Republican county, precinct chairs served temporary restraining order

Tensions spiked at a local Republican executive committee meeting when several precinct chairs were served a surprise injunction, stopping alleged attempted removal of two precinct chairs from office.

An agenda circulated around the county leading up to the special meeting Thursday night indicated there would be a vote potentially to suspend or remove sitting precinct chairs. As a result, a temporary restraining order and injunction was filed, signed by the 198th District Court Judge and served to seven members of the Republican Party, much to the apparent surprise of the county chair.

“This seems kind of backwards showing up at our meeting and serving us with no prior warning,” Bandera County Republican Chair Conrad Striegl said to the deputy finalizing the formal documents to be served, saying the Republican Party members weren’t invited to be present when the judge approved the orders.

The orders halted the Republican Party officials from removing Precinct 305 Chair Joseph Kitzman and Precinct 306 Chair Cammie Morgan, with affidavits from both chairs noting reason to believe they were the targets of the executive session agenda item.

In his latest weekly column, Striegl says the meeting was for “some housekeeping business” and compared the delivery of the restraining order to the recent Mar-a-Lago raid by the FBI.

“The BCEC were served with a restraining order and lawsuit to preclude them from removing these Pct Chairs, which the BCEC can’t even do,” Streigl wrote in that column, which can be read on page two of this issue of the Bulletin.

The Bulletin reached out to Morgan and Kitzman, but did not receive a comment by press time.

Both Kitzman’s and Morgan’s affidavits point to Texas Government Code Section 171.029, which essentially allows the removal of a precinct chair for failure to attend meetings or perform their function, which both chairs say does not apply to their performance as chairs. Despite the great efforts to prevent the arguably unlawful removal of two chairs, a roughly hour-and-a-half long executive session ensued. A group of concerned and impassioned citizens lined the booths and tables outside the small meeting room at China Bowl, leaning in to hear more as voices raised and banging ensued from the closed chambers. The finalized restraining orders were handed to the chairs by a deputy one-byone as they came in and out of the private room throughout the meeting.

Kitzman and Morgan were notably expelled from the executive session about an hour into the discussions, which raises legal questions identified in the injunction John Payne, attorney for Kitzman and Morgan, filed. The petition for injunctive relief identifies Republican Party of Texas Rule 8g, which states: “All meetings of any state or county executive committee or its committees, subcommittees or ad hoc committees shall be open to any member of that executive committee.”

In the end, several of the county chairs on the receiving end of the injunction and restraining order claim no precinct chairs were ever going to be removed from office that evening, but with the meeting happening behind closed doors, it remains unclear what may or may not have happened.

The next regular meeting of the Bandera Republican Party is Thursday, September 8 at 6 p.m. at the Lakehills Library. It is open to the public.

“Spread the word, tell your friends and neighbors,” Striegl wrote last week. “We want to meet you and hear from you.”