Quoted from the Westminster Herald:

 "CRA Convention in Costa Mesa Has Interesting Westminster Twist"

In April of 2002 the American Vietnamese California Republican Assembly (CRA) was established as the "Orange County American Vietnamese CRA, with its jurisdiction being within the American Vietnamese Community/Westminster.

But there are a few steps this group skipped in forming their group. First of all the California Republican Assembly, once referred to by President Ronald Reagan as "the conscience of the Republican Party", has by-laws that state that at least 11 members of a newly formed chapter must reside in the city in which they claim jurisdiction. Well, since only one or possibly two of the charter members lived in Westminster, ......

and all the rest lived in cities such as Stanton, Anaheim, Laguna Niguel and most in Garden Grove; the CRA gave them the name "Orange County American Vietnamese CRA".

However, the CRA has another by-law. It says the name of the area in which you claim jurisdiction must be in the name of your unit. Apparently the CRA overlooked BOTH of their own by-laws in order to grant a charter to the "OCAVCRA." As if that is not sufficient; another CRA by-law is that all members must be registered Republican voters. When all the founding members of this chapter/charter were researched at the Registrar of Voters, it was found that two of them did not even register to vote until 2004 and 2005.

When a group of Westminster Residents recently attempted to form a Westminster California Republican Assembly chapter, they were originally told that they could because there was no other Westminster Chapter. When the OC American Vietnamese CRA found out about it they filed a "dispute" to have the newly formed group blocked from having a charter. They claimed they "owned Westminster". The new group filed a counter-dispute asking for a copy of the Charter of the OCAVCRA, and a copy of the map required to be filed at the time of the OCAVCRA charter approval. The new group never received anything from the CRA despite several attempts to get a copy of their charter and map.

Finally another person, a former and founding member of the OCAVCRA gave them a copy of the original charter where they found the names of the original founding members of the charter and researched them at the Registrar of Voters. That same person said there was never a map filed because they wanted to leave it open for all Vietnamese in Orange County to join their group. The only reason they had put a slash/Westminster in the body of their own by-laws was because all other chartered areas were already represented in the areas they wanted to form their charter in, namely Garden Grove.

After three "disputes" were filed by the group wanting to form a Westminster CRA - they still received nothing from the State CRA. The State CRA said that the disputes would be heard at the annual meeting on April 25, 26, & 27, to be held in Costa Mesa. There were rampant rumors that this group's only intent was to have a new chapter that could produce five votes to endorse Janet Nguyen for 1st District Supervisor. In fact, that endorsing convention was held in March and these disputes would not even be heard by the CRA Board until April.

It didn't go so well for the Westminster group. The CRA, seeing that they had made errors and not even followed their own by-laws decided to just have the Orange County American Vietnamese CRA change their name to "Westminster CRA". The group that wanted to start a Westminster CRA had just had the name that was supposedly available to them given away to a group that proposed to have jurisdiction "within the Vietnamese American Community/Westminster". So the new group was not allowed to form to represent the other 61 % of Westminster that are not Vietnamese.

While the newly re-named group says they are open to all people in Westminster to join, their charter still says that they wanted Jurisdiction within the American Vietnamese Community. Some of the members wanting to start the new Westminster group had been former members of the OCAVCRA, and one was a delegate to conventions for them. However, at the endorsements convention meeting for the first district supervisor (When Lou Correa left his post on the OC Board of Supervisors) the President, Mr. Cuong Cao replaced one of these delegates with a new delegate. When asked why, it was stated by the Secretary of the OCAVCRA that Mr. Cao thought since the group's name was American Vietnamese, that a person of Vietnamese heritage should be the delegate. That endorsement convention resulted in the endorsement of Kermit Marsh, who had filed to run for County Supervisor and later dropped out of the race.

So the Westminster residents who wanted to start a new Westminster CRA chapter are still wondering what President Ronald Reagan would be thinking if he were alive today, would he still be calling the CRA "the conscience of the Republican Party"? And, will there be real representation within the CRA for the other 61% of Westminster?

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And another thought comes to mind when thinking about the "conscience"...if the CRA is the "conscience" of the Republican Party and it has now sacrificed it's own conscience circumventing it's own by-laws to clean up what should never have been allowed in the first place, then indeed does the Republican Party still have a conscience?