After-Action Report Minnehaha County GOP Special Meeting
Review of Minutes of the 5/9/2024
In the past my After-Action Reports (AAR) have come out before the Minnehaha Central Committee (MCC) put out their minutes. This meeting took place almost 8 months ago and I am just getting to this now. Since the MCC put out the minutes for this meeting in July it affords me the opportunity to review the “official” MCC account of that meeting and I will include those minutes with my thoughts and comments for this meeting to give a wider view.
Meeting was called to order by Chair Tornow. There was a prayer, and pledge.
The Chair’s agenda was passed out and members of the board made a motion to accept it, and it was seconded. Chair Tornow asked for any discussion. CW Puttman said this agenda was not given a notice of 5 days. We should be using the agenda that gave proper notice. Chair Tornow said the agenda does not require a 5 days’ notice. The meeting requires 5 days’ notice.
Reviewing Robert’s Rules of Order New Edition (RONR) may benefit Chair Tornow and the Executive Board. The RONR rules for notifying the members regarding a Special Meetings. 9:14 “The president directs the secretary to send the notice of the special meeting to all members at the society’s expense in compliance of the bylaws no later than the required number of days in advance, making sure that it contains all the necessary information.”
It was CW Kathleen Puttmann who sent out the notice with all the required paperwork. Including the agenda. Chair Tornow was wrong when he said the agenda does not require a 5 days’ notice.
Chair Tornow said this is the chair’s agenda that calls for a meeting. Was some discussion and Chair Tornow put it to a vote. Said the Ayes have it. CM Stangland called for Point of Clarification. People were saying they were confused on what we were voting on because different options were stated in the discussion.
More discussion about the confusion and decided to vote by division. They had everyone voting Aye stand and counted 26. Ayes 26 out of 49 present the Chair’s agenda passed. Reviewing this today I find it puzzling. When you are in a meeting there is a lot going on and you may miss things. Chair Tornow did not have the Nays stand. He just said that 49 were present so that vote passed. Reading the vote for the new Treasurer in the minutes it is recorded by Secretary Brummett that there were 56 people present. If that is so, then 26 votes are not half of 56. Therefore, this vote was not done correctly and according to the numbers in the meeting minutes, this looks like actually the Nays had it. Evidently 7 votes were lost. This is discussed in more detail in the treasurer’s election below.
Chair Tornow spoke about the vacancy of Treasurer Meyer. He said that on January 3, 2024, she resigned for personal reasons and gave all the Roberts Rules of Order rules regarding the resignation and their subsequent actions. Secretary Brummet volunteered to be Secretary/Treasurer, so the Executive Board (EB) met on January 11th and voted “unanimously” to approve her as interim Treasurer until the “next scheduled meeting” to have the body then vote. This is why Chair Tornow believed there is no vacancy because he says that we have an interim treasurer and could wait until the next scheduled meeting on June 22nd. Looking over the meeting minutes by Secretary Brummett there is a huge gap.
Secretary Brummett’s minutes say only, “Discussion ensues.” It was 20 some minutes of discussion. There were 2 issues that came out in this “discussion.” The first issue dealt with the SOS office notification. In the meeting minutes that Secretary Tanna Brummett submitted she states that “On January 11th the Executive Board members moved, seconded and unanimously approved her interim service as Treasurer. In fact, following that Board action, Brummett was/is on file with the SOS as interim Treasurer until a new Treasurer is elected.” No mention is made by the Secretary that Vice-Chair Jennifer Foss was not at that meeting. This is the kind of detail that the Secretary should be attentive to because when people hear that the EB voted unanimously, they would automatically believe that Jennifer voted that way as well. The accurate statement would be “it was unanimously passed by the members present.” It is a simple respectful request, but the Chair and the Secretary have repeatedly ignored her reasonable request. This disrespect of the officers on the EB towards the Vice-Chair is a pattern of behavior.
With those two sentences being placed together one would read them and assume it was a smooth transition done immediately. When asked why the body was not informed about the resignation, Chair Tornow said, “It was put out online through the Secretary of States office.” (SOS) Ten minutes into the meeting when again asked why the body was not told about the resignation of Treasurer Meyer, Chair Tornow stated that, “We have those meeting minutes and people can see them.” It is my understanding that the Executive Board (EB) meets monthly, and they have never presented any EB minutes to the body. Now we are told we can see them but evidently you must make an appointment to do so.
It was another 10 minutes further into the discussion that the fact came out that Secretary Tanna Brummet did not notify the SOS office of this change until April 11th. That was a full 3 months after the EB voted her in. April 11th was about the time that the discussion was going around about calling a special meeting. It would not be unreasonable for some people to believe that the SOS was notified on April 11 because a special meeting was being called and bases needed to be covered.
The second issue discussed was the disrespect of the members of the body by the Chair. When this special meeting was called the Chair sent out an email to the body. This email is attached. In the email Chair Tornow talked about 23 of people who signed the petition were up for reelection and an additional 4 were not running and would no longer be serving. He then made personal comments on a former treasurer. In the meeting Chair Tornow again brought this up and talked about if it was prudent to have people voting for a new treasurer when they may not be elected, and it may be better to wait until after the primary to have the fresh slate come in.
People should keep in mind that everyone who is a precinct person in that meeting voted for the treasurer in 2023. They voted for someone to be treasurer until the next election in Dec of 2024. They were all within their right to vote on a new treasurer. Some people were offended that this email came out dismissing the value of current committee people. It gave the appearance of belittling the members who were running a race and that they had no value. Interesting that Chair Tornow would dismiss their legitimacy in voting but still talked about the need for people to show up to help with the upcoming Lincoln Day Dinner just a few days before the election.
It should also be noted that in Dec. of 2022 when Shawn Tornow and many of the current board members were putting together the request for a special meeting to bring about the election, he specifically kept the petition at his office and would not send out a copy to the then current Minnehaha Central Committee. (MCC) He told them if they wanted to see the names to verify that they had enough signatures they would have to come to his office and they could not take a picture of the list. The MCC wanted Shawn to give them the list, but he refused and said according to the bylaws he did not have to. In one of the special meetings that was held Shawn Tornow stated that if the MCC got the list of names they would weaponize it against us. That was why he kept it secure from them. To protect us.
When Kathleen Puttmann was putting together everything for the May 9th Special Meeting, State Chair Wiik informed her that it was required for her to give the signatures to the current MCC, and so she sent the signed petition to the current Chair Tornow. In the email from Chair Tornow on May 7th two days before the upcoming May 9th special meeting request he not only verbally implied people did not have a valid reason to call the meeting, but he also included in the email the petition signatures for everyone to see. I will not include that in this report because I believe that was very wrong to send out people’s signatures over the internet.
It is hypocritical that Chair Tornow in 2022 would accuse other people of using the petition as a weapon. Some people find this attitude towards members hypocritical. Just like his statement that there was “pettiness going on here…. towards at-large board members being 2nd class with the pending bylaw change that was handed off to [State Chair] John Wiik who is not a voting member of Minnehaha CC.”
In the meeting several people spoke about how Chair Tornow was belittling towards Precinct Committeemen and Women. (CM and CW) in the email. One woman said she was not being challenged but was so hurt by reading those comments. Chair Tornow replied that since she was not challenged it was not talking about her in the email.
Regarding the election of the new Treasurer. The Meeting notes submitted by Secretary Brummett are brief and do address those nominations took place and the final vote. The significant point is the numbers in this vote do not match the numbers in the previous vote above. We were told at the beginning of the meeting that there were 49 members there. Only to be told some thirty minutes after that vote that there were 56 members present. There was a lot of confusion in sorting this out.
Evidently there were people who came in but did not check and sign their name. From reading these numbers it appears that 7 people lost their vote during the vote taken for the agenda due to the incompetence of Secretary Brummett and Chair Tornow who would be in charge of the attendance.
The Secretary and Chair should have made sure every voter is checked in correctly before the meeting starts. Election Integrity is one of the key issues in this current environment and Chair Tornow and Sec. Brummett did not handle putting together an election with less than 60 people correctly.
Another thing that was not mentioned in Sec Brummett’s minutes was when Chair Tornow asked for nominees, Tyler Swinger was nominated then Tanna Brummett declined. At that moment Chair Tornow interrupted the nominations to tell the guests in the back of the room they cannot take any video. He said for them to delete it if they have video. He saw one or two people with a camera. I will address this incident in a separate report.
The next item that was discussed after the treasurer election was completed was the request for bylaw changes. The meeting minutes state “…that this bylaw is in contradiction of the State GOP bylaws and would, if pursued, undoubtedly be determined to be null and void.” There is a lot of talk going on about following the bylaws and tossing out rules and giving you the number of where to find it. At this point we need to cut through all the red tape and look at what this is about. For the last 4 years all of us patriots have dealt with approaching our elected official about following the law and doing the right thing only to be told that the law reads this way. When you look at the law, they are quoting, you can see it is how they interpret the law and then they tell us if we do not like it, we can….well…lump it. So rather than going down that rabbit trail I will explain what this about in common simplified English.
In January of 2023 Minnehaha County Central Committee met and voted in a new board. Patriots were very involved in trying to put together a board that would follow the bylaws and work for the people. There were six people elected to the board. Three of them that had come into these as new patriots (Jennifer Foss, Cindy Meyer, and Tanna Brummett). Two of them had been working in the GOP for years with the anti-establishment (Shawn Tornow and Melinda Roth). The last member of the board was Tom Pischke who is a seasoned conservative legislator. Many patriots thought this breakdown would be a good dynamic of shared power and an opportunity for the new people to be mentored. We were woefully ignorant to how a Central Committee worked.
The first thing that Chair Tornow did was bring in three new board members (Gary Dykstra, Shamra Johnson, and Mike Austad). Tanna Brummett attached her flag to this anti-establishment (AE) group. From then on, they had the 6 votes they needed to pass anything. Jennifer, Cindy, and Tom’s votes were irrelevant. The had their agenda and anyone that stood in their way was severely dealt with. Jennifer and Cindy were mistreated. One person stated in the discussion time that Cindy was a highly qualified accountant, and they believed the only reason she would resign is a problem that made her uncomfortable signing documents. The hostility of the board towards Jennfer is also common knowledge by many.
Jennifer (And I assume Tom because he was the one to submit the request) was concerned that the votes of the people were being denied. Those elected board members were now being overridden by the bureaucracy that the chair created to control the agenda. It is an issue that needs to be addressed. The question to be asked is, should At-Large board members be given the right to out vote the board members who were duly elected by the people. Or should they only serve in an advisory capacity to help with the workload of the party’s responsibilities. In the meantime, people should be aware that anytime you vote in the Chair for your Central Committee they can appoint enough people to override the people you voted in as officers. In other words, the person who is voted in as the chair could possibly take over the Executive Board and create a dictatorship.
Finally, CW Puttmann, as per the minutes, requested to add two new items to the agenda. There was never a discussion on the storage unit so I do not know what that was about. Some of the people brought up the video again and also the email sent out by Chair Tornow.
When it finally did come back to the motion by CW Puttmann Sec Brummett asked for the amount, $801.89. CW Puttmann went above and beyond on getting out the petition to all precinct committee people by mailing them a letter. She did not cherry pick and choose who she wanted to invite to defend her cause. All were welcome. It should be noted that in December of 2022 when the AE were calling for a “Special Meeting” they discussed that if the board showed up then they would not have to pay the costs because that would then be qualified as a meeting. Again, it is easy for some to see hypocrisy.
One final note here, in chair Tornow’s email, it states that the next scheduled meeting was to take place on June 22nd. Considering this is an election year there should have been many meetings organizing the members work to help in the primary. Instead, it was scheduled for after the primary election. It is not a stretch for some people to believe that there were those working to bring in new Precinct Committeeman and Committeewomen in order to get rid of unwanted people and bring in new people who would tow the line.
Below is the email sent out to Committee Members by Chair Tornow. The email is dated May 7th and the meeting took place two days later. It was not following the bylaws rules of timely nor did it include all the necessary information.
Below is a copy of the minutes for the Minnehaha County GOP Central Committee Meeting #1 Special Meeting, Thursday May 9, 2024.
Additional After-Action Report of my Encounter with Mike Austad Before the GOP Special Meeting on May 9, 2024
Prior to the Minn GOP Special Meeting there was a meet and greet for candidates running in the upcoming June primary. I had a table at this event as I was running for House District 13. Once that event ended, I cleaned up my table and took things outside to my car. I was standing outside the building visiting with someone when Mike Austad opened the front door and called out to me with the sweetest voice asking me to come in as he wanted to speak with me. His voice struck me as odd. It was not his normal talking voice. I told Mike I would be right in and finished up and came inside. I came in the room and walked over to Mike. He was standing with another man and they were surrounded with security men. As I approached this scene it concerned me. Having 5 security people hovering over a conversation looks like an opportunity to intimidate someone. We have a room full of people and all the security are now standing in a semi-circle on either side of Mike and this man. I made a conscious decision at that moment to not allow myself to be intimidated.
I came up to Mike and he asked me if I knew who wrote this. At that moment the other man standing beside Mike handed me his phone and it had a photo of a clip from the After-Action Report I wrote for the Minnehaha Central Committee Meeting on Dec 30, 2032 about the Sgt-at-Arms.
Mike agitatedly asked me again who wrote that. I replied he needed to let me read it. It puzzled me that Mike would ask me “Who wrote that” because he knew very well that I wrote that report.
On page 2 of that report I wrote, “The Chair threatened to have the Sargent At-Arms remove her. Some man came across the room and got right up to Bridget Meyer before she stopped asking to speak and sat down.”
On page 6 I again spoke about it, “It was shocking to see that man (the pastor of that church) charge across the room to remove her.” Someone had mistakenly told me the Sgt-at-Arms was the pastor and I originally wrote that in. When doing my final editing I realized that I hadn’t confirmed his identity so I should not mention the pastor and I removed it. Unfortunately, I did not catch that I had also written it in a second reference on page 6. The snip he showed me was the one from page 6. I was surprised I had missed that.
I then replied that I wrote that and handed the phone back to the man. The man who gave me the phone then spoke with a tone of distress that he was the pastor, and he did not do that. He said he was not the Sgt-at-arms, and I had destroyed him by putting his name out there and he did not know how he could live it down. He said his character was ruined. I apologized for upsetting him and said I thought I had removed it.
While I was trying to speak with this man Mike was highly agitated and talking over us. Then Mike moved up to me and put his face within inches of mine and raised his voice yelling at me saying then you admit you lied, what else have you lied about? No one can believe anything you say ever again because you are a liar and you admitted it.
I told Mike that I did not lie. Someone mistakenly told me that it was the pastor. If that information was not correct, then I apologize for it and will write a retraction. What ensued for the next few minutes was Mike repeatedly saying that I admitted I was a liar and the pastor saying he was shattered about how his name had been ruined on the internet. I told Mike I have not lied about anything. You have pointed out something that was not correct in my report. Is there anything else in my report that you saw was not, correct? Mike shot back, “I don’t know what else you lied about.” During the encounter, I asked Mike this question several times. Each time he replied the same. Therefore, by his own standard, Mike has acknowledged that there were no other errors in my After-Action Report for December 30, 2024.
At one point Kathleen Puttnam came up to me and took my arm and pulled me away saying it was not worth it to talk to him. At this point I wanted to confront the problem to see if it could be resolve and so took Kathleen’s arm and pulled her towards me. I wanted a witness to this encounter.
Mike and the pastor were speaking in highly agitated voices. I kept my voice calm and controlled to try to bring the conversation to a more reasonable tone so that we could resolve it. Mike and the pastor were both repeatedly using a harsh and accusing tone with me and I said that there is no reason to use these kinds of voices. We can have a calm and civil discussion. Turning to the pastor I said, “it looks like we got off to a bad start.” I held out my hand to him and I introduced myself. He recoiled back away from me and said, “I am not going to give you, my name.”
Never met a pastor who would not give me his name. I do not know how to address him going forward so since he did not want to give me his name, I will respectfully refer to him as the pastor without a name. (PWAN).
Still stunned by his comment, I made another attempt to engage and said to the pastor that there is no reason we cannot talk this out. You are a Christian, and I am a Christian so we should be able to speak together as a brother and sister in Christ. He again stepped back from me clutching his chest and saying, “I don’t know if you are a Christian.”
Never met a pastor who would accuse me of not being a Christian. One would expect a Christian pastor to want to resolve the issue and discuss faith. This man appeared to only want to accuse me.
At some point Mike Austad took out his phone and started videotaping the conversation. Since the PWAN was focused on repeatedly accusing me of ruining him and how he could never live it down and with Mike repeatedly accusing me of admitting to being a liar there was no point in continuing the discussion so I thanked them both for their, shall we say, gentlemanly conversation and walked away.
It should be noted that I come from a generation where men are to respect and protect women and children. I am a boomer. For that last 50 years I have watched certain forces in our society working to change the nature of male and female. Manhood has been under assault in our society, and it is so pitiful that some people today do not even know what a woman is. I believe only cowardly men are abusive towards women or children. All my life I have expected every man I have encountered to respect me and not violate my sense of security. In return I have always honored and admired the role of men in our society for their protective instincts. I am still set in my heart to always assume that men will respect and protect their charge. Watching across this country for the last 4 years it is sad to see so many instances of men not following their God given responsibilities to protect and defend women and children. This encounter, with one grown man whining and the other grown man verbally abusive, only added to my disappointment.
Not long after that the meeting was called to order. I was still thinking about my encounter but snapped out of it when the Chair said that the PWAN was going to say the prayer. He spoke eloquently calling upon God to bring us together because as we serve God we need to get along. I was listening intently to his words because just a few minutes ago I was trying to do that and he shut me down. This was very puzzling behavior.
It was over an hour into the meeting when Chair Tornow told people in the back of the room that they could not video the meeting. I remembered that in the meeting on December 30th Gary Meyer was setting up his camera and taking video before the meeting started. Gary was told to turn it off and he had to delete the video. This made me think about the video Mike Austad took and I thought about how the PWAN was so distressed about not wanting to have his reputation sullied and I thought it would be better for him if that video was deleted. When the opportunity arrived to ask for Point of Clarification, I told the Chair that Mike had taken a video, and I asked if he could delete it.
There was some discussion and Chair Tornow said that there are people who have stated their concerns of video being taken and so during the meeting no video is allowed. Since that video Mike took was before the meeting he had no control over it. (It is curious to me that people are concerned about video during the meeting but not before or after.) I told the Chair that in the December meeting the board forced Gary Meyers to take down his video before the meeting. The Chair chose to dismiss it.
The real enlightening moment came when it was brought up that the security people were wearing cameras. I believe there were five of them. They were never introduced to us, and we were never told why they were there. Now it comes out that they were wearing cameras. There was so much talking going on in the room I could not hear if they all had cameras. The Chair said that Mike and Gary had security for their personal protection. Chair Tornow said, “I’m gonna trust them that they aren’t going to use it anywhere else.”
One purpose of security is to be intimidating. To allow them to walk about the room freely during the meeting adds tension to the room and feels like there is some threat instead of a friendly meeting.
This begs the question why two men need so many bodyguards during a GOP Committee meeting. Who is a threat to them in here? For the last 4 years we patriots have been accused of being domestic terrorists and now two people are given free rein to surround themselves with bodyguards? Mike had all of them surrounding me in that encounter. Imagine that two grown men so intimidated by a 68-year-old toothless grandmother they needed that kind of protection. If that is all it takes, I guess anyone can bring in bodyguards and they can record.
The second enlightening moment came when a woman said, “If we want to pull this party together, I think Penny asking Mike to delete the video is respectful…just simply because we have to trust each other…We should be able to walk into this meeting as fellow Republicans or let’s all switch to Democrat.” Chair Tornow replied, “With all due respect I wish that could be true and I’m being as professional as I can be here but when I hear some of the same people speaking, not you ma’am, saying that the Chair was out of control at the last meeting. That the pastor at that church charged an individual and tried to remove them which is blatantly false…we are moving forward.
The after-action report for the December 30,2023 Minnehaha County Central Committee was clear and addressed the issues. See above when I asked Mike if there were any other errors in the report, he did not have any. This is a recurring thing during every meeting. It is never really under control because the Chair is constantly arguing with everyone. According to RONR 12TH ed. Sec. 47:9 the Chair is supposed to be seated when a member is speaking in debate or on a question. I have rarely seen Chair Tornow sitting and letting people talk. Most times when someone speaks the Chair comments on what they say and will point out why they are “wrong” when he disagrees with them.
That the Chair would speak about the very thing that Mike and the PWAN came after me for in his explanation of why security was present was telling. It leaves me with the impression that it was a setup from the beginning and Chair Tornow was personally offended by the After-Action Report for December.
After the meeting ended, I wanted to try one more time to resolve the issue. I approached Mike Austad (a single security detail remained at his side the whole time I spoke with him) and asked him what could be done to resolve tis. Mike remained in accusation mode and said words cannot be taken back with an apology. Interesting that he should have said that. At one point, after the meeting while talking with a woman I could see the pain in her eyes and the hurt in her voice remembering the post Mike put online over a year ago accusing her, a decent Christian woman, of being a “Wiccan type leader.” Mike needs to take his own advice. This is an example of the woke policy we have witnessed for the last 8 years accusing the patriots of the things they do.