Bucks Republicans return to court over leadership election complaint

PHILADELPHIA — Bucks County Republicans returned to court yesterday over a June 2022 party leadership election whose results plaintiffs call illegitimate.

At the 2022 meeting, the Bucks County Republican Committee (BCRC) reelected Pat Poprik as chair, a spot she first took ten years earlier, and elected four other party executives.

The following January, several dozen BCRC members who opposed Poprik filed an ethics complaint with the county and state Republican committees, alleging problems with the June election’s conduct. The complainants objected to BCRC’s timing of many new committee-member appointments, stewardship of its bylaws, and management of committee voting, especially proxy voting. 

Seeking Poprik’s ouster and bylaw changes but getting nowhere, her reelection opponent Barry Casper and 44 of his committee allies sued BCRC and the Pennsylvania Republican Party in August 2023. Losing in the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas, the plaintiffs appealed to the Commonwealth Court, a three-judge panel of which heard oral arguments in Philadelphia yesterday.

In addition to the local and state GOPs, defendants include former state party Chairman Lawrence Tabas, Poprik herself, and BCRC Assistant Secretary-Treasurer Colleen Strunk as well as former party officers Joe Cullen, Joe Pizzo, and David Breidinger. 

Plaintiff attorneys Andy Teitelman and Josh Prince argued the committee could not hold its leadership elections under current BCRC bylaws. The document, they insisted, lacked proper certification and did not match the most recent version on file with the Bucks County Board of Elections. They referenced the state’s election code which requires the filing of county party bylaws with the election office.

“What we’re arguing in this case is: There are no valid bylaws that affect the Bucks County Republican Committee,” Teitelman said, faulting the state GOP for declining to force a redrafting of the rules. “And it appears, based on the research that was done by my clients, that that goes back to 1972 when the allegedly operative bylaws were first filed at the Bucks County Board of Elections.” 

He also took aim at proxy voting in the 2022 leadership contest, citing a Pennsylvania law governing nonprofits. It states that an organization’s “governing principles may provide for the… taking of action by members by proxy.” If a group’s bylaws contain no such provision, “customary usages and principles of parliamentary law and procedure apply.”

BCRC could therefore not permit proxy voting, Teitelman concluded, because the group had no legitimate bylaws authorizing it. Teitelman and Prince urged the court to permit “discovery,” an information exchange between plaintiffs and defendants, to reveal more details about when and how the committee bylaws were adopted and filed. 

“There’s a lot of questions here that require discovery,” Prince said. “That’s why this case needs to be returned back to the Court of Common Pleas to address it.” 

State GOP attorney Matt Wolfe and BCRC lawyer Scot Withers told the judges they should toss the case because the court lacks jurisdiction over political party administration except where a “public function” is concerned. They recalled that a precedent emerged just four years ago involving the same defendant. In Mohn v. BCRC, the state Supreme Court found the party could perform its operations — in that case, kicking out a member — without courts interfering.

“This is a political party,” Withers said. “And the courts should not be looking behind the curtains at the internals of [its] apparatus.” 

Teitelman stipulated that Mohn protects party leaders’ prerogative to make business decisions like dismissing a BCRC member, assuming they do so with valid rules in place. 

“We’re not challenging that; this case has nothing to do with the Mohn decision,” he said. “This case is about whether a political association is held to the same standards as any other association formed at law in Pennsylvania.”

Defense attorneys posited that this is a First Amendment issue, a matter of a political organization with a right to free association operating how it chooses without government meddling. They also see the complaints about the bylaws themselves as baseless.

“They were certified on June 24, 1972 and filed with the BOE two days later,” Wolfe told The Independence after the hearing, adding that the board may only accept certified party bylaws. “They have not changed in the over 50 years since. The plaintiffs went to the BOE and asked for a copy of the certified bylaws on file and were given a copy.”

President Judge Emerita Mary Hannah Leavitt spoke up frequently during the defense’s arguments, largely to ask what oversight courts do have over political parties. Withers answered that Mohn would only permit courts to step in when party actions affect government concerns like poll-watcher certification or ballot-access issues.

Andy Meehan, a founder of the conservative Right for Bucks activist outfit who favors Casper’s side in the lawsuit, said after the hearing he thinks that rubric for court involvement is too narrow. 

“The political committees have to be accountable to somebody,” he said. 

In court remarks, Withers attributed the plaintiffs’ disgruntlement to the fact that they fell short in the 2022 leadership race. 

“They’re complaining because they’re the minority,” he said. 

Bradley Vasoli is the senior editor of The Independence.

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