Confusion at Lucas Co GOP headquarters

DOWNTOWN TOLEDO - In a move Monday evening, Jeff Simpson said he has been voted in as chairman of the the Lucas County Republican Party, but Jon Stainbrook, current county GOP chair, says he is still in charge.

"There was a lot of people who were very much unhappy with the Lucas County Republican Party and they wanted new leadership today," Simpson said. "In a meeting they got new leadership. Now it's important for the leadership, myself included, to bring hope to the Lucas County Republican party."

The central committee meeting was held Monday, which originally centered around whether or not committee members need signatures to be on the committee.

One side of the party said a meeting was then held to elect a new leader, which is Simpson. The other side said no such "official" meeting was held, and Stainbrook is still in charge.

Stainbrook said by the rules that govern the Republican Party, no meeting ever took place to nominate a new party chair.

"You have to understand what the meaning of a central committee meeting is," Stainbrook said. "It's to have a meeting about something that's on the card that is mailed out by the law. That's what we did. This was done by the bylaws and it was done properly. The after the fact, they thought it would be fun to have shenanigans and release a press release."

A man introduced by Stainbrook as Ben Roberts, parliamentarian for the central committee and executive committee member, said anything before and after the meeting was just “noise and static.”

“I do not recognize anything they did tonight,” said Roberts.”We have the final say. We held a meeting. The meeting had an agenda sent out to all of our central committee members. The central committee members signed and went upstairs to vote, we had one topic to vote on and we did that.”

The parliamentarian is in place to advise on Robert’s Rules, the bylaws of the Republican party.

It's not real clear where the party goes from here.

Apparently the fire department was called out at some point because of the amount of people inside the party's headquarters on Superior Street.

Currently Simpson has been denied the ability to enter the Republican Party building and is weighing his options as to the next step forward, he said.

(FOX Toledo's Shuan Hegarty and The Toledo Free Press, a FOX Toledo News media partner, contributed to this report)