Image Credit: Elevate-2025 Slate / Facebook
By Don Beehler [contributor to The Tennessee Conservative] –
At the April 12 Tennessee Republican Party’s State Executive Committee (SEC) meeting in Mount Juliet, SEC members rejected the Williamson County Conservatives’ (WCC) appeal of results from the Williamson County Republican Party’s (WCRP) March 4 reorganization convention and upheld the election of the new Elevate board.
This decision ends the challenge of the WCC candidates, led by Williamson County Commissioner Brian Clifford, to upend the election for WCRP board seats. (Elevate’s rebuttal on the WCRP website reveals details of what happened before, during and after the convention.)
The 59 SEC members present voted against the appeal, finding it baseless and without any evidence of election fraud. In doing so, they also rejected the ridiculous charges and defamatory public statements made by the WCC and their supporters when they falsely, maliciously and recklessly accused numerous upstanding fellow Republicans of cheating.
One of the key disclosures made during the appeal process is that the WCC hosted their own registration site using a QR code that insinuated to voters they were registering with the party for the convention. Instead, they were apparently registering through the WCC, providing their personal information to the group, which harvested the data on its private website.
(Voters who registered through this site might want to give Mr. Clifford a call to ask who has their personal information and how it will be used.)
The WCC hoarded more than 900 names of Republican voters and then dropped these names on the official state registration site the Saturday before the Tuesday convention. These 900+ names represented a more than 70% increase in registrations and could easily have been submitted on a rolling basis.
The timing appeared to be designed to create a chaotic and difficult situation for the volunteers charged with vetting names, and which the WCC could later complain about (as they did in their appeal). The devious and methodical way in which the WCC candidates set pre-election expectations for cheating on the part of innocent groups and individuals—and their actions in undermining the registration process—is truly stunning.
Despite these challenges, the Contest and Credentials Committee (CCC) volunteers and the Tennessee Republican Party made heroic efforts to process the WCC’s massive and calculated last-minute name drop. For their efforts, they were rewarded with ruthless accusations and innuendos by the WCC.
In one particularly memorable case, the WCC publicly and deceitfully targeted a volunteer member of the CCC by accusing the volunteer of “flippantly” stating they should “burn certain ballots,” thereby implying evidence of election fraud, knowing full well that the volunteer was responding to Williamson County Election Commission Chairman Jonathan Duda’s statement (confirmed in his own submitted declaration) that extra unused ballots should be “shredded or burned” for the sake of election integrity.
During the campaign, the WCC’s social media made the outrageous comparison of the Williamson County GOP’s leadership to Joseph Stalin, a man who killed millions of his own people. Within minutes of losing their appeal, the WCC publicly accused the Tennessee Republican Party and the GOP’s State Executive Committee of having “Soviet-style rubber stamped the sham of an ‘election’ that was the March 4th Reorganization.”
They went on to claim the March 4 reorganization “was rigged as is this TNGOP State Executive Committee.” Funny how every loss the WCC endures is the result of a communist-style rigged election.
The new Williamson County GOP board now has the unenviable task of trying to unify the local party while a group of sulking crybabies who didn’t get their way actively seek to continue attacking and undermining them. To achieve unity, there will have to be a willingness by the WCC to dispense with their vitriol and work with the Republican leadership as they move the party forward. So far, the indications are not encouraging.
“We do NOT condone corruption and collusion within the Williamson County ‘Republican’ and the Tennessee Republican Party’s Establishment State Executive Committee. There will be no concession for a rigged ‘election,’” the WCC wrote on their Facebook page shortly after their appeal was dismissed, adding, “We are here to stay and are going to thwart their nefarious plans at every turn.”
As “Winning for Life” author Denis Waitley wisely noted, “Losers live in the past. Winners learn from the past and enjoy working in the present toward the future.”
While it’s amusing to watch the WCC become unhinged and self-destruct, we also must acknowledge that the WCC’s hateful rhetoric and unsubstantiated accusations have done great harm to the WCRP and the Tennessee GOP by creating division and suspicion. Even though they’ve been discredited by third-party GOP officials, the WCC has made it clear they intend to continue down this ruinous path. Is this really what rational Williamson County Republicans want? I don’t think so.
Early in my public relations career I attended a conference where a speaker from a company that was frequently under attack suggested dividing one’s critics into two camps: the reasonable and the unreasonable. He urged the audience to try to work with their reasonable critics, listen to their concerns and find common ground. The unreasonable critics, he counseled, should be ignored because they will always suspect the worst and refuse to work with you, even in areas of common interest.
The Republican Party platform is a good starting point for Republicans to unite, rally and find common ground, but sadly that is not the case with the WCC folks. They fall into the unreasonable camp, so it’s best to just ignore them.
Interestingly, of the eight WCC candidates who sought board positions in the WCRP, five of them are not even members of the party they once hoped to lead. From what I have seen, they do not appear to be the least bit concerned about the best interests of the local or state party, nor do they care about the consequences of the discord they continue to sow among Republicans.
It’s estimated that the WCC team spent around $100,000 in their failed campaign. Now this money has gone down the drain and all that’s left is a gurgling sound. As a service to those funding the Williamson County Conservatives PAC, I feel obligated to point out that narcissism and rage are not winning strategies. If you want to be taken seriously, perhaps a coaching change, an attitude adjustment and a new strategic direction are in order.
The real question that now ought to be asked of prominent establishment supporters of the WCC, such as State Sen. Jack Johnson and Rep. Lee Reeves, is whether they agree with this divisive stance or are they embarrassed by it? Do they now regret backing Mr. Clifford and the other WCC candidates, or are they quietly working with them behind the scenes to fan the flames of disunity?
(I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for a response as I can’t even get Mr. Reeves, who represents my district, to answer a simple question I asked him recently in an email: “If the choice comes down to continuing to permit Democrats to vote in Republican primaries or holding caucuses, which do you prefer?”)
It’s believed by many that Brian Clifford has ambitions beyond his current position as a county commissioner; in fact, some think his next goal is to become county mayor. How on earth can someone like that work with diverse groups and bring unity to our community? What does our current county mayor, Rogers Anderson, think of Mr. Clifford’s antics?
For that matter, are any of Mr. Clifford’s supporters willing to go on record to either continue backing him or to call him out for his horrendous, child-like behavior? Perhaps an ugly split in the GOP is the only way certain elected officials think they can retain their power and keep the grassroots conservatives from exerting more influence. If so, that likely will provide even more motivation for true conservatives in upcoming elections.
Here’s the bottom line: The WCC candidates lost this election because they lack integrity, credibility and a unifying vision for Williamson County Republicans. These candidates made it abundantly clear they were running as a unified slate. They lost their appeal because they had no proof of fraud. And now, having demonstrated they are irreconcilable and ungracious in defeat, they have made themselves irrelevant in Williamson County politics.
Don Beehler is a retired public relations consultant in Franklin, Tennessee. He served as a volunteer in the Elevate campaign. For more information visit www.donbeehler.com.
