No Grok Allowed! David Chesley Bullies The Ladies Of NAFRW - Granite Grok

No Grok Allowed! David Chesley Bullies The Ladies Of NAFRW

Respect for his elders? Not so much!
Respect for his elders?
Not so much!
Saturday lunchtime: Your Grok was invited, nay, cajoled, to record the NH Federated Republican Women’s “Woman Of The Year” event, to preserve it for posterity, especially as Betty LaMontagne was the honoree this year. (This has been common practice – DaTechGuy covered last year for the NAFRW.)

Arrangements were made with the Nashua Area FRW President and Secretary, a table was provided, setup almost completed, and a guy (women’s event, remember) comes up demanding the we leave: “No press allowed, this is a closed event, Sharon Day (RNC Co-Chair) cannot be recorded”, and more nonsense. We told him that we were there at the invite of the organization, and that he had no authority, specifically as he was obviously not a Republican Woman!

The guy, David Chesley, then insisted that the “whole event”, encompassing the GOP grassroots training delivered by Sharon Day that morning, was closed to press, and when that claim didn’t move us, went off to tell the NAFRW president, Linda Twombly, pictured, and secretary, Mar-Mar Rogers, that the club had previously been advised of the press ban, and that the ‘press’ (Grok) must go. Linda was nonplussed by the assertion that she’d been told previously, and was tempted to give in, but Mar-Mar wasn’t backing down.

At first, the compromise was to record everything except Sharon Day’s speech (we had a note-taker ready), and finally to go ahead with the recording as originally requested by the NAFRW. A wise move, because Skip was ready pull up stakes and dip his keyboard in poison pixels over the folly of public figures in the GOP demanding to be off the record at a public event.

As it happened, it was a very good event, Jennifer Horn’s speech was good, Sharon Day’s was an excellent history of the advancement of women by the GOP, and Betty LaMontagne’s speech was very moving – don’t miss the videos when Skip posts them!

>