GOP chief in tough race to keep post
 |
|
||||||||||
The state Republican Party will pick a new chairman today after an unusual - and for some uncomfortable - public campaign for the job.
Choosing a party chairman is supposed to be an insider's game. The only people with a vote are the 78 members of the GOP state committee - party regulars who are subject to a very narrow-cast campaign.
But this year it's different for the Republicans because of the high-profile troubled tenure of the current chairman, state Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver.
Since November, Benton has been blamed by party officials for not doing enough to help Sen. Slade Gorton, for not spending enough money on other candidates and for buying a new party headquarters building in Olympia without the approval of the party executive board.
He also tried to get prosecutors to press criminal charges against the party's national committeewoman he accused of illegally taping a meeting. Benton's allegations were found to be groundless.
Last month he ignored the executive board's call to resign. But today he faces what is expected to be a tough re-election race against three other candidates: John Koster, an unsuccessful congressional candidate and former state lawmaker; Reed Davis, King County party chairman and a political-science professor; and King County Councilman Chris Vance, also an unsuccessful candidate for Congress last year.
Benton's three challengers met in Gig Harbor this week for a debate before the Gig Harbor Republican Women's Club. It was the first public debate of candidates for party chairman anyone could remember.
Benton didn't attend.
"This is not a campaign for public office," Benton said. "To go stand up in front of the public and give my vision and strategy for the party is tantamount to Gen. Eisenhower giving a press conference a week before the Normandy landing.
"It's ludicrous."
His opponents agree it's unusual. Even "totally weird," according to Vance.
The campaign has provided an unusually candid and public assessment of the state Republican Party. To win votes from the party regulars, Benton's challengers in Gig Harbor said that the party is suffering from a collection of maladies, including a muddled ideological message, poor candidate recruitment, an inferior get-out-the-vote and voter-identification program, and a devastating failure to connect with suburban voters.
Davis, who has been King County Republican chairman for six years, said the party needs to do a better job recruiting candidates at the state level and find a way to help county party organizations do more locally.
"The gene pool in the Republican Party is getting pretty thin right now," Davis said. Of the three challengers, Davis gave the harshest assessment of the party's inability to promote its principles. He said that during a campaign the party needs to sell itself as much as it does specific candidates.
Koster said it's not the chairman's duty to shape a message or promote an ideology. That, he said, needs to come from the state committee and the local organizations.
Vance points out the party organization has been plagued by staff turnover, with six executive directors in four years. Mostly he says he is concerned about what happened in the suburbs last fall.
He says there is no doubt that Bush and Gorton lost in Washington because Republicans didn't appeal to swing voters in the crescent around Seattle. "We have a crisis among suburban voters. That's the battleground in the state of Washington," Vance said.
Vance says the party should find a way to appeal to young voters and do extensive surveys and polling to find out what suburban voters are looking for in a political party.
Koster appears most concerned about party infighting. "I just think you keep it in the family. This is an in-house deal," he said of the complaints about Benton.
Koster said he almost didn't attend the Gig Harbor event because he did not want to be part of any "bash Don Benton" session. The other challengers agreed and refused to answer any questions about Benton's management. Through the campaign season there were no public complaints about the party chairman. But as soon as the votes were counted on election night the criticism began.
In December, local newspapers reported that party officials were questioning why Benton didn't spend more money on candidates in the November elections and why he bought a building in Olympia to move party headquarters without permission of the executive board.
Benton was also criticized for leaving $1.1 million in the bank after the election. Some party members said spending more of that money could have made the difference for Gorton, who lost a very close race to Democrat Maria Cantwell.
Benton said his troubles come from detractors in the party who backed his opponent when he was first elected chairman. In a two-page written statement circulated to party members this week, Benton defended his time in office.
"I'm fairly confident when they sweep aside all the liberal press accounts and attacks by my detractors they'll judge me on results," Benton said in an interview. That said, Benton concedes he has made mistakes - he moved too fast to buy the Olympia building and didn't consult with other party leaders as much as he should have.
"They wanted the chairman to be decisive," Benton said. "But I guess not this decisive."