His bio says he’s “Known as a strict fiscal conservative”.
I find it hard to fathom he’s not a RINO if he was Nassau county chairman for 25 years.
Wikipedia says he’s been state chair since 2006 and is also still Nassau county chair. The latter point another source confirms.
http://www.nygop.org/officials/
Check out that. 5 years ago that page would have been full of Congressman instead of 3 congressman and 2 minority leaders.
http://www.nypolitics.com/2008/12/01/joe-mondello-says-hes-staying-on-as-republican-chairman/
“Mondello maintains the loss of the Senate cannot be put at his door. “This was not me,” said Mondello, “neither was it Dean Skelos,” referring to the now-lame duck Senate majority leader from Rockville Centre.”
Whoa, the dude is 70 years old. From looking at his bio, it seems to me like he got the NY GOP Chairman nod for the same reason Bob Dole got the Presidential nomination in ‘96 ... the party big wigs went with a drab, uninspiring, old-party war horse because they felt he deserved a shot at it after decades of party loyalty. One of the jobs of a party chairman should be to be the face of the party in public and to inspire swing voters to vote Republican, and I doubt Mondello even inspire hard-core Republicans to turn out.
What the NY GOP needs now is a young, vibrant, articulate, unapologetic new leader who knows how to raise money and can make an appealing pitch to people who don't traditionally vote Republican.
At least the NY GOP had the sense to dump the last Chairman after the 2006 losses, but instead of hitting rock bottom in that election, it's gotten worse under Mondello. In fact, if it got any worse, NY would resemble Massachuttes-like Dem monopoly.
Looks like the last decent NY GOP LEADER they had was this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Powers_(politician)
The thing is, the NY GOP has a golden opportunity to make gains next year, thanks to Spitzer’s self-destruction, Patterson's screwups, an unelected Senator, and the incompetent RAT general assembly. But from what I see the NY GOP has no clue how to take advantage of it (Mondello is even part of the crowd who thinks it would be a “dream ticket” to have Peter King as Senate nominee)
I agree heads should roll, but I would say Mondello’s head should be first (and Tedisco needs to forget about running in 2010)