John Hager: Clueless
By Greg L | 9 May 2008 | RPV | 5 Comments
Republican Party of Virginia Chairman John Hager is apparently laying down the gauntlet to unit chairmen to increase the size of their committees in typical RPV fashion: get bigger, or else you don’t get new money:
The effort calls on local Republican committees to double their membership lists by Labor Day. Those that do will receive extra money to support their activities, including get-out-the-vote efforts for the November elections.
Over the past few years, RPV’s financial support of local committees has been, well, largely nonexistent. The mad money dash at RPV has almost exclusively gone to finance direct mail campaigns for candidates in a grand experiment to determine whether you can win an election by stuffing yet another piece of direct mail into an already overloaded mailbox. These contracts to overwhelm the postal service are awarded in non-competitive fashion at the sole discretion of the RPV Chairman, to direct mail firms that perhaps not so coincidentally sometimes even host the campaign headquarters for, you guessed it, RPV Chairmen. So in typical “I got a hammer, where’s the nail” fashion, John Hager wants to build the grassroots by rewarding unit chairmen with money.
The grassroots are so far responding with derision. “Right Wing Liberal” sees a return to the Kilgore strategy. “The Write Side of My Brain” offers a different solution: actually act like Republicans, for a change. They’re right. Money can help with mobilizing the grassroots, but money is not the means to building grassroots. Leadership, effort, and above all dedication to principle is what motivates the grassroots to rise up on their own, and that’s what has propelled successful candidates to office, despite a long-term stoic disregard of the grassroots from RPV. Until recently, if you didn’t have an appointment to deliver a check to RPV headquarters, it was an iffy proposition as to whether they’d unlock the door and let you in the building.
It is not wrong to encourage unit chairmen to grow their committees, which is clearly a laudable goal, but trying to bribe them with GOTV money is hardly the means to achieve this goal, and indicative of a fundamental disconnect between RPV leadership and the folks that actually work to get candidates elected. Give unit chairmen a banner under which to fight, and they’ll rally the troops as they’ve always done. Local candidates, when they’ve had a strong message that resonated with the electorate, have been able to do this pretty easily. When RPV and Tom Davis tried to rescue Jeanne-Marie Devolites Davis from the self-immolation of inviting Michael Bloomberg to campaign for her while she tried to run to the left of Chap Petersen with gobs of cash, no amount of money could realistically rescue her. While you can’t win an election without money, grassroots volunteers are not bought, but earned.
So what is John Hager doing to actually earn the loyalty and dedication of the grassroots, or effectively foster their development? As the national standard bearer of the Republican Party at the moment might say, “nada”.
I’d imagine Jeff Frederick’s answer would be rather different.
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Excellent post. Keep up the good work. Charlie Judd is incompetent, he was dub enough to hire a guy who contributed to Don Beyer in 1997 then fired him when that became public. With Judd in there it never will get better.
The problem with banging on Hager for this is that it was actually McDonnell’s idea and it’s a joint program between McDonnell, Bolling and Hager. Of course the real value of this program isn’t the cash incentive but the AG/LG/RPV funded outreach being done on behalf of each local unit. We’ll see if it works once we get the primary voter roles.
Not to be petty however if you are going to call Charlie Judd dumb you should be able to spell the word.
Honestly, I don’t know what to do about my delegate vote at RPV’s convention end o’ the month. I don’t like Hager. I don’t like Frederick. Yuk, yuk, yuk,
I belong to FCRC. Have for years. I had to beg a couple friends to renew and not give up. They didn’t want to renew after last November’s fiascos. It’s not because they don’t like the County leadership (we like Jim just fine), it’s because they got frustrated w/ how the candidates didn’t cooperate with each other w/r/t volunteers on election day and how we had candidates with no core message in common. The Democrats can pull together. Republicans pull apart. No point in having a party if we’re not willing to compromise sometimes.
Jeannemarie blew it, but I believe it was because she ran to the LEFT of Chap. You can’t out-Dem a Dem when you are a Republican. She’d have held on if she had made a couple concessions to the right. Money can’t save you, when you’ve lost your way. She came out fighting, with a negative message, from that start when she should have tried to campaign on what she had done right. That all got lost in the he said/she said hub bub over who published whose personal information.
You can’t make everyone happy, but when you are a Republican and you have some large Republican interests groups telling you that you’re dead wrong on an issue, then you at least owe them the time of day. Or you lose. You lose your people and you don’t win over Chap’s people. Jeannemarie had upset the Second Amendment advocates she needed, but she wasn’t willing to go to them and ask forgiveness or at least understanding for where she had strayed from the fold. Some assurance of “I won’t do that again” helps, even when you have strayed. There is arrogance in power. And then you lose power.
Some other candidates in Ffx County did not get the attention or respect they deserved, while we watched Jeannemarie’s campaign crash and burn before us. Lower down the food chain, we barely held on to John Frey’s office (he never did any harm that I know of, yet we barely held on) and we lost the at-large school board spots for our endorsed candidates, including the incubment, Steve Hunt. The one bright spot was Patrick McDade, running for Bob Horan’s venerable seat. He did damned well, even though he lost it, because he was a relatively long shot and he had positive energy. He was all about what he could do for you and me, which should be the mantra of anyone seeking our votes. But I don’t think he got enough support from the party and I wonder if he’d ever consent to run again. Our best pick up locally on election day was Pat Herrity to the BOS! I consider him a pick up because Elaine McConnell was too comfortable in her job and no longer willing to stand up to Gerry’s Machine.
Hager? Frederick? Pah! Guess I will have to decide. Too bad there is no choice behind Door Number Three.
You never see anyone talked about because of the person they are but what Party banner they are running under. Maybe that is why we have such a sorry incompetent list of elected officials nationaly, state and localy. If they public is going to be lead around like a dog with a collar and leash and not think and ask questions and demand results they deserve what they have. Va is one of the few if maybe the only state to elect a person to be Governer twice and each time they were of a different party when elected. What a novel concept to elect someone because of the job they did not because of what party they were affiliated with.
Frederick is very good at saying NO to taxes but what has he accomplished to imporve the transportation problems and funding them in VA. The same goes for Marshall and the other one in PWC.