Grubbing at Straws

In the waning days of the 2024 election, the Chair of the Cobb County Republican Party, Salleigh Grubbs, (who also serves on the State Republican Party Executive Committee as the Over 80,000 Caucus Chair) is hard at work.

Is she organizing and training poll watchers to cover the 140+ Cobb County Precincts? No.

Is she organizing weekends for volunteers to knock doors and make phone calls for local Cobb candidates running for county offices, school board, and the General Assembly? Of course not.

Is she recruiting and organizing volunteers and collecting resources for the election eve sign blitz? Don’t be silly!

No, Salleigh Grubbs is hard at work fighting Scot Turner!

In an email sent today to Cobb County Committee Members, Grubbs tells the governing body of the Cobb County GOP where her priorities were with only three weekends left before the November election:

As you may or may not be aware, there was an action filed in Fulton County by an activist group, Eternal Vigilance Action, Inc., against the State Election Board with regard to the rules passed. The ruling by Judge Cox negated the rules and an appeal was filed by the GAGOP. An appeal to the Supreme Court was granted quickly and a decision was necessary to file an Amicus Brief in support of the appeal. The Amicus was due by noon today. Our legal team and I have worked all weekend to get the wheels in motion in order to protect Cobb County Republican Voters’ interests in seeing we have these good, common sense, relevant and important rules upheld. Moreover it’s extremely important to support our State Election Board. <emphasis added>

I felt it imperative to update you on this important filing and to let you know that we are all working hard to ensure the 2024 election is conducted in a legal manner with appropriate actions in place to ensure a free and fair election for our candidates. Please see the attached filed Brief.

Over her tenure as Cobb GOP Chair, Grubbs has made it her mission to either fight against the State Elections Board or, after a new majority was constituted, fight FOR their cockamamie attempts to run roughshod over the State Elections Code, and her misplaced activism can be seen in an email she sent on October 15 to her County Committee, chastising them for what amounts to her failure to lead, reminding the committee members, “IT IS YOUR OBLIGATION AND DUTY as a County Committee Member, to take care of your constituents by placing signs at precincts and early voting locations in your area.”

Grubbs continues, “This is a tough email for me to write because this is me telling you to do your job,” Grubbs writes. “During conventions people want to be on the committee, but then lo and behold – that’s all they do. You need to be growing the party by engaging new folks, sharing Republican values and platform and actually doing the job of covering your precincts. Republican voters in your neighborhood count on you.”

It’s not surprising that with the Chair being focused on legal briefs, that the precinct and House District chairs that govern the Cobb GOP are unsure of their duties, so they do nothing or find other ways to be involved. Case in point, rather than organizing events to get out the vote in Cobb County, Jerry Ramsey, Chair of Cobb County’s House District 34, was in Hilton Head, SC on October 13 waving signs for Trump.

South Carolina is hardly a swing state. Georgia is.

Four years ago, the Cobb GOP was not only engaged in getting out the vote for Trump, but all of the down ballot races as well. This week, Grubbs simply reminded subscribers to the Cobb GOP’s newsletter that early voting was still going on and to vote against the M-SPLOST. A link to the list of candidates was provided.

The activism in 2024 is stark when compared to the efforts in 2020. Grubbs recently appeared on Fox News Digital where she was asked the question, “How are you working to flip Cobb County red?”

Grubb’s response?

“Well…we’re working to change it with our election integrity efforts…”

Never mind that in the now infamous call with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021, Trump was emphatic that he wasn’t interested in Cobb County, just Fulton County saying, “You sent us into Cobb County, which we didn’t want to go into. And you said it would be open to the public. And we could have our – So we had our experts there they weren’t allowed into the room. But we didn’t want Cobb County. We wanted Fulton County. And you wouldn’t give it to us.”

But still Grubbs hasn’t ventured far from the shredding truck she chased in 2020…the action that made her a MAGA celebrity and propelled her, despite never holding a position of leadership in the Cobb County Republican Party, to Chair in 2021.

She goes on in the Fox News video to talk in political platitudes and “wearing her [no M-SPLOST] t-shirt out” as being the sum total of the Party’s GOTV efforts. She also differentiates the campaign in 2020 versus now stating, “I think in 2020 there was still the concept that the county party would leave everything up to the campaign to get everything done. And the way I view things for both the midterm in 2022 and this election is everyone needs to get out to vote. Everyone needs their voice to be heard, Everybody needs to be concerned about election integrity. They need to know when they case a ballot, their vote counts.”

Not one word about the number of voters the Cobb GOP is trying to reach, how many doors knocked, or how many calls made.

With Cobb’s GOP leadership focused on meeting lawyers rather than meeting undecided voters, Grubbs has essentially squandered Cobb County Republican Party’s resources and surrendered the upcoming election.

Scot Turner’s suit is only the latest in a misplaced focus that Grubbs and the Georgia Republican Party as a whole has engaged in as they fight the battle for more so-called “election integrity”. Grubbs has, of course, also inserted herself into the fight to hand count ballots at each precinct after the polls close on Election Day.

Never mind that NONE of the rules Grubbs, State Party Chairman Josh McKoon, and others have been advocating would have made a difference in the 2020 election (never mind either that Trump didn’t need these rules when he won Georgia in 2016).

We won’t have to find out as Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney struck the rule down as it exceeded the State Elections Board’s authority to implement.

Do Grubbs and McKoon actually trust the average Fulton County election worker to accurately hand count the ballots after the polls close at the precinct when they cannot even guarantee each precinct will be covered with trained poll watchers? Of course, Grubbs herself wasn’t a poll watcher even in the critical January 5, 2021 runoff, opting to go to Washington. D.C. for the rally the next day.

Grubbs is chasing ghosts in the Dominion machines that do not exist, especially in light of the fact that Donald Trump won the vote on the Dominion machines in 2020. I realize October is a time for some to chase ghosts, but the party needs to be focused on chasing voters.

Trump may likely win Georgia, but what does the future for Republican in Cobb County look like after four years of her leadership? Will we have a strong Republican Party that can start fighting Cobb Democrats for the hearts and minds of Cobb voters? Probably not.

After all, if they can’t win a lawsuit, how can they win Cobb back from the Democrats?