reprinted with permission from BayAreaGOP.com
Jessica Patterson was elected California GOP Chair at the bi-annual organizing convention on February 24 in Sacramento. Joining her as statewide elected leaders are Vice Chair Peter Kuo from Santa Clara County, Treasurer Greg Gandrud from Santa Barbara, and Secretary Randy Berholtz from San Diego.
Patterson, who won on the first ballot with a 24 percentage point margin over the next place finisher, served as CEO of California Trailblazers which has trained many of our Bay Area state legislative candidates. She was endorsed by Bay Area County Chairs, Hugh Bussell from Alameda County, Shane Connolly from Santa Clara County, Neal Kaufman from San Mateo County and Jason Clark from San Francisco.
Small business owner and entrepreneur Peter Kuo was elected State Vice Chair. He was the Republican nominee for State Senate District 10, including Fremont, Milpitas and Santa Clara, in 2014 and became a leader in the effort to rally Asian voters in opposition to SCA 5 which would have reintroduced racial preferences into college admissions. In the only race that required two ballots, Peter ultimately prevailed with 57% of the vote.
In the closest race of the day, Greg Gandrud, owner of Gandrud Financial and former Central Coast Regional Vice Chair, won the race for Treasurer by just 2 votes out of 1188 votes cast.
Randy Berholtz, a corporate lawyer and pharmaceutical industry investor, won the race for Secretary with 78% of the vote.
Jessica Patterson immediately reached out to her two opponents and asked them to co-chair the party’s voter registration task force. Both candidates had campaigned strongly on reinstituting a statewide voter registration program at the California Republican Party.
Credit BayAreaGOP.com
