One of the champions of the unsuccessful effort to oust a Muslim from Tarrant Republican Party leadership now has a new appointment.
James Scott Trimm now serves on the Tarrant County GOP Precinct Chair Recruitment Committee. He was a vocal supporter of the request to remove Shahid Shafi from the post of vice chairman.
“The point of this is to heal the Party,” Tarrant Republican Joel Downs, who heads the committee, posted on Facebook about the new appointment.
(Star Telegram Jan. 18, 2019)
The Dallas Morning News reported a day earlier:
His appointment, leaders say, is intended to be an olive branch to those who voted to remove Dr. Shahid Shafi from his position.
Joel Downs, chairman of that committee, announced the appointment Tuesday on Facebook, along with an explanation of why Trimm was chosen.
“Although James is a capable person and I appointed him for that the reason, I did it mostly to make a gesture of peace,” Downs told The Dallas Morning News. “We need to bury the hatchet and defeat the Democrats.”
(Dallas Morning News Jan. 17, 2019)
The public should know that Joel Downs and I discussed my possible appointment to the committee for the first time on Saturday January 12th, 2019. However after discussing the matter, we both agreed that I would not accept this appointment without Darl Easton's approval.
On January 14th, 2019 Joel Downs contacted me to tell me that Darl Easton had approved of my appointment to the committee.
On January 18th I was contacted by the Fort Worth Star Telegram for a comment about my appointment:
When asked for a comment about his appointment, Trimm responded: “I voted against Shafi because he was unwilling to publicly support Israel with Jerusalem as the undivided capital and oppose creation of a Palestinian state within the historic borders of Israel” which is a plank in the Texas GOP platform.
“The decision on Shafi has been made and we Republicans now need to work together to keep Tarrant County red.”
(Star Telegram Jan. 18, 2019)
Then on Thursday January 24th I learned that the entire committee had been vacated when the Star Telegram reached out to me for a comment. I had none, because that was the first I heard of it. Apparently Easton's priority was notifying the press rather than the committee members.
That day the Star-Telegram reported:
Tarrant Republicans trying to unite after an unsuccessful move to remove a Muslim man from party leadership have hit another roadblock.
An effort to “heal the party” has ended.
The idea was to offer a spot on a recruitment committee to James Scott Trimm, who vocally supported removing Shahid Shafi, a Muslim, from party leadership.
But the chairman of the committee has resigned and the entire committee has been disbanded, at least for now.
(Tarrant GOP’s effort to ‘heal’ after Muslim vote claims first victim: a whole committee)
Why did this happen? Because Darl Easton, who had approved my appointment just ten days earlier, had waffled and suddenly wanted me off the committee. The committee chair Joel Downs, unwilling to remove me from the committee without any real cause (short of Easton's inability to stand by a decision he had made just days earlier) chose to resign rather than to follow Easton's directive.
Darl Easton's goal was to "completely reorganize" the committee. The Star Telegram reported Easton as saying:
“The (committee) will be completely reorganized after the assessment,” he said in his statement. “The purpose of this re-assessment is to improve and expand our efforts to grow the Party and its outreach to every corner of Tarrant County as we approach the next election cycle.”
(Tarrant GOP’s effort to ‘heal’ after Muslim vote claims first victim: a whole committee)
Now, as a result of Easton's inability to make a critical decision, and stand by that decision for more than ten days, there will be no committee to recruit new Precinct Chairs until at least after the March Executive Committee meeting. Tarrant County Republicans need to be uniting to keep Tarrant Red, and Darl Easton's instability as a leader, has left us without this important committee. Moreover, as members of the party are trying to heal and unite to work together, Darl Easton is working to divide rather than unite the party.
The Tarrant County Republican Party is in shambles, and those of us working to heal the party and unite the party to keep Tarrant red, are finding our County Chair working against that goal.
This kind of waffling, of holding out the olive branch to unite the party, only to jerk it back and bring down our recruitment committee in the process was the last thing our County Chair needed to be doing with the Lincoln Dinner less than a month away.
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