“There’s no question that what we witnessed was over the top and unprecedented,” former State Rep. and conservative Sam Rohrer told us, “There were state committee members who came to me in tears after the Hershey meeting and said their arms were twisted so badly [to support Welch] that they were threatened with the loss of state jobs.”
Rohrer, who served 14 years in the state Legislature and was the runner-up to Corbett in the 2010 primary for governor, also charged that the committee endorsement “rejected the wishes of thousands of people who signed petitions requesting that the process be kept open and there be no endorsement before the primary.” He cited a meeting at the Hershey Lodge two days before the state committee vote in which State Chairman Bob Gleason ignored petitions containing the signatures of thousands asking for no endorsement. Rohrer added that the endorsement process was a “slap to the freedom movement — that is the tea partiers, the 9/12 activists, and the property rights movement, all of whom have just become very involved in the party.”
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