Tyler Bowyer has taken the first in what has been rumored to be a set of revenge maneuvers against those officer that voted for the recent “no confidence resolution” of Chairman Bowyer.
After serving less than a year as Maricopa County Chairman, 14 of the 29 officers present at the county party’s regular monthly meeting voted that they had no confidence in their current chairman. The resolution followed an embarrassing display by Bowyer on Sunday Square off where he misleads viewers about the party’s stance on educational bonds and overrides. Many officers, PCs and voters were angry with Bowyer for falsely claiming that the decision to oppose all education bonds and overrides was a unanimous one. Even worse, after publicly opposing all 28 bonds and overrides, Bowyer saw 24 of them pass…an embarrassing 14% winning percentage. So at the end of the day, Bowyer lied about his board’s position on the bonds and overrides…and then failed to win even a quarter of the races in which the county party participated.
As a result, officers began to see other irregularities and questionable decisions like Bowyers use of county funds for trips out to presidential campaign events. Sources close to the issue are wondering why is he wasting the County’s very limited funds to attend presidential campaign events and nothing on local issues important to Maricopa County. Said one conservative Maricopa County leader, “to be honest I’m not sure if Chairman Bowyer has actually accomplished anything since he took office.”
The Arizona Capitol Times’ Yellow Sheet has covered many of Bowyer’s many misrepresentations, failures and missteps, culminating in 14 of his officers voting that they have no confidence in him.  As a result he has begun a revenge campaign.
Following the ‘no confidence vote’ Bowyer directed member-at-large Andrew Costanzo to violate county and district bylaws in calling for a new election in LD 30. By ignoring officer nomination procedures, notice requirements and election procedures, Bowyer and Costanzo clearly broke established rules for both LD 30 and the Maricopa County GOP.  As attorney Kory Langhofer stated in a letter to the board, the election, “deviates substantially” from the county and district by-laws and was not legally binding. Costanzo and Bowyer, unfortunately, do not feel compelled to follow the rules, and were determined to carry out Bowyers revenge order despite these contradictions to the law of the land. They held a bogus election, and illegally “elected” a new chair.
So as it stands, the district now has a legitimate set of duly-elected officers and PCs who will continue to lead their district in accordance with the rules and a separate group of illegally appointed PCs lead by only this false chairman (no other officers were elected so this group has no other officers) holding there own meetings.
The November 19th Yellow Sheet poses the most important question: who will Bowyer recognize? The article states that the State Party has already obtained there own legal opinion from State party legal counsel Tim LaSota stating that there was nothing legally binding about the rogue meeting. As a result, the State party will continue to recognize the duly-elected officers of the district.
What will Bowyer do? Will he stab Constanzo in the back and abide by his own by-laws? Or will he violate the by-laws and add another nail to his coffin…we’ll be watching, and reporting.