I'll drink to that!
Posted on 02/10/2005 8:06:17 PM PST by Huber
When local Republicans head to the precinct meetings scheduled next week for the Mecklenburg County Republican Party, they might be in for a more raucous affair than usual.
Bill Huber has thrown his hat into the ring to challenge current Party Chairman John Aneralla for the key leadership position.
Huber said it’s time for the local Republican Party to send a stronger message that resonates traditional Republican principles like low taxes, limited government, and free enterprise. In the wake of November’s election that saw Republicans lose majority control of the board of county commissioners, that message might carry extra weight.
“I haven’t had any chance to talk with Huber directly, so I’m not sure exactly what he has in mind,” said County Commissioner Dan Bishop, a Republican who in his first term on the board is proving to be one of the more conservative members in the minority. “But I know there’s an argument that there’s a lot of local Republicans who are Republicans in name only and I think that’s a big issue that’s frustrating to a lot of people, including me.”
“There have been some people in leadership positions who have been pretty philosophically sound,” Bishop said, “but I’ve never perceived those persons to have a lot direct power over the people who run for office or their message.”
Huber, a senior vice president with Wachovia who has lived in Huntersville for the last three years, said it’s time for that to change and the results would be more Republican victories in local races. Huber said his grassroots experience with the Republican Party would provide him a solid base upon which to build. Huber has served on the Republican Party’s state, district, and county executive committees, was vice chairman of the Young Republicans in Winston-Salem, and is the founder of the Lake Norman Chapter of Citizens For A Sound Economy.
“As a Party we need to better articulate the principles we’re supposed to stand for,” Huber said. “Republicans tend to win elections when we stand for something and the minute we try to water down our message and go for an approach that’s sort of a mix or an accommodation, our own base doesn’t come out and neither does the other side cross over and support us.
“So we end up with some tepid, mixed support,” Huber said, “but rarely do we win when we do that.”
Precinct meetings are typically low-key events, where Party members go about the task of electing individual precinct committees, precinct chairs, vice chairs and secretaries. But they also elect delegates to the Party’s district and county conventions. In turn, those delegates vote for the local Party chairman of their choice. Huber is hoping he can convince enough delegates that it’s time for a change in leadership
“John (Aneralla) is a good man and I believe he believes in the Party’s principles,” Huber said. “I think the big difference is a willingness to go out there and articulate them and make those principles front and center, as opposed to the Party just being a looser organization that provides some coordination of volunteers and some fundraising.”
Aneralla sees it differently.
“That’s where we disagree, in that I don’t think it’s the role of the chairman or the Party to come out and comment on any particular vote that a Republican may take,” Aneralla said. “My job is to get as many people involved in the process and keep everybody pointed to the same goal, which is ultimately to elect Republicans. And if I’m out there espousing my views on every single issue, that’s not going to happen.”
Aneralla assumed the chair of the Mecklenburg County Republican Party when Mary Kay Ulsamer stepped down last year. The Party’s executive council unanimously endorsed him for the leadership position and Aneralla said he has the Party headed in the direction and is growing support on a grassroots level with more volunteers and good fundraising.
Before stepping into the chairman’s seat, Aneralla, who also lives in Huntersville, was an assistant precinct manager for all the Party’s north Mecklenburg precincts, was a precinct vice chair and a five-precinct supervisor.
“We did a lot of things right this year,” Aneralla said of his tenure at the helm of the local Party. “We had a goal of getting President Bush more than 153,000 votes and we ended up getting him more than 155,000 votes. We increased the number of our volunteers. We put together a good team to build on over the next couple of years. It’s my goal right now to keep as many of the people that volunteered during the Presidential Election involved in the process, so we’re not starting all over for the next Presidential Election or county commission election.”
Last year’s setback in the county commissioners’ race wasn’t because of any lack of effort, Aneralla said, or any misguided message that the Party sent. It was because, in large part, of what he called the “tremendous inconsistencies” between early voter results that were registered in Mecklenburg County and the final results that were tallied. Mecklenburg’s election results, for those with a short memory, were contentious to say the least; early ballots had to be re-counted when it was discovered there were more votes cast than there were voters – a discrepancy that was attributed to computer error – and there was considerable consternation over whether provisional ballots should have been counted, which they eventually were.
“If you backtrack a little and just take out the liberalization of provisional ballots,” Aneralla said, “1,800 votes would have been thrown out.” That would have been enough, he said, to give Republican at-large candidate Ruth Samuelson a victory.
“We managed to do a good job with what we had,” Aneralla said of November’s elections. “We turned out almost 80 percent of first-time, registered voters versus about 67 percent for Democrats. And we were a targeted county by the Democrats. They probably outspent us 8 or 10 to 1.”
Even Samuelson, the Republican candidate who came oh-so-close in November, said the results were more because of a perfect storm of circumstances stacked against Republicans than anything the local Party did or didn’t do.
“Are any of those something specifically I can point to John Aneralla and say, ‘you screwed up’?” Samuelson asked. “Not really. The fact is we had a higher turnout than the Democrats did; it’s just that there’s more of them. So I can’t look and say, oh, it was the Party’s fault.”
County Commissioner Jim Puckett, a Republican who retained his north Mecklenburg district seat in November, agreed that nobody should be arguing for a change in Party leadership based exclusively on November’s results. But at the same time, Puckett said he agreed with Huber’s position that the Party could and should do a better job delivering a stronger message of core Republican principles.
“The Party can clearly lay out what its platform and positions are and at a minimum state that it expects those who run under the Republican banner to agree to that both in philosophy and in practice,” Puckett said. “I guess the question is, is the current leadership willing and capable to make that switch to a more aggressive approach. If not, then I think it might be time for a change.”
Samuelson said she hasn’t made up her mind on whether to throw her support behind Aneralla or Huber for the chairman’s leadership position.
“I’m staying out of that fight,” Samuelson said. “I’ve had contact with both of them and I see strengths and weaknesses in both approaches. If I had to vote today, I’m not sure what I’d do.”
Neither, Bishop said, is he. But he did have a warning for any RINOs – Republicans In Name Only – lurking in the local bushes.
“When I see something like what that Morgan fellow in the General Assembly is doing,” Bishop said, “sometimes I think the Party should have firing squads.”
HOME GROWN ACTIVISM PING!
Overheard two folks at the precinct meeting saying they were gonna vote for him.
FYI
And your post has "what" to do with a Freeper challenging the old guard in the largest county in North Carolina?
Never mind.
I'll drink to that!
Why not? The phrase 'put up or shut up' seems appropo here -- and you've 'put up', so lead on and shake 'em up!
Nice tag line! ;-)
There are two probable outcomes to this. Either I win, which will be good, or John is forced to upgrade his game, which would also be ok.
ATTABOY!!!!!!!
Cool Beans...
Thank you for your efforts. Now if we only had some new
Conservative Republicans with some backbone in Raleigh...
Almost tempts me to move to Mecklenburg County, especially if you win. You know you have my support. Let me know if I can do anything to help.
Thanks and good luck with your efforts in preventing Char/Meck from becoming the latest urban failure in this country.
That'd be nice.
South Carolina BUMP to you Bill. Go get 'em. I'd vote for you if I could.
Feel free to edit the post ever so slightly to give us some clue as to what state this is in.
I haven't heard that expression in a long time. It was back in 1996 from a gal in OH, who came from VA. Where is that expression really from? And what does it really mean? I use it quite frequently because I think it's "cool beans" but most people think I'm "nuts."
Well, the NC Ping and comments might have clued you in :)
Do you think the origin might have been in the coffee bars of the ancient Beatnik tribes?
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