Judge denies Korach’s motion for temporary injunction as local GOP battle continues (SAR)

Seventh Circuit Court Judge J. Michael Traynor denied a preliminary injunction to already-fired St. Johns County Republican Executive Committee Chair WILLIAM KORCH.

As previously reported on this blog, RPOF says KORACH created a "culture of fear" in the Republican Party.

 Interestingly two of the letters of support or rebuttal were on Government and Church letterhead.

Blurring ethical lines and raising ethical questions, letters were sent on Clerk of Court and Church letterhead by St. Johns Clerk of Court and Comptroller Hunter S. Conrad, and his father, the Rev. Dr. Mark Conrad, pastor of Turning Point at Cavalry Church & Academy.


In his letter on Church letterhead, the Clerk of Court's father, Rev. Dr. Mark Conrad, identified himself as a former law enforcement official and pastor of a 2000 member church.  Rev. Dr. Conrad presides at a annual all-male "Beast Feast," where men shoot game and their women cook it and serve it to them, at an event where guns are raffled.

• 
• 

Judge denies Korach’s motion for temporary injunction as local GOP battle continues

By Jared Keever
Posted at 6:04 AM
Updated at 6:04 AM
St. Augustine Record

The ousted chairman of the St. Johns County Republican Executive Committee will remain ousted while the lawsuit he filed against the Republican Party in Florida awaits resolution in circuit court.

Circuit Judge Michael Traynor signed the order denying Bill Korach’s emergency motion for a temporary injunction on Friday.

Korach filed that motion through his attorney Jeremiah Mulligan earlier this month, seeking to have his seat as chair restored while his complaint seeking declaratory and injunctive relief in response to his removal was pending.

State GOP chairman Blaise Ingoglia removed Korach from his local seat on May 29 on the recommendation of a party grievance committee that was convened after three local party members and a state committeewoman filed a nine-part grievance against him that alleges, among other things, public drunkenness, “improper acts towards females” to include “even touching improperly,” promoting personal opinions on party letterhead, failing to file accounting records, and conducting a business meeting without a quorum and improperly electing new members to the committee.

Korach, whose complaint contains not only the original grievance letter but a lengthy response complete with at least 14 “letters of support” and other “letters of rebuttal,” denies the allegations.

But Mulligan’s motion for temporary injunction, as well as the complaint at the heart of the court battle, don’t really focus on the truthfulness of the allegations, rather they argue that the party didn’t have the ability to remove Korach in the first place and alleges that, even if it did, it violated its own processes put in place to do so.

Mulligan, who, along with attorney for the Republican Party, Michael Orr, appeared in court to argue the emergency motion and told Traynor much the same thing on June 13.

“Our problem, our grievance with the way that they removed my client, is they didn’t follow any of their rules,” he said.

Traynor, who pointed out early in his six-page order that injunctive relief is “generally” requested and granted to “preserve the status quo” and that Korach has already been removed from his seat, addressed many of the other issues in his closing paragraph after finding that Ingoglia did have the authority to remove Korach based on the grievance committee’s recommendation.


“Whether those rules were properly followed and the authority properly executed remains for this Court to hear,” he wrote. “However, injunctive relief, at this point, is neither warranted nor appropriate.”

The local Republicans have a meeting in early July where they will vote for Korach’s successor.

Former assistant county administrator and first vice chair of the local Republican Executive Committee, Jerry Cameron, is currently serving as acting chair.