Republican National Delegate Sondra Ziegler, a member of the Free the Delegates effort, released an open letter to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.
Texas Republican Delegate Sondra Ziegler speaks
I received a press release in my inbox that caught my eyes. I get tons of these releases every day and ignore most of them. This one touched me. Sondra Ziegler is a young Texas married woman. Both she and her husband are self-employed. But Ziegler is not a Trump supporter. She is a ‘bound’ Ted Cruz delegate.
Ziegler said that she wants to educate other delegates. She feels it is the responsibility of delegates to vote in the best interest of their party irrespective of the popular vote.
“This is not a normal year,” Sondra Ziegler said. “Most of us who are involved in this effort would not bail on the presumptive nominee if we didn’t believe the presumptive nominee was someone who was going to do great damage to our party. And he is not a suitable leader of the free world.”
Ziegler said there were three specific reasons she wrote the letter to RNC Chair Reince Priebus.
- Point out that delegates are everyday Americans that are out there volunteering and working for the party.
- Point out that the desire to replace Trump has nothing to do with sour grapes but about an unqualified nominee.
- Point out that delegates and the establishment have different roles and as such let the delegates do their job.
I asked Sondra Ziegler if she intended to vote for Donald Trump if he becomes the nominee. Her answer was unequivocal.
“I will not cast a vote for Donald Trump,” Ziegler said. “I will be voting for somebody else. It won’t be Hillary Clinton. No, I am not going to vote for Hillary Clinton, and I am not going to vote for Donald Trump.”
After the interview, I spoke to Ziegler about other conservative issues. As a Texan, I asked her if she agreed with the anti-choice laws in Texas. I asked her for her position on several general conservative issues. I wanted to pick the brain of an intelligent conservative woman as opposed to many who simply carry the flag for cultural reasons. There was more agreement than one would think. Wordsmithing by the plutocracy is powerful and is the cause of our great divide. But that is for another blog.
Following is the letter that was sent to Reince Priebus.
Open Letter to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus from National Delegate: “Don’t freak out. We’re trying to save you from yourself.”
I am a wife and mother of three, a business owner, and a grassroots volunteer. I have been Vice Chairman of my county Republican Party and of my local Republican Women’s Club, and I am a first-time delegate to the Republican National Convention.
In the 2012 primary, like so many other Republicans, I was determined to help our Party nominate a candidate who could take the fight to Barack Obama, and articulate the cherished principles of our Party that have made America exceptional. Our liberty — born in the heart of God – is the animating principle of our Republic, and the engine of our prosperity.
Nothing this side of heaven is perfect. And I agreed with Sen. Phil Gramm when he used to say liberty is no exception. “Trouble is,” he would say, “it’s better than anything anybody’s ever figured out.” Indeed, all of human history is witness that free markets, smaller government, and individual liberty have done more good for more people than anything ever.
As many like-minded members of our Party, I believed that Newt Gingrich, not Mitt Romney, was the best standard-bearer of this message in the general election. So I did what many grassroots volunteers in our Party do in presidential primaries. I packed up the kids and my Mom, and went first to Iowa, and then to South Carolina to help run phone banks for a campaign that had little organization or money, and looking back, probably began as a promotional effort to sell books and speaking fees. I don’t think Newt ever dreamed he would have to run a real campaign with real staff. But alas, he found himself surging in the polls just ahead of Iowa.
When we arrived a few days after Thanksgiving 2011, the paid staff had just unlocked the door of the Des Moines headquarters. The primary in Iowa was going to be held January 3rd. Not a lot of time to organize. We were literally the only volunteers there except for a lady named Judy from Indiana who had arrived as a volunteer like us, and had been tapped to answer the phone and run the office. We went home for a few days at Christmas, and returned just a couple of days after to help work the final push.
As other volunteers started to pour in, we did the best we could, working 12 hours a day. I helped train new callers, create scripts, and compile “best hits” talking points based on the state of the race that day and what seemed to be resonating with voters. We signed people up to speak for Newt at their caucus meeting on yellow sticky notes. I spoke at a caucus meeting.
After Iowa, I was asked by our grassroots Newt team to run a phone bank in South Carolina. I packed up the kids, asked my Mom in Kentucky to meet us, and drove 22 hours to Greenville to work the two weeks prior to the South Carolina primary. Newt ended up winning it (thanks to a stellar performance at the presidential debate there where he took on the media for how it covers Republicans. It was a winning narrative.).
I went home to Lubbock and continued to work full-time as Newt’s National Volunteer Coordinator, an entirely volunteer position for our grassroots team in which I contacted and coordinated volunteers to travel to the primary contests leading up to and including Super Tuesday. I was a stranger calling to ask them to go and stay entirely at their own expense with nothing to offer them but the glamorous work of phone banking and block walking to convince people to vote for Newt in those battleground contests.
When Newt lost the primary, I mourned.
And then, with the general election in the balance, I led a group of Republican Women from Lubbock to Cleveland, Ohio. We spent a week knocking on doors in rain gear for the Romney/Ryan ticket, as hurricane Sandy was blowing in on the east coast.
My point in all this is that anybody who wants to accuse me of being motivated by sour grapes can stuff it.
Mitt Romney was not my choice. But he is a talented businessman whose respect for others is evident. He believes in the power of free markets to “lift all boats.” He is a decent and honorable man – one my children can look up to.This election, and this “presumptive nominee” are different. The question in this election is not if Republicans can get over the fact that their first choice didn’t win the primary. The question is if there are any boundaries to our Party at all.
Does the Republican Party stand for anything? Or are we bound to allow 12 million people who aren’t even Republicans dictate what the Party now stands for and who its standard-bearer has to be? And are we also now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Trump Inc.?
That the majority of Republicans don’t want Donald Trump is a fact of the primary election, and also of recent polling. The vast majority of my constituents as a Republican National Delegate from Texas’ 19th Congressional District who have contacted me say they long for someone else to vote for.
Fortunately, the founders of our Party knew that we needed an escape hatch. That’s why we have delegates, not just a popular vote. An examination of the history of our Party and of legal precedent shows that the delegates to the Republican National Convention may cast a vote for a different candidate than the one dictated by their state’s Presidential Preference Primary or Caucus, when conscience, the good of the Party and our nation dictates they must. This is such a time.
My message to you Chairman Priebus is this: I understand the position you hold, and your belief that you are duty-bound to (nearly daily) embarrass yourself by attempting to embrace Donald Trump as the likely nominee of our Party.
But those of us who are delegates have a different role. Our Party rules say the delegates are the “highest authority” of the Convention. It is the delegates who choose our nominee. So along with other delegates, I am working to save you from yourself.We are educating the delegates of the historical and legal precedents to vote their conscience, to give them a green light to do so. Our goal is to put forth as the Republican Nominee for President of the United States, someone who is an honorable and vigorous advocate of the blessings of individual liberty, smaller government and free markets – someone who understands that it is only these principles that actually can make America great again. You can thank us later.
Yours Truly,
Sondra Ziegler, Lubbock, Texas
National Delegate – Place 1, Texas Congressional District 19
#freethedelegates