Last month, Fredy Burgos was removed from RPV’s State Central Committee [1] following a string of inflammatory comments, which included religious prejudice against Jewish candidates [2] and a racist rant against interracial marriage [3].
Now, newly-elected Fairfax County Republican Committee chairman Tim Hannigan has promoted Burgos to a position of leadership within FCRC.
In a presentation to the Fair Lakes Tea Party (embedded below), a slide dated April 16th shows Burgos on FCRC’s issues committee. Moving up from the rank and file, Burgos will now help lead at FCRC and steer its direction on the issues.
You read that right.
Hannigan tapped Burgos to advise the party on what to say just weeks after Burgos was thrown out of party leadership for saying reprehensible things which were quoted by hundreds of news outlets across the nation and quite a few in Israel.
Fredy’s latest scandal broke in February when he was campaigning for Hannigan. Burgos said he had a religious “duty” [2] to vote against Hannigan’s opponent, Mike Ginsberg, on account of Ginsberg’s Jewish faith.
Unfortunately, Tim chose to handle this the wrong way, issuing an evasive and vacillating response calling for an “investigation,” rather than joining his colleagues in immediately calling for Mr. Burgos’ resignation or removal. That response lacked moral clarity and depreciated the seriousness of the situation, which is why we later wrote that Hannigan had failed a test of leadership [4] and was not ready to take the helm of FCRC.
At the time, Hannigan said he had removed Mr. Burgos from the campaign.
Now, it has become abundantly clear that Hannigan’s response was little more than an empty gesture designed to sweep the controversy under the rug and hide Fredy away until the chairman’s election was over.
Burgos never really left Team Hannigan.
On March 28th, just four days after his removal from SCC, Burgos was helping the newly-elected chairman set up shop at FCRC headquarters. He celebrated “FCRC Under New Management” and exclaimed in a Facebook post that “Electricity is in the air!”
Hannigan should have followed the lead of State Central in removing Burgos from FCRC.
Instead, Hannigan gave him a promotion.
By promoting Burgos, Hannigan is also openly defying the SCC and picking a fight with Richmond during a year where FCRC needs a unified and close working relationship with the state party. SCC is not likely to look favorably upon Hannigan thumbing his nose at their decision and welcoming into the party inflammatory language which they said ran counter to Republican values and had no place within the party of Lincoln.
Speaking of his “investigation,” what ever became of that?
On February 12, Hannigan announced in a statement [4]:
“Accordingly, I will seek to have a competent, impartial investigator gather relevant facts from: 1) interviews with Mr. Burgos and those who have made these charges of malfeasance against him, 2) reviews of past media and social media postings by all relevant persons, 3) past charges leveled against Mr. Burgos, 4) records of Mr. Burgos’ experiences working for the Republican party, and 5) any other germane source.
“I will ask the investigator to assess these facts and recommend to me whether Mr. Burgos’ actions do or do not warrant any further work in my campaign, the FCRC (should I be fortunate enough to win the Chairmanship, and the Republican Party.”
That was nine weeks ago. Hannigan is in his sixth week as Chairman.
Has he even taken the first step in opening that investigation?
It would appear he has not. Nobody has heard anything about it since.
Already, dozens of long-time, loyal Republican volunteers have walked away from FCRC, angered by Hannigan’s agenda, his embrace of divisive rhetoric, and his mishandling of the Burgos scandal. This includes a majority of FCRC’s magisterial district chairmen and many other key positions.
Further defections are likely in order.
Hannigan’s presentation curiously lists Mike Ginsberg, Pete Snyder, and Eleventh District congressional candidate Jeff Dove as additional members of the team.
It is hard to imagine Ginsberg knowingly agreeing to serve alongside Burgos, who maligned him during the race for being Jewish. More than likely, these notables had no idea that Hannigan had welcomed Burgos to the upper echelon of his team. They will probably resign shortly, leaving Hannigan with an ever-dwindling leadership circle capable of filling key party positions.
This situation was entirely preventable.
All that was missing was leadership.