Massachusetts First

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Hostile Takeover

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What is a Hostile Takeover?

According to Investopedia.com

“A hostile takeover occurs when an acquiring company attempts to take over a target company against the wishes of the target company’s management.

Reasons that hostile takeovers occur, from the acquiring party’s point of view, often coincide with those of any other acquisition or merger, such as:

• A belief that a company may be significantly undervalued
• A desire to access or own a company’s brand, operations, technology, or industry foothold
• A strategic move by activist investors looking to effect change in a company’s operations

One method used is a proxy fight, where the entity tries to persuade stockholders to vote out the current management and vote in management that would allow the takeover.”

In the corporate world, hostile takeovers involve investor shares and dollar amounts. The same methods can be translated to what occurred with the Gloucester Republican City Committee.

Clayton Sove, Cynthia Bjorlie, and their cohorts (along with a group of supporters/backers/handlers who remained in the background) were behaving like an insidious “acquiring company,” while Chairwoman Ashley Sullivan and the GRCC leadership team were “the management.” Those entities looking to oust Sullivan were looking to use the GRCC infrastructure to promote their ideas outside committee bylaws.

Initially, Cynthia Bjorlie attempted to persuade State Committeewoman Amanda Orlando to support her desire to oust Sullivan as chair. When that didn’t work, she unsuccessfully tried to vote Sullivan out at GRCC meetings. She resorted to recruiting Clayton Sova, forming an illegitimate committee that ran parallel to the real and actual GRCC, creating confusion and chaos until the opportunity arose to execute the takeover.

Another Tale of Two Meetings

After the March 5 Presidential Primary, it was time for Republican Committees all over the state to reorganize, a standard procedure that happens every four years. In Gloucester, Chairwoman Ashley Sullivan hadannounced that she had decided to step down at the end of her term months before running for State Committee, giving committee members plenty of time to strategize about her replacement.

On March 27, Clayton Sova announced a reorganization meeting for April 4^th, while the real and actual Chairwoman Ashley Sullivan announced the reorganization meeting for April 10^th.¹

To address the dispute, on March 30^th, Chairwoman Sullivan and outgoing State Committeewoman Amanda Orlando held a Zoom meeting with outgoing State Committeeman Richard Baker, MassGOP Executive Director John Milligan, and newly elected State Committee members Lisa Marie Cashman and Michael Scarlata. The idea of holding two separate meetings, one with the real and actual GRCC and one with the fake Sova group, was discussed.

Remember, Sova, Bjorlie, and their cohorts were officially voted out of the real and actual GRCC the previous summer. They were not even members of the GRCC.

A source familiar with the matter says that Scarlata favored holding separate meetings. Ultimately, it was decided that one meeting would be better to promote unity, and a new date would be set. Cashman and Scarlata were tasked with finding a suitable meeting place and time and would then notify Milligan, who would then notify all committee members.

Sullivan waited for notification but was met with radio silence:²

Then, on April 13^th:³

It appeared that a meeting did occur, unbeknownst to the real and actual GRCC Chairwoman Sullivan, the leadership team, or many of the real and actual GRCC members.

From Ashley Sullivan’s April 14^th Facebook post:

Amanda Orlando sent an email to MassGOP Chairwoman Amy Carnevale on April 14^th, which stated in part:⁴

Read the entire letter here:

Carnevale’s response:⁵

One of the largest, if not the largest, Republican Committees in the state had just suffered an illegitimate hostile takeover by people who weren’t even members of the GRCC, a man who was reprimanded by the Chair of the party herself not even a year ago for falsely using GRCC logo, naming himself chairman, and calling himself a republican. And the response from the leader of the Massachusetts Republican Party is…

“I’ll get back to you.”

Something is rotten in the MassGOP.

As of this writing, there has been no official response from Carnevale or other MassGOP leadership to Sova and Scarlata’s actions, which ignored committee bylaws and disenfranchised the majority of the real and actual GRCC membership.  

The Fallout

The disenfranchised members of the real and actual GRCC were left wondering what happened to their committee. Most were aware of the chaos Sova, Bjorlie, and the other malcontents exacted on the committee over the past year. None of the committee members who voted out the cabal last summer were at the fake reorganization meeting on the 13^th. Most claim they were never notified.

One member of the real and actual GRCC expressed her anger on Facebook:⁶

Eason also emailed MassGOP leadership, expressing her disgust and dismay.⁷

Eason had attended early meetings at Bjorlie’s home but soon realized the group’s motives and tactics were abhorrent. More from her email:

Other members have resigned from the committee in disgust, as illustrated in the below email, in which the names of those not previously mentioned in this series have been redacted:⁸

Sullivan, who also resigned from the committee, explained her reasons for stepping down in her April 14^th FB post:

“I dealt with a year of nonstop opposition from the establishment and my own people. Instead of focusing on and fighting for our candidates, they were actively trying to take our candidates, and myself – out. I was busting my ass, and dumping money into our candidates/causes – only for others to try and take the credit, while simultaneously attacking me…. When the party [MassGOP] refused to hold Clayton accountable and uphold the laws/bylaws (I believe it was because they were running a candidate against me for State Committee… they wanted their people in and control of Gloucester) I realized what nonsense it all is. You don’t get to pick and choose what laws/bylaws to follow when it suits you and the laws/bylaws mean absolutely nothing if you do not enforce them!!”

She also added:

“It got to the point where I realized I could get more accomplished without the MAGOP…they’ve turned into the opposition against their own people…

With that in mind, I decided to walk away from the committee. I cannot and do not want to associate with the people that do the things they do. That stalk and take photos of fellow Republicans (to this day!!). Cold call the FBI, AG, Environmental, etc. for fake crimes. Put out fake hit pieces. Lie about the committee and laws/bylaws and ignore them. Forge signatures and try and fraudulently file them with government entities…That’s not who I am, nor what I want to represent me.”

So, where does this leave the Gloucester Republican City Committee? With an illegitimate leader at the helm of an illegitimate committee that is somehow both unacknowledged and yet tacitly accepted by the Chair of the MassGOP, Amy Carnevale, it is in the hands of people who did everything they could to undermine the bylaws and flout basic ethics to achieve the power they so desperately desired.

Our next article will serve as a wrap-up, barring any major developments. Massachusetts First will look at the repercussions of the MassGOP’s obvious move to allow—if not endorse—the takeover. We will analyze the RINOS’ true motives, and finally, we will discuss the solution for those true Republicans who have been abandoned by their party.

by Citizens for Truth Contributor

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