Posted on 11/16/2004 8:53:16 AM PST by unspun
By The Leader-Chicago Bureau (admin@illinoisleader.com)
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As the party rank-and-file meet in various venues throughout the state, one theme comes through loud and clear: there is an urgent need for Republican party reform in Illinois.
Party reform has different meanings, however. For some it means finding a new party chairman to lead the party out of its mire. For others there is a growing consensus that the part of the party's revamping should include the return to direct election of their representatives to the decision-making Republican State Central Committee.
Fingers point to state central committee
The state central committee, whose members are now elected from among county committeeman outside of Cook County, among township committeemen inside Cook County and among ward committeemen in the city of Chicago, were virtually unknown to party members statewide when they came into the spotlight this year.
The members gained notoriety when they were forced to choose a candidate to replace Jack Ryan, who the majority of Republican primary voters chose as their party’s nominee in the 2004 March primary.
Court documents concerning Ryan and his ex-wife actress Jeri Lynn Ryan’s dispute over their son Alex’s custody were unsealed after the Chicago Tribune sued to have them opened this past summer. Within days of the unsealed records revealing the ex-Mrs. Ryan’s complaints about her husband taking her to visit sex clubs, Republican Party leadership pushed Ryan to step out of the race against the Democratic nominee Barack Obama.
Party officials complained about the length of time Ryan took to file his official withdrawal papers, while all the while potential replacement candidates withdrew their names from consideration. At one time, over thirty individuals either contemplated running or were suggested as potential candidates.
The state central committee held a two-day forum where candidates from primary second place winner dairyman Jim Oberweis to former U.S. Senate candidate John Cox to an unknown Downstate farmer and a wig-wearing homeless man appeared before the panel.
The committee's final two choices were ideological opposites - Democrat-backing former Bush administration official Andrea Barthwell and Maryland-based radio talk show host and former presidential candidate Alan Keyes. After hours of intense discussion, the committee decided upon Keyes, based on his name recognition, his potential to pull in national money, his well-known debating ability and his conservative positions on political issues. Both Barthwell and Keyes were African-American, as was the Democrat nominee Obama.
If the Keyes' candidacy had worked out as committee member Dave Syverson had hoped, the Rockford area state senator and his colleagues would have been heroes. All those on the inside knew that a Keyes upset was virtually impossible in light of Obama’s popularity with the public and mainstream media, but throwing the dice on Keyes produced initial excitement with the party’s conservative base and renewed hope for an already struggling party apparatus.
But as Keyes kicked off his campaign with just weeks until Election Day, he chose a media strategy that backfired. Keyes’ plan was to get as much free earned media as possible by introducing himself to the Illinois electorate with surprises such as promoting reparations for the descendants of slaves and making national headlines by calling homosexuals “selfish hedonists.” Keyes chose to hone in on issues that emphasized the chasm in the state’s Republican Party -- abortion and the homosexual agenda -- rather than talk about the war on terror, homeland security, lower taxes and smaller government.
Just as quickly as Keyes' enthusiasts jumped on the bandwagon, many jumped right back off. Finger pointing and blame placing began right away. By the end of the Republican National Convention, the Republican Party establishment had already denied plausibility for the Keyes candidacy and backed away from any public support, leaving only the hardiest of conservatives to carry the Republican candidate through.
On Election Day, Keyes garnered an embarrassing 28 percent of the vote to Obama’s 70 percent.
The party rank-and-file blames the State Central Committee for the debacle. But the rank-and-file complain they had nothing to do with selecting the committee members, adding to their overall frustration.
Call for state party reform
In wake of yet another major Republican loss in two consecutive elections and the national disgrace of the senate race itself, the party members are calling for major overhaul.
The state central committeemen’s next task is to find a replacement for the current State Party Chairman Judy Baar-Topinka, who told the press last summer she intended to resign immediately after the election, but who now says she will remain so she will be able to attend the President’s inauguration in January.
Yesterday, the statewide group of Republican Young Professionals notified their membership that the group’s consensus is to return to directly voting for the state central committeeman on the party’s primary ballot.
Last Saturday the Illinois Center Right Coalition, a group which formed after Republicans lost the governor’s mansion and the State Senate majority in 2002, agreed with the RYP’s suggestion and called for same open elections the Democratic party currently holds every four years.
Not everyone thinks that’s the answer, however.
“Keeping the process the way that it is allows conservatives to effect change quicker than going toward direct elections,” 8th Congressional District state central committee member Dr. Bill Dam publicly told the ICRC members. “If you go that route, it will become a popularity contest.”
But a growing number of other conservative coalitions, including Illinois Forum based in downstate Champaign, support the more open election process as well.
“We have been calling for open elections of the state central committee for years,” Bob Redfern, chairman of Illinois Forum, said last week.
The Republican Young Professionals call for three things they say would indicate that that party is serious about reform.
“There should be a complete housecleaning in both the leadership and staff of our State Party,” Doug Ibendahl, co-founder, told his network on Monday. “The new Chairman should be chosen by a more open process than has been done in the past, and the State Central Committee should once again be directly elected by the Primary voters of our Party, and not just by the Party apparatus below them.”
The struggle between the old guard and the reformers is likely to intensify over the next few months as younger party leaders struggle to set a new course leading to the 2006 statewide elections, just as the Democrats are revamping at the national level.
“This is the time for political restructuring,” Ibendahl, former general counsel for the IL GOP, said. “President Bush is seeing Cabinet officials go who did outstanding jobs in the first term. We Illinois Republicans can surely now make some major changes in an organization which failed to do much of anything for this Commander in Chief - even during a time of war.”
© 2004 IllinoisLeader.com -- all rights reserved
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What are your thoughts concerning the issues raised in this story? Write a letter to the editor at letters@illinoisleader.com, and include your name and town.
Let's just hope they can find another candidate from outside Illinois to run for the next vacancy. Is Pee Wee Herman available? /sarcasm
better luck next time bump
That's because the Illinois GOP is pretty much as Liberal as the national Democrats. It's high time that the RINOs got drummed out permanently.
With any luck, this will serve as an object lesson for the California GOP.
"Reform" of the Illinois GOP is direly needed, to be sure, but that won't happen until they rid themselves of their Judy Baar Topinkas and Big Jim Thompsons and George Ryans. Now that (praise God!) Topinka is finally on her way out as head of the Illinois Republicans, hopefully they can get a real Republican and a real leader to salvage the party from the pile of wreckage it was reduced to by the graft and corruption and leftist compromise of the two Jims and Georgie.
Grass roots party organizations were further made irrelevant by the information revolution that made volunteer workers unnecessary.
One large contributor is worth more than bunches of volunteers. Take the money from big contributors and pay for professional telephone banks.
Volunteers stuffing envelopes? What millennium are you from? Machines stuff the envelopes, print the address, and stamp tho postage much more dependably than volunteers.
Word of mouth advertising? Television commercials are much more effective.
State Party Conventions? Waste of time and money. Party Platforms? Candidates ignore them.
Except in very unusual circumstances such as a candidate withdrawing after the primary, the only practical function for most state party organizations is to act as a conduit for contributions from wealthy contributors who have already maxed out under federal campaign laws. Then the candidates put their own people in control of the special campaign fund to guarantee that the money is spent the way the candidate wants it spent, not how the party officials would spend it.
In Illinois the problem was that the state party was relevant in that they threw sand in the gears for Fitzgerald. He wasn't one of them, they didn't like that fact that he recommended Patrick Fitzgerald (no relation) to be US Attorney for Northern Illinois who would have the audacity to go after crooks on both sides of the aisle. He basically had enough and decided to go back to enjoying his private life rather than having to battle with a bunch of hacks. Topinka BTW isn't a RINO, that would be too far to the right. Hopefully Illinois republicans will remember her if she runs for state treasurer again.
Except for Cook County, Bush won Illinois by nearly 300,000 votes. Not too shabby for a party in disarray.
Bush got that many votes not because of, but in spite of, the state party hacks.
I must admit I did find myself somewhat surprised by the percentage of Bush voters (about half) that cast ballots for Obama. I would not have been surprised if half the Bush voters didn't vote for either major-party Senate candidate (i.e. voted Jerry Kohn or another third party candidate, or simply left the Senate race blank), but the number of Bush voters who voted for Obama surprised me.
The realization that not voting for Keyes is in essence voting for Obama never crossed your mind either. The liberals don't have to get the conservatives to vote liberal for them to win, they just need to keep them from voting against them. Kudos to the strategists. But it's egg on your face. You bit the bait and now have a hook in your jaw named Obama. Congratulations.
I voted straight ticket regardless of whether they were RINO's or not because the alternative sickens me. I even voted for the carpetbagger for the sole reason of detesting Obama.
The problem here is that there are no viable Republican candidates that can dent the city. Chicago has a viable R voting block just waiting for a candidate to get behind.
We need leadership, bad.
This exact smae story could be and has been written about NEW YORK state GOP committee.
It's too bad Ryan got caught with his pants down. I didn't think of my vote as a vote for Keyes but rather a vote against the socialist.
My vote was definitely a vote for Keyes. I'm glad I got a chance to cast a vote for him, even though the circumstances that made that possible were most regrettable to say the least. But then you'd expect that from a Catholic Jacobite monarchist like me . . . .
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