Rina Shah, a Republican businesswoman — and vocal critic of Donald Trump — who was supposed to be a delegate to the Republican National Convention from Washington, D.C., had her RNC credentials stripped from her on Friday while she was visiting her father in the hospital. Shah tells Heat Street exclusively that she believes the reasons include sexism and a party motivated by fear of crossing the presumptive Republican nominee.
“An embarrassment to my party, just for exercising my right to free speech”
The trouble started back in April, when Shah appeared on Fox News and was asked about Trump. She had voted for Sen. Marco Rubio at D.C.’s March 12 convention and successfully campaigned to be one of 10 delegates for Rubio, the victor of that contest.
Shah was critical of Trump and said that if he won the GOP nomination, she’d consider voting for Hillary Clinton as the “lesser of two evils.” But she was committed to go to Cleveland and cast her vote for Rubio, as the people of D.C. had elected her to do. She also posted tweets critical of Trump, calling him a “racist, misogynist flip-flopper” who couldn’t beat Clinton.
.@realDonaldTrump is not a real Republican. So, he'll never get my vote. He is a racist, misogynist flip-flopper. Wake up #USA! #NeverTrump
— Rina Shah (@RinainDC) April 13, 2016
Shah’s comments caused a furor, with the Chairman of the District of Columbia Republican Party (DCRP) saying, according to Shah, that she was an embarrassment to her local Republican Party as well as to the national organization.
“That’s what hurt the most,” Shah told Heat Street, “hearing him say that I was an embarrassment to the local party, just for exercising my right to free speech.”
Shah says that party leaders continued to hound her, demanding loyalty. She sent them an affidavit affirming she was a lifelong, loyal Republican and intended to vote in November for “a Republican and a Republican only,” not for Clinton. Of course, Shah noted, this did not mean that she was pledging to vote for Trump if he did become the nominee, as this language “leaves the door open” for a write-in vote or perhaps voting for the Libertarian ticket, comprised of two former Republican governors, Gary Johnson of New Mexico and Bill Weld of Massachusetts.
Shah says she was unsuccessful in appeasing her critics, and that they then found a new avenue of attack: her home. Or, more specifically, homes.
A question of residency
Shah, an Indian-American daughter of immigrants, married her physician husband in May 2014, and they have a seven-month-old daughter. She owns her own business and is preparing to go to law school in the fall in D.C.
Prior to the birth of their child, the couple lived in a Washington, D.C. condo that Shah had purchased with her father and brother in 2010. The D.C. condo has also been the location for Shah’s consulting business in the city since 2011.
As they prepared for the birth of their daughter, Shah and her husband purchased a home in Reston, Virginia. “We wanted to do like they did in India,” Shah explained, referring to the common arrangement in their parents’ native India, where several generations often live together under one roof.
With the new baby arriving in November 2015, two professional careers, and Shah heading to law school soon, having a home large enough so that their parents could stay there to help with childcare was a blessing.
Meanwhile, Shah kept the D.C. condo, continued to list it as her legal residence, keep it as the address on her driver’s license, pay income taxes as a D.C. resident from that address, and use it for business. Shah also continued to sleep at the D.C. condo several nights each week, sometimes with her husband and child, and sometimes alone with her parents watching the baby at the Virginia home.
This was an ideal arrangement for Shah and her family: a D.C. residence that was convenient for her business in the city, and a second home in the Virginia suburbs where her close-knit family could stay. It’s the kind of situation many young professionals would love to be able to afford.
But when Shah started tangling with the DCRP, her living arrangements made her a target.
To be a District of Columbia GOP delegate, the local party’s rules stated that Shah was required to be a registered Republican voter and a D.C. resident as of January 1, 2016. She says her detractors began claiming she was a Virginia resident and thus ineligible to represent the District of Columbia at the RNC in Cleveland.
Shah provided piles of documents: copies of her driver’s license and income tax returns, a contract showing that she was a co-owner of the D.C. condo, proof she was responsible for paying utilities and taxes at the D.C. condo, her business records, etc. The response was to question her choices as a mother.
“What right does he have to question whether or not I’m breastfeeding?”
Shah and her attorney asked for a meeting with the DCRP chairman, José Cunningham, and the DCRP’s counsel, but Cunningham didn’t show up. Bob Kabel, the national committeeman, was there instead.
According to Shah, Kabel was critical of her for spending a few nights a week away from her baby and speculated out loud how she could do that while still breastfeeding. She had stopped breastfeeding and switched the baby to formula after about a month, but was irritated that Kabel thought that was anyone else’s business but her own.
Kabel did not respond to Heat Street‘s request for comment.
Like many young female conservatives, Shah is reluctant to play the feminist card so often employed by liberals, but her treatment by Kabel and the party leadership shocked her. “I never say this, but this was sexist,” she said. “What right does he have to question whether or not I’m breastfeeding?”
“I feel like it’s so ridiculous,” Shah said of the questions and suspicion directed at her family. “They asked where i put my head down at night, [but] one point that I think is missing, is how can Donald Trump vote in New York but lays his head down in Florida every night?” Shah also mentioned how the 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney had maintained multiple residences.
“These [men] can get away with it, how come I can’t?” Shah asked.
The reality, Shah explained, is that the two homes are only half an hour from each other, and the ability to go back and forth between them and have her baby watched by grandparents instead of strangers in day care is what’s best for her family, and she was shocked to find fellow Republicans attacking her for it.
“It’s like I’m being persecuted for espousing Republican values, but aren’t we supposed to be the family values party?”
Cunningham, reached for comment by Heat Street, broadly denied that Shah had been asked invasive questions or that the DCRP did anything inappropriate. “I know Rina, I like Rina…I know she has a great family and a great family support system,” he said.
He also denied that the dispute was caused by her criticism of Trump. “We were just trying to determine whether or not she lived in Virginia,” said Cunningham. “We came to the conclusion that she lives in Virginia.” He cited Shah’s social media posts and that she had written articles that described her as a “resident of Reston, Virginia.”
A victory, but a short-lived one
The inquisition into her family life, which Shah described as “hell,” wasn’t enough to satisfy the DCRP. In May, they voted to not certify her election as a delegate, and appointed a replacement. Disappointed, Shah appealed through the procedures allowed by the RNC’s Committee on Contests and waited.
Then, on Monday, came a reprieve: the RNC Committee on Contests said that the decision of the DCRP was wrong and issued a revised report, recommending that the RNC seat Shah as a delegate.
“They didn’t follow their own procedures,” said Shah, explaining how the DCRP had ignored the legal standards for residency and refused to accept the multiple sources of evidence she attempted to provide.
In their written opinion, the Committee agreed with Shah, criticizing the local party for “imposing their own definition of residency rather than relying on the applicable residency standard in the D.C. Election Code,” noting that Shah had offered as evidence her D.C. driver’s license, voter registration, and property records. The Committee also criticized the DCRP for “the lack of due process provided to [Shah] during the meeting when the Executive Committee voted to not certify her as a delegate.”
“Literally” an eleventh hour appeal
Shah was elated with her victory, tweeting Monday evening that she was happy to be back on the D.C. delegation and had just booked her plane ticket.
Just booked my ✈️ticket to #Cleveland. Happy to be back on the #WashingtonDC delegation to @GOPconvention! https://t.co/eUKYqCS2Mq
— Rina Shah (@RinainDC) July 12, 2016
The victory would be a short-lived one, however. On Thursday, the RNC Committee on Credentials adopted rules of procedure for appeals, and an eleventh hour appeal was filed against Shah late that evening by Cunningham, the DCRP Chairman.
This was literally an eleventh hour appeal: Cunningham emailed his intention to appeal the decision at 11 p.m. Thursday night.
The RNC’s counsel’s office called Shah’s attorney minutes later to give notice of the appeal, and to inform her that the matter would be heard the very next morning, with appeal hearings beginning as early as 9:00 a.m.
This meant Shah had not even eleven hours to travel to Cleveland to defend herself.
That’s not an easy trip to make at the last minute for anyone, even less so for a young mother, but Shah faced an additional challenge: her 72-year-old father was in the hospital, recovering from a fall that broke his hip and femur, requiring emergency surgery. “We just got him home last night,” said Shah as we spoke Friday afternoon.
Shah knew that she was more likely to lose if she was not there in Cleveland to defend herself, but being with her father was a priority.
“That was part of the risk, but aren’t we supposed to be the pro-family party?” she asked wryly. “I don’t know. I thought we were.”
According to Shah, it was no secret that her original plane ticket, booked after she was reinstated on Monday, had her scheduled to arrive in Cleveland on Sunday. “They knew they couldn’t defend themselves,” so they picked a time when she couldn’t possibly make it, she said, and “the votes were whipped against me.”
Shah sent a representative to speak on her behalf, but to no avail.
The Credentials Committee, according to Shah, was stacked with pro-Trump members and they relied on testimony from three members of the DCRP, again ignoring the legal standards for residency and the recommendation of the Contests Committee.
Once again, Shah’s delegate credentials were stripped.
“They’re fearing the repercussions,” said Shah, saying that Cunningham and the DCRP “panicked and caved to the Trump forces.”
The plane ticket, happily booked on Monday, has now been cancelled. Shah won’t be attending the convention at all now. “I didn’t think they would even let me have a guest pass,” said Shah, saying that she’s sure the DCRP and RNC don’t want the negative press attention.
Unfortunately, just staying away from Cleveland isn’t likely to end the headaches for Shah and her family. She says the attention from Trump supporters over the past few months has been obsessive, and even scary at times, whipped up by articles at sites like Breitbart that she says omitted key facts and called her a “Hillary supporter.”
“It’s just insane how far people will go to try to prove something,” said Shah, describing how Trump fans had scoured the internet and found an online review she wrote about a moving company. Shah explained that they had hired a moving company to redistribute some of their furniture and belongings when they bought the Virginia home, had left some at the D.C. condo, and bought some new things.
Others sought to read hidden meaning into the hashtag #OurFirstHome on an Instagram photo of the Virginia property. “That was our first home we bought together as husband and wife,” explained Shah, since the D.C. condo was purchased with her father and brother.
Shah says her physician husband has been targeted, too, as Trump supporters have been writing negative one-star online reviews of his medical practice.
More troubling, Shah says, have been the threats and harassment on social media, and even several emailed death threats. Her mother also saw someone park their car right outside the Virginia home, watching the house, for several days.
“It’s been an ordeal,” said Shah of the threats, all the more frustrating when she received no reply when she reached out to the DCRP’s national committeeman and committeewoman for advice.
“It was just really scary,” she continued, “and the local party did this to me. They didn’t have to, but they did, so they could show that they were in good with Trump…I think people are scared so they’re falling in line.”
Cunningham denied knowledge of any specific threats against Shah. He did say that Shah had called him and said people in the DCRP were shunning her. According to Cunningham, he told her he was always willing to talk to her.
It’s a frustrating situation for Shah, knowing that she met the legal requirements to be a delegate but being kicked out for criticizing Trump.
Credentials Comm. set dangerous precedent that a delegate's support for a certain candidate can be grounds for stripping their credentials.
— Adam Motzko (@adammotzko) July 15, 2016
Shah isn’t in Cleveland, and she remains adamant in her opposition to Trump and determination to not let the injustice committed by the DCRP and RNC be forgotten.
I may be able to forgive, but guess what? I'll never, ever forget.
— Rina Shah (@RinainDC) July 16, 2016
Follow Sarah Rumpf on Twitter: @rumpfshaker.
