11/15/98
The races for a new Republican Party chair and vice chair are
moving forward. Elections are scheduled for the second Saturday
in December. Kathy Watson, David Peterson and Jim Donnelly are
running for party chair. Ken Dutille. Jon Reisman, and David
Charette are candidates for vice chair.
The Maine GOP, as with all organizations over time, is in
transition, sorely in need of defining its role in party
politics. The state committee is divided. Some members are
fighting to re-energize the committee; to have it become a force
in electing Republican candidates. Other members, we're told,
view the committee as a "social tea" and have no desire
to rock-the-boat. These tea-drinkers see the energizers as
trouble-makers, party crashers. And as the Maine GOP runs left
while the country runs right, the Republican National Committee
has given up on investing in Maine GOP candidates.
There's another element within the Maine GOP; a 1980's holdover
when the party existed first and foremost for the Maine GOP's
top-of-the-ticket candidates. This arrangement served these
candidates well, but neglected local Senate and House GOP races.
These contradictory party visions are impacting the elections of
the new party chair and vice chair.
Most state committee energizers have first-hand experience with
successful, grass roots organizing. They know what it takes to
beat Goliaths. Anxious to apply their knowledge and experience to
rebuilding the Maine GOP, energizers have little patience for
complacent, apathetic tea drinkers and the "country
club" approach to politics.
They also have no illusions about the modern Maine Democrat
party. Camelot is a ghost town. The modern Democrat party is made
up of individuals and organizations who survive on government
largess. Look at the recent leadership elections. House Democrats
elected two socialists: Representatives Mike Saxl and David
Shiah. Modern Democrats will work with Republicans to the extent
Republicans forward Democrat goals. What the modern Democrat
party really wants is to drive a stake through the heart of the
GOP.
It's a crucial time for the Maine GOP. Energizers are ready to
rock-and-roll. GOP tea drinkers, with a 20-plus year track record
of delivering the minority party (almost 30 years in the House),
can hardly fault them. Nor should they.
Energizers are the heart-and-soul of the modern Maine GOP. That
truth frightens GOP tea drinkers, ripples their tea. The defeat
twice of the Forest Compact, the successful People's Veto to
repeal the state gay rights law, the successful signature
gathering effort for the upcoming referendum on partial birth
abortion -- all were driven by energizers within the GOP. Not
even the combined opposition of King, the Democrats and millions
in media exposure could stop them.
It is a transition period. The liberal wing of the Maine GOP
remains powerful. It still controls the party hierarchy. But it
can't win state legislative elections. At least, not enough to
secure a Republican majority. The energizers -- a minority within
the party hierarchy -- can win elections and want the chance to
win legislative majorities. They need a leader who can prove he
she can lead the way. That's what this party chair/vice chair
election is about. Conservatives don't control the state
committee but they do have a block that cannot be ignored if the
party is ever to regain the prominence of 30 years ago.
Energizers defeat the Forest Compact and GOP legislators then
help Democrats enact a new law that includes many of Compact's
worst parts. Energizers write and are successful in having
adopted a private property rights plank in the 1998 GOP Platform,
then wonder why Senators Snowe and Collins are still cosponsors
of the Northern Forest Stewardship Act and why both have so far
refused to hold public hearings in Maine on that bill. Energizers
draft and have adopted a partial birth abortion ban plank in the
1998 GOP Platform and then watch our two U.S. Senators twice fail
to vote to override Bill Clinton's PBA veto.
GOP tea drinkers wonder why the Maine Taxpayers and the
Libertarian Party peel off GOP voters? It's because of a thing
called "principle." "Yes," argue tea
drinkers, "but these third parties can't win
elections." Re-read the previous paragraph. If the Maine GOP
is going to drop the ball on key energizer issues, what
difference does it make to energizers if they vote for third
parties or the Republican party?
Maine Republican party registration is now third behind
Unenrolled and Democrats. Democrat candidates are successfully
attracting social conservative votes on the partial birth
abortion issue in Maine and other parts of the nation. Democrats
are reaching out to traditional Democrat voters in areas like
Lewiston, Biddeford and Saco. For the first time the Catholic
Church, long a bastion of ethnic Democrat voters in Maine, has
sided with conservatives on the partial birth abortion issue and
has allowed signatures to be gathered at Catholic churches around
Statewide.
As the Maine Republican state committee approaches the day of
reckoning for the new party chair and vice chair, its members --
and candidates for chair and vice chair -- would do well to
consider: If the tea drinkers remain on course, if the Maine GOP
is finally and absolutely successful in alienating Maine's
property rights activists and social conservatives -- who's left
in the party?