Clark County Republican party leaders resign

Clark County Republican Party Chairman Dave Gibbs announced his resignation Wednesday night and said he would join "Team Nevada," a national GOP group supporting Mitt Romney's presidential campaign as well as other top Republican candidates.

Gibbs' move to enlist in the shadow state party comes after supporters of GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul took over the Clark County GOP, with some threatening to oust Gibbs, who apparently decided to walk away instead.

The county party's Vice Chairman Woody Stroupe also announced he would resign and join the Team Nevada effort. In a letter to the Clark County Republican Central Committee, Gibbs cited "distractions" as a reason for leaving his post.

"When I was elected Chairman of the CCRP, my plan was to focus all our efforts on electing Republicans to office as is stated in our county party bylaws," Gibbs wrote, saying that 2012 is a great GOP opportunity.

"However, I find that I now spend more than 75 percent of my available time focused on issues that have nothing to do with electing Republicans," Gibbs added. "These distractions take away from doing what must be done in order to defeat the Democrats this fall."

Gibbs said he would resign effective at 12 p.m. on Friday and would take a volunteer position with Team Nevada. The Republican National Committee and the Romney campaign formed the group.

Stroupe said he could no longer tolerate the strife within the GOP.

"Recently, the turmoil in the Clark County Republican Party has driven a wedge between many Republican organizations and prevented me and the county party from focusing on electing Republicans," Stroupe said in his separate letter to the county GOP's central committee.

In the past couple of weeks, the RNC leadership lost patience with Paul supporters who have been winning leadership jobs in the county and state parties.

Last week, frustrated national GOP officials said the RNC and other GOP campaigns would go around the Nevada Republican Party and run all of the campaign operations and money through the Team Nevada offices.