At the Trumbull County Republican Party’s June 10 reorganizational meeting, the central committee elected some possibly ineligible officers based on bylaws approved just a few months earlier.

There was much hostility at the meeting, resulting in numerous shouting matches, two committee members pushing each other, mass confusion, accusations and name-calling.

The meeting included a failure to find a candidate for treasurer with two people declining to be nominated.

It was so bad that Randy Law, who was ousted as party chairman in 2017 in a bitter internal dispute, called the meeting “an embarrassment to the party.”

Kenneth Kline, re-elected chairman, said the meeting was disorderly at times, but he wants to get past it and look ahead.

But it appears that could be a challenge.

When Kline took the microphone for what was called the chairman’s report, he spent a lot of time accusing his opponents of “attacking” and “slinging mud” at him. He also criticized the five party officers who resigned in the past year — all pointing to Kline’s inability to lead — for being quitters.

“They quit on me, they quit on you, they quit on our candidates,” Kline said.

Central committee members who supported Martha Yoder, the party’s county auditor nominee, for chair asked that Kline’s eligibility to run for the seat be discussed. Those requests were refused.

Kline was re-elected chairman 44-21 over Yoder.

Yoder said Kline, who is a pastor, “wasn’t very honest” when he aired his grievances.

Kline also got into an argument with Denny Malloy, the party’s county commissioner candidate who nominated Yoder for chair.

Kline said to Malloy: “Why don’t you shut up?”

Malloy responded that the party needed to follow rules “so we don’t look like jackasses.”

The eligibility issue stems from a March 12 meeting at which the central committee changed its bylaws to state its elected officers “must be a registered Republican for four consecutive years and a resident of Trumbull County.”

In a letter to central committee members before the meeting from Cheryl Tennant, who was party secretary at the time, typed in red italics and underlined was: “If you are considering running for any office, you must provide a certified voter history from the Trumbull Board of Elections showing that you have been a registered Republican in Trumbull County for the last four years.”

I asked Kline earlier this week if he voted in favor of that bylaw change. He said he didn’t recall his vote while acknowledging there was no opposition to it.

Kline’s voting record, provided by the board of elections, shows he voted in the 2016, 2020 and 2022 Republican primaries. He didn’t vote in the 2018 primary and in 2019, he voted nonparty when he ran without a political affiliation for Newton Falls mayor when he had the option to seek the post as a Republican. That could be interpreted that Kline stopped being a Republican that year and didn’t start again until 2020.

Kline said he’s “been a Republican my whole life and there hasn’t been a change to that.”

There are also questions about the eligibility of Gabrielle Kline, the chairman’s daughter, as secretary, and county Commissioner Niki Frenchko as auxiliary chairwoman. Both were elected unopposed.

Gabrielle Kline voted Republican this past May, which was the first time she voted in a Republican primary, according to her voting record.

Frenchko, who accepted the nomination as auxiliary chairwoman when no one else stepped forward, voted Republican in 2020 — when she was the party’s successful nominee for commissioner — and this past May. Before that, her voting record showed she voted Democratic in 2011, Republican in 2012, Democratic in 2014, 2016 and 2017. She voted issues only in 2018, the same year she unsuccessfully ran for county commissioner as an independent, meaning she was unaffiliated with a political party until 2020.

An Ohio Republican Party spokesman told me the state party typically doesn’t get involved in local party issues.

The state party stepped in twice during the Randy Law saga in 2017 saying the Trumbull party’s executive committee acted appropriately when it removed him as chairman and prior to that the bylaw changes he implemented were not lawful.

The ORP spokesman said the state party doesn’t plan to intervene in the latest Trumbull matter.

dskolnick@vindy.com