Flathead County Republicans Primed for New Leadership

Al “Doc” Olszewski’s days leading the local Republican Party apparatus are numbered.

The Flathead County Republican Central Committee (FCRCC) has selected Sept. 17 to hold a county convention, where the body will elect a new executive board, including tapping a new chairman, the role Olszewski has long held. 

“It was very obvious last month that if I’m in the room, I’m like gas on the fire with the new members,” Olszewski said at the FCRCC’s Thursday meeting. “So, I will just let you know, as we move forward with the county convention, I’m not going to be directly involved in the planning of the convention or chairing the convention.”

But after Thursday’s meeting, where conducting new business was hamstrung by the absence of more than 60 of the body’s newly elected members, questions about how to conduct that county convention remain. And several of the body’s holdover members, who have served on the central committee under Olszewski, minced no words Thursday about their feelings seeing the chair depart his position as the local party faces down divisions some of its new members have told the Beacon they hope to see mended.

“While I have the floor, I would like to thank Dr. Olszewski for his years of service, his commitment to this county, and to these people, not to necessarily a party, but supporting the Republican Party platform,” said Al Wilson, who has served as a precinct committeeman for six years. “With all he’s done, he did not deserve the past couple months of the hounding and the badgering and the visceral attitude from certain people.”  

The latest meeting comes on the heels of a contentious summer for the central committee as Olszewski has experienced a groundswell of opposition among new membership, resulting in his decision to step down as chair in July. In June, the first meeting after the new central committee members were elected, business did not take place as committee members voted to shut down the proceedings before the meeting could officially begin. And at August’s meeting, those present expressed frustration over their fellow committee members’ absences, with some suggesting absences should be cause for removing precinct captains. That suggestion, Olszewski said, is out of line with state law.

The trio of meetings where the FCRCC conducted minimal business — and squabbled over the legality of meeting at all — tees up the county convention to be a turning point. But before that can happen, former state Sen. Keith Regier, who’s handling the rules committee for the county convention, raised several questions Thursday about how to conduct the selection of new leadership.

“I got to looking at the convention, and there are some things that are a gray area, and I thought, ‘well, I could get two or three people and we get together and make a decision on that,’ but the group as a whole would probably go, ‘why did you do it that way?’” Regier said at the meeting. “So, I thought the best thing is to bring those decisions to the body as a whole to make those decisions. Too bad we won’t be able to make those decisions tonight, but they are things that we’re going to have to somehow work out before the convention. Otherwise, there will be a lot of confusion during the convention.”

Among the questions Regier posed were the matter of credentialing members so they could cast votes; how to handle nominations for officer positions; and ensuring proxies were submitted “sufficiently in advance.” At central committee meetings, with the requisite paperwork, a “proxy” can stand in for a committee member.

With the absences, the body made no decisions about how to handle those questions. FCRCC members present discussed the possibility of calling a special meeting ahead of the Sept. 17 convention to hammer out the details but didn’t make a final call on whether that meeting would take place or not.

For some new members of the central committee, a change in leadership is a welcome prospect.

Bill Moseley, who represents Precinct 54, told the Beacon in July one of the main questions the new faction hopes to answer is about how often the FCRCC will tolerate those who occasionally disagree with its positions. Moseley suggested that tolerance has been absent in recent years — and in his eyes, the local central committee should be a place for debate and conversation.

He pointed to the state party’s recent activity as an example, which includes new membership bylaws that allow the GOP to remove its own for unspecified reasons. Those bylaws are the subject of a lawsuit, where multiple local central committees are challenging the state party in court. Flathead County’s central committee is not among them.

More locally, Moseley suggested the FCRCC’s endorsement activities in recent primary election cycles served as an example of an unwillingness to tolerate differing opinions within its ranks. In large part, those who were passed over clung to their conservative bona fides, and some who were incumbent legislators had records that showed they voted in line with their party a majority of the time at the legislature.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s a question of conservatism,” Moseley said. “It seems like it’s a question of tolerance.”

Giuseppe “GMan” Caltabiano, a Whitefish city councilor who bested state party chair Art Wittich for his seat on the FCRCC, echoed Moseley. While Caltabiano claimed he didn’t know much of the history of the FCRCC, in a July interview with the Beacon he cited recent divisions in the central committee as a factor in his decision to run for a seat on the body. He said he hoped to help repair those divides.

Caltabiano said, in his view, the best leaders are the best servants.  

“A leader should be able to serve his or her committee, and the committee should be able to serve the community, not the other way around,” Caltabiano said. “Sometimes leadership is confused with authority, and in political office, I’m adamant about leadership being the lowest degree of authority because I respond to my voters, not the other way around.”

So, extending that ethos to the FCRCC, Caltabiano said he views the chair’s role as one of servanthood. Ideally, he hopes the body’s next chair would be willing to listen, accept scrutiny and to coordinate the members of the group. But most importantly, he hopes the central committee can leave its past, and the divisions along with it, behind.

“I don’t worry about the past,” he said. “I just hope that we can all be united and look forward united.”

Olszewski, for his part, said as he steps away from his role in leadership, he won’t have a voice in the local party anymore. He’s not an elected precinct committee member. He said state Rep. Steven Kelly represents him on the body, and views Kelly as doing a good job. So, he said he has no imminent plans to run for a precinct seat.

“Every organization needs new blood and passion and energy,” Olszewski said.

It’s exciting, he said, to consider what the new group might bring, and it appears they’ve created a cohesive caucus. But his hope is that as new leadership takes over, they include the members of the old guard he’s leaving behind.

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