California Republican Assembly, CRA, endorses Mitt Romney in 2nd ballot

Bulletin: The California Republican Assembly, CRA, has just endorsed Mitt Romney for president at it’s convention in Sacramento. Announcement follows:

Subj: CRA Endorses Mitt Romney for President
Date: 11/11/2007 7:32:09 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: admin@californiarepublicanassembly.com
To: lgpwr@aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)

November 11, 2007

CRA Overwhelmingly Endorses Mitt Romney for President

SACRAMENTO – California’s oldest and largest Republican volunteer organization, the California Republican Assembly, endorsed Mitt Romney for President this weekend during the group’s annual convention held in Sacramento, California.

“Mitt Romney has been steadily gaining support from conservatives throughout California,” said CRA President Mike Spence following the endorsement vote.

Romney received the required two-thirds vote of delegates to obtain the endorsement.

In a nominating speech, former Assemblyman Tony Strickland urged CRA members to vote for Romney as “the best candidate to fight for critical conservative issues and to defeat Hillary Clinton in November.”

Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts, is one of several candidates who have openly courted CRA delegates. In a September 2006 meeting with CRA members, Romney made a solid conservative presentation touching on a number of bellweather issues from taxes, to gay marriage and stem cell research.

In the first vote, all of the major Republican candidates were placed in nomination. Romney won 139 of 230 votes cast. Fred Thompson was second with 30 votes. Rudy Guiliani received only 6 votes, with the other candidates rounding out the votes.

Under CRA rules, candidates who did not receive at least ten percent of the votes cast were dropped from subsequent ballots. In the second ballot, Romney defeated Thompson 148-73.

As a former unit president of the CRA, and with fellow believers at church, I am in contact with many Republican conservatives in south Orange County. Basically we find solid support on several of the candidates but struggle to find “one size fits all” as it relates to all of the key policy issues.

The low voter approval by the CRA of Rudy is not a surprise based on his position on gay rights and abortion.

According to my calendar we are now inside the final three months to our primary.
Stay tuned! The fat lady is not even in the house.

About Larry Gilbert