Posted on 03/04/2007 7:37:09 PM PST by george76
A year ago, Dick Wadhams never thought he’d be back in Colorado full time trying to resurrect the state Republican Party.
Wadhams, the silver-tongued Las Animas native who has led upset campaigns across the country, expected to be getting Virginia Sen. George Allen prepped for his presidential run. That was before Allen made his infamous “macaca” remark amid what should have been an easy reelection bid, and suddenly both he and Wadhams, his press secretary, found themselves out of their jobs.
One week after that debacle, Wadhams fielded a call from Colorado Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany, who suggested that the 51-year-old return to the state and run for GOP chairman. Wadhams laughed, but the more he mulled the suggestion, the more it seemed fitting.
The Republican Party, after all, wasn’t supposed to be in this place, either. It’s not used to being clobbered the way it was in 2004 and 2006.
In 2002, voters re-elected Sen. Wayne Allard and Gov. Bill Owens. Republicans held both chambers of the General Assembly and five of the state’s seven congressional seats.
Two election cycles later, the GOP has lost a Senate seat, the governor’s mansion, both legislative houses and two congressional seats. With Allard retiring in 2008...
Wadhams returns to a depleted party. Warming to the party chairman’s role as cheerleader, Wadhams says the GOP is ready to bounce back.
He was elected state party chairman Saturday, but he also will take over the duties of executive director, chief recruiter and, essentially, savior of the GOP.
“What I want to do is wake up every morning and do nothing but eat, sleep and drink this stuff,” Wadhams said last week. “Given the last two cycles and what happened, there’s an attitude that we have to try something different.”
(Excerpt) Read more at gazette.com ...
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>>>>The Republican Party, after all, wasn’t supposed to be in this place, either. It’s not used to being clobbered the way it was in 2004 and 2006.
I wonder why??????
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Log_Cabin_Republicans
Log Cabin Republicans campaigned AGAINST Bush in 2004.
Log Cabin (Republicans) need to account for where they got the money to fund the $1M ad campaign against President Bush in 2004 in key battleground states. This is a Federally-regulated organization (IRS and FEC rules apply!), but they have never documented where this money came from.
Wadhams is a hack that makes it hard for a campaign to mount a character assault on the opposition, because he runs campaigns with no character. He's a slash-and-burner, who so mishandled the Macaca affair that he completely destroyed years of credibility Allen had built up in Virginia.
I blame Allen for hiring a hachet man to "groom his presidential race" when he should have hired a clean issues-oriented manager to push his better way.
After what happened in Virginia in '07, you would think Wadhams would find employment in Republican circles a tad difficult.
I did not follow Virginia closely...was Wadhams that bad ?
In a word, yes.
I've followed George Allen for over 20 years. The Allen we saw on the campaign trail was not the same Allen we saw in previous years.
Wadhams wasn't the only factor in the loss. But he was key. He totally bungled the "macaca" response. The campaign never recovered.
Oh absolutely, and he knows that. But Wadhams offered his first "explantion" before he had talked with the Senator (at least it appeared that way. Then Wadhams advised the Senator to go on an apology tour thus prolonging the story.
"Macaca" wasn't the only thing that sank Allen. But it threw them off their game.
Wadhams should have been able to pull them out of that tailspin, but he couldn't.
The campaign did not do substantive operation research, because there was plenty of info out there. So when the macaca hit the fan, what they had to strike back with was "Webb against women" and Webb's books.
We ran with that in the blogosphere. But it was too little, too late.
Understood. And he did a heck of a job in South Dakota as well. It just didn't play well here. For multiple reasons.
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