Thousands of copies of the Fort Bend County Republican Party October 2007 newsletter are stacked up in Gary Gillen’s warehouse, and when the recent county GOP chairman announced his resignation on Thursday, he vowed the newsletter won’t see the light of day.

Until the past few days, 20,000 copies of the newsletter sat at a printing house. The printer was awaiting payment, and members of the county GOP’s communications committee were waiting for Gillen to sign a check so the copies could be sent out through a mail house.

“Let me set the record straight” Gillen said during his resignation announcement, adding that the printer has been paid. But, he added, communications committee members “played fast and loose with the rules,” printed it without Gillen’s column, didn’t collect payment for all the ads before having it printed, and “used the newsletter as a bludgeon” against certain candidates.

“What they didn’t count on,” Gillen told a crowd of elected Republican officials and candidates, “is a county chairman who stood up and said ‘you will not do that.’ They will not be mailed under my watch.”

Word of Gillen’s statement infuriated some county GOP Executive Committee members.

“They collected almost $9,000 in advertising that the party promised would be published,” said long-time executive committee member and political activist Terese Raia. “They expect that entity to honor that obligation to publish.

“Now this one person has arbitrarily decided and thumbed his nose at the good people that supported this newsletter with their hard-earned money,” Raia said. “And to me, it’s unconscionable.”

Until the past few days, 20,000 copies of the newsletter sat at a printing house. The printer was awaiting payment, and members of the county GOP’s communications committee were waiting for Gillen to sign a check so the copies could be sent out through a mail house.