Posted on 02/11/2009 12:16:41 PM PST by cll
Michael Steele owes his dramatic victory in the race for Republican National Committee chairman to votes from island territories outside the 50 United States. Now, the question is what else he owes them.
The residents of the five territories, from Puerto Rico in the Caribbean Sea to the tiny Northern Marianas in the Pacific Ocean, provided Steele with a bloc of 15 votes - one more than his margin of victory - when they swung into his camp late in the balloting last week.
Now, a leading committee member from the Virgin Islands, former shadow Senator Holland Redfield, said they expect results.
"They've committed themselves into putting real, hard money into the races here in the [U.S.] Virgin Islands, Guam, [American] Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Marianas," said Redfield, a leading figure in the territorial caucus at the RNC gathering.
"This was not just given to [Steele]," he said. "It was given based on commitments."
Territorial residents are American citizens but do not vote in presidential elections, and the "shadow" members of Congress they elect have no say in the Capitol. They do have the franchise, however, within the political parties, participating in presidential primaries and caucuses and internal party votes.
An advisor to Steele, Jim Dyke, disputed the notion that the new chairman made a concrete financial commitment to the territories.
"There would not have been a specific financial commitment to them," he said, calling referring to that claim as a matter of "interpretation." "He committed to working with all 50 states and the territories to help them win elections."
One certainty: The territories played a crucial role in picking the party's new leader, and they did so because they believed Steele would respond to their concerns.
"The territories put him over the top," said another Virgin Islands committeeman, Herbert Schoenbohm.
Steele's victory was widely seen in broad, symbolic terms, as Republicans chose a relatively moderate, black politician in an indication of their desire for dramatic change. But Steele's win was a coup for the territorial caucus, whose muscle inside the GOP had allowed it to expand last year to include committee members from the Northern Marianas. And it was one of those, committee member Bo Palacios, who crystallized the territorial complaints with a story about the RNC's failure to return his calls seeking help with a local shadow congressional candidate, who lost narrowly.
"Just with a little bit of support from the RNC, they would have picked up a member of congress, which they didn't," said Schoenbohm. (Palacios didn't respond to requests for comment.)
Many committee members from the territories began as supporters of former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who had focused early on on wooing the far-flung Republicans. But as his prospects dimmed, they invited South Carolina's Katon Dawson, and then Steele, to their caucus meeting in the Western Caucus Breakfast Room down the hall from the Capital Hilton ballroom to make their pitch.
Dawson focused his pitch on his own conservative credentials, and mentioned the territories' specific concerns only in passing, people in the room said.
He said he would be happy to do a fundraiser for them, but he would not commit to a direct contribution when we didn't know what the political environment would be like," said a Dawson supporter. "They wanted some cash to do whatever they need to do in their islands and Katon wasn't ready to commit to a direct contribution."
A spokesman for Dawson didn't respond to questions about the territories.
One ballot later, Steele addressed the group, reiterating his pledges to support the islands. Some, like Redfield, who had been closely involved in negotiations, took him to be pledging financial support; others understood his commitments more generally.
"No one said anything like "You vote for me and I'll put $_____ into your party coffers," said an American Samoa committee member, Amata Radewagen, in an email. "While financial assistance is nice, I think what the territorial members want most from the party leadership and our stateside colleagues is dignity, respect and recognition. In the end, we all felt we would get that from Michael Steele."
Now the question after Steele's victory is, as in any race, whether campaign commitments may get in the way of Steele's ability to deliver on goals that aren't centrally focused on Samoa.
The new chairman suggested in his victory speech that he knows he's made a commitment.
"I want to thank especially my friends in the territories, who I can assure all of you will be a part of building this party in a way we have never seen before," he said early in the speech.
And the territorial committee members will be watching.
"It demonstrated their political acuity to understand the importance of a bloc of votes," Redfield said of Steele's campaign. "And they know there's another election two years from now, and it can be taken away."
© 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC
Something doesn’t add up here. Somewhere around 170 votes total and a few teenie offshore areas have 15 votes? Less than 1% relative population but garner 9% of the votes??? What am I missing.
i think each state/territory has 3 votes, and there’s a few left over.
it’s like the senate, not the house. so the 5 territories have 15 votes.
I agree it’s kind of silly that say Guam and the Northern Marianas have as much say as Texas and California, but that’s how it is.
Have Ben Smith and Alexander Burns spent ANY time looking into Obama’s political financial shenanigans....before going after something so seemingly innocuous as THIS??? This is a decoy folks.....don’t take the bait.
Our State Party Chair (just elected in November) was part of the election of Steele....and he tells an interesting story of building coalitions....THIS whining about how the Republican’s elected the RNC head is weird.
Changing tag line.
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