Instead of bringing the appeal to the Maine State GOP Executive Committee as laid out in the State Rules, Chairman Rich Cebra consulted with an attorney.
The attorney, William Logan, sent a legal memorandum back to Cebra on February 22, 2013. The page containing details of that memorandum are at our "Memo from the Lawyer" page.
Cebra held on to that memorandum for more than a week, until on March 1, 2013, he issue a memorandum of his own which stated the "opinion of the Party's Legal Counsel" which opined that Ken Anderson was "not an 'affected person' and cannot avail himself of" the provisions for appeal. Details of that memorandum are discussed on our "Memo from the Chair" page.
Also on March 1, 2013, he issued a response which was emailed to the State Committee members and selected members of the Penobscot County Committee, entitled "Message from Chairman Richard M. Cebra". The details of that "message" are on our "Message from the Chair" page.
Conspicuously, the appellant, Ken Anderson was not included on any of the mailing lists.
And no one would contact him at any time until literally hours after the email had gone to all members of the State Committee and selected members of the County Committee. Although Ken Anderson was a duly elected, dues-paying legal voting member of that Committee, he was not given the civility of being notified that he was "not an affected person" until after I contacted Maine State Republican Executive Director Jason Savage.
Here was my message to the Executive Director:
Please relay to your boss that it would be a good thing to break his and the State GOP's silence with my husband and at the VERY LEAST, let HIM know that he is a "not affected" person.
I am livid, not just at the goings-on of the past month, but at the fact that the "leadership" does not have the common decency to send him their 'findings.'
Am I supposed to do that? What a crock. What a big, steaming crock.
Please have someone at least send him an email telling him the outcome of his appeal?
Mr. Savage responded that "it was believed" that Ken didn't have his own email address, which I pointed out was not even a good lie, given that Ken certainly got email from the party when they wanted something from him, that the Secretary of the State Republican Committee had the email address, and that Ken Anderson had sent his contact information -- including phone, physical address, and email address -- along with the appeal.
Although Mr. Savage then immediately sent me the message that "Rich is not to blame in any way for the timing or delivery" of the communication and that he (Jason Savage) could not address the issue with me because he did not "have any understanding of what happened."
Ken Anderson finally got official notification of his status as a "not affected person" more than five hours after the rest of the Maine State Republicans got it.
Pertinent Links:
Message from Rich Cebra, Chair of the Maine State Republican Party