The Backbiting Must Stop
By Greg L | 9 November 2008 | RPV | 39 Comments
One GOP unit Chairman for Greenville-Emporia (total population about the size of Manassas Park, VA) has called on RPV Chairman Jeff Frederick To resign, prompting “The Contemporary Conservative” to post Carla Harris’ letter underneath a post title that alleges that GOP Chairmen are calling for RPV Chairman Jeff Frederick to resign. If one obscure unit chairman wants to demonstrate what political party dysfunction looks like, fine. That occasionally happens at the unit level, especially in small units where there isn’t exactly a deep bench of folks to pick from when choosing someone to head a Republican committee. This is hardly the beginning of a revolt within RPV against Jeff Frederick, nor should it be.
Let’s look at what Jeff Frederick ended up with four months ago when he was selected as RPV Chairman. RPV had no money when he took over, no communications getting out to the grassroots, no base of volunteers, and a ticket for the November elections that only the hard-core loyalists would have considered compelling. Four months ago RPV leadership was a club of insiders utterly inaccessable from the outside, uninterested in doing anything but talking to unit chairmen and the State Central Committee, and provided tools to local level units and candidates that were utterly abysmal — and demanded payment for them. RPV’s total contribution to election operations would be massive amounts of direct mail and some robo-calls, and a complete and utter disinterest in doing much else.
Within a few short months Jeff Frederick has revamped communications to the grassroots, started rebuilding fundraising, and has been working to get candidates ready for the 2009 House of Delegates races. He’s used the time and resources he’s had about as well as anyone could have expected, and to have unit chairmen publicly throwing rocks at him for what happened is utterly pathetic. Was Frederick supposed to remake Jim Gilmore into someone who would be competitive with Mark Warner? Or single-handedly defuse the financial crisis on Wall Street so John McCain would have had a prayer of winning? Get real.
Right now the race starts for the 2009 elections. This isn’t a time to start infighting within RPV, but a time for everyone unhappy with the outcome of this year’s election to start working for a different outcome next time around. Instead of trying to throw blame around elsewhere, there’s something each of us can start doing now to produce that different outcome. It’s not up to Jeff Frederick to make the difference in all the various places where these contests are fought, it’s up to us to make sure the right candidates are running, that they have the support they need, and that there’s an army of volunteers working for their victory in every precinct, in every town and county, and across the state. RPV can help coordinate what happens, and if properly lead can make a huge difference, but the victory is not won or lost at RPV. That victory depends on us.
This year we had a pretty weak national ticket and a Senate candidate that wasn’t going to get the job done. That national wave impacted Congressional races and we lost some races we wish hadn’t been lost. Next election cycle the climate will be different.
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Frederick may have a difficult time holding on to the chairmanship. He probably deserves another year but we will see. I think it will essentially be up to McDonnell and Bollings people to see if he gets another chance. I think a vote could be very close.
Frederick did use RPV money to help Gilmore when obviously the money should have gone to Fimian, Drake, and Goode. That was his biggest mistake.
Exciting times.
I wish I could agree here, but CC makes some very valid points in his criticisms. Frederick should hold himself to the same standard he foisted on Hager. He also shold take down his photo from the RPV website - that is nothing more than self promotion. And I am very curious about the allegation of RPV contracting to Frederick’s company. If true, that’s even worse than the Faisal Gill - Kopko mess.
Saw an interview with Larry Sabato on FNC. Basically, he said that in Virginia, no Republican could have beaten Warner, and Obama got a nice tail-wind off of that. Combined with the constant media barrage, and big money dumped into VA, plus the economy, plus frustration with Bush, no presidential nomiinee from the field we selected McCain from could have carried the state. I agree, Frederick deserves at least another cycle to get things turned around. We shouldn’t forget that this passed cycle started immediately after the 2006 federal elections. Hagar had 20 months to get things turned around, and did nothing (except plan a wedding). Let’s see where the party is at headed into the Governors race. The thing is, all Republicans have to make a commitment to the party, stop the infighting, and get behind our nominee. Leverage the fact that we won’t need to have a primary or convention to select ours, while the Dem’s have their nomination contest. If it’s a primary, let’s figure out who we’d rather face in the fall, and “help” them select their nominee, the way they “helped” us select our nominee for President. Let’s turn out to help our GOP HOD candidates as soon as possible, and not wait for the post-labor day traditional campaign season. We need to maintain control of the HOD, and take back the Gov. Mansion. This is VERY important. Congressional redistricting is coming up in 2010.
the 08 election is done. We’ve had our period to mourn. Let’s get moving!
Yes, Gilmore was a disaster and not JF’s doing or responsibility. Prez is too big to lay to a state Chairman.
HOWEVER, losing Drake AND especially Goode (not to mention Fimian) is a real problem. And JF did blame JH for losing as the basis of his being elected.
Frankly, I voted for JF, but nothing seems different at RPV. Fundraisings sucks, website was late, money mis-allocated … and the 2009 Call smacks of insider, big boy dealing … Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?
I just dunno.
Ciao.
not russ moulton
“Gilmore was a disaster and not JF’s doing or responsibility.”
Actually if Frederick hadn’t supported Gilmore, Marshall would probably have won, I’m all for replacing Frederick.
I wholeheartedly in line with Flavius…with the odds being as they were, no one could have saved us in 2008!
Let’s get going and “hang in there,” Jeff….better days are coming!!
A majority of Prince William has voted for a Democrat Governor, 2 Democrat Senators and now a Democrat for President. If this continues (and it looks like it will) we will has a Democrat majority Board of County Supervisors in Jeff Fredrick’s home county in a few years.
Could someone please explain what happened to Gilmore? It’s was like he didn’t even campaign…
well, what could the RNC expect - with how things are right now, why would anyone want to trust a Repub?
Economy - on the rocks
Good Companies - needing bailouts
Iraq still not finished (remember Mission Accomplished).
etc
Hell of a job, Jeffie!
It’ll be interesting to see if, as Anonymous puts it, if the voting for county offices trends dem or if at a local level we still want republicans. Personally, I’d want a strong fiscally conservative person. Someone that’ll cut 30% of the Prince William County government will get my vote.
Pat, to your point about ‘weak’ companies I agree with you. I’m moving all my money out of Bank of American and moving it to USAA Federal Savings Bank. If a company took federal ‘bailout’ funds - it means to me that its too weak to survive without government help. I’ll go to a bank that knows how to manage it’s own money.
Anchor,
some of the bank (I think BOA was one of them) were given money to give to other institutions.
I think Wells Fargo, BOA, PNC and JPMC are all doing fine - this is not a recomendation, as we have found out, in good standing one day, looking for bailout money the next.
I think most people think of republicans as being fiscally conservative. It is elected republicans like Caddigan, Nohe and Hill that give republicans a black eye.
Caddigan and Nohe because they have a record of vote with the democrats and, Glendell Hill because he has done nothing to help reduce the cost of running a police department, serve the people, or make the community a better place to live.
So much for Greg’s call to stop with the back biting. To those talking about “removing” Fredrick, you had better read up on the Party Plan. It will not be easy, and will tear what little party unity that remains to shreds.
Plus we have “Anonymous”, who I suspect is a big Stoffregan fan, still suffering from Hill-derangement-syndrom. Lastly, we have Pat Herve, who is no Repeublican weighing in. Thanks for the insight Pat. We’ll get right on that for you….
I agree 100% with Flavius. Let’s roll!
Anonymous said on 10 Nov 2008 at 6:53 pm,
Said:…. Glendell Hill because he has done nothing to help reduce the cost of running a police department, serve the people, or make the community a better place to live.
Get you facts straight he is not POLICE he is a State Constitutional office as the elected Sheriff for Prince William County whose primary responsibility is: primary responsibility is securing the Judicial Center and serving civil process. They also have a staff of approximately 91 people.
If you lived around here, or had your head some where other than the “sand”, you would know that in 1970 the BOCS started the Prince William County Police Department, replacing the Sheriffs office as the primary law enforcement office in the County.
Nothing peeves me more than people who spout junk that they do not even know about or try and get a jab in at someone because they their candidate and friend couldn’t beat Hill.
40 Years,
I suspect “anonymous” knows the deal well. He most likely had one of those “special deputy” badges Stoffie would give out, when someone made a campaign donation over $5K. He probably campaigned for Mike “I was Stoffie’s #1 guy” Messier.
Boy oh boy did I have a bunch of spelling ooopps in that last message….long day. I agree Anonguy, or it could be one our own that wanted Fotis in, you see the link to the not as conservative R’s such as Nohe and Caddigan gave that one away…
It would not be too hard to remove Frederick. If Bolling and McDonnell publically express “no confidence” I expect he will be removed. I do think he is probably somewhat safe for the time being. Any more stupid mistakes or controversial comments and he is gone no questions asked. This is all about the big 3 candidates next yet NOT the RPV chair.
40 year,
You may be right. I didn’t consider the fotis connection.
anon, then why is his photo in the number one slot on the RPV website masthead? I will keep harping on this until he takes that down - it is nothing more than blatant self promotion. And is there any more info on RPV contracting to Frederick’s company?
40 years,
In terms of the constitutional office of Sheriff..
§ 15.2-1609. Sheriff.
The voters in every county and city shall elect a sheriff unless otherwise provided by general law or special act. The sheriff shall exercise all the powers conferred and perform all the duties imposed upon sheriffs by general law. He shall enforce the law or see that it is enforced in the locality from which he is elected; assist in the judicial process as provided by general law; and be charged with the custody, feeding and care of all prisoners confined in the county or city jail. He may perform such other duties, not inconsistent with his office, as may be requested of him by the governing body. The sheriff shall be elected as provided by general law for a term of four years.
Now, PWCPD and the PWC Sheriff’s Department did sign an MOA detailing that the Sheriff’s department would concentrate on it’s role with the court but you make it sound like deputies don’t have jurisdiction within PWC - which they do. But, at this time they don’t excercise it.
And, thats unfortunate. Because, like him or not when I as a private citizen would call up the sheriff’s office and ask for ‘traffic enforcement’ on my road I had a deputy report there with radar gun in hand pretty darn quick. Tell me how long you’ll have to wait to see a PWCPD officer do the same. You’ll keep waiting. I was told that they have 6 hours worth of ‘elective traffic enforcement’ in “non-patrolled areas”.
And, that is the difference between a person that I can vote in and out of office and one that has a job for life. I’d replace the PWCPD with more deputies any day of the week - because they are accountable to ME - a voter and taxpayer.
I don’t care if we have a dem or a repub as Sheriff - as long as when I call them they’ll get a car out where I want them because they’re beholden to me as an elected law enforcement officer.
You hit the nail on the head with this post. Jeff Frederick had about as much to do with McCain losing Virginia as DPV Chairman Dickie Cranwell had to do with Obama’s win….NOTHING!!
Jeff has brushed aside the petty attacks from the press and the brutal stuff coming from the lefty blogs and kept his nose to the grindstone doing the job he was elected to do…and keeping his promise to rebuild the grassroots operations of the RPV.
Obama’s victory was in no way a reflection on Jeff Frederick’s job as RPV Chairman, it was proof that Jeff was right all along about what needs to be FIXED NOW at RPV.
Anonymous said on 10 Nov 2008 at 3:54 pm: Flag comment
A majority of Prince William has voted for a Democrat Governor, 2 Democrat Senators and now a Democrat for President. If this continues (and it looks like it will) we will has a Democrat majority Board of County Supervisors in Jeff Fredrick’s home county in a few years.
Put candidates in there worthy of being elected and they will be. Gilmore should not have been nominated to run. He had to much baggage over the car tax fiasco. I truly believe that Bob Marshall would have made the difference.
Anchor Baby,
What you need to understand is that the Prince William Sheriff’s office is no longer the PRIMARY law enforcement office and isn’t run by a person with a massive ego and as such doesn’t jump out of a car with a radar gun when you call because they are beholden to YOU.
I have discussed this before that the Sheriff’s office does back up the police when the police request it, they aren’t out there on their own in forcing what the police should be doing. The current Sheriff doesn’t have an ego that needs to be filled. He has developed a very good working relationship with the police.
So what do you want, to have two separate law enforcement agencies in Prince William County, each with their own policies and procedures? What is that called….hhhmmmm duplicative services and a waste of tax payers dollars!
You seem angry that the Sheriffs office isn’t there for you to do your calling as you wish, if that is the case then go to the Board with your request to undo what they did in 1970 or solicit for a funding increase or to slice junk out of their budget so they can be beholden to you.
40 Years
Why don’t you just come on out and say the current sheriff is only in office for a paycheck and doesn’t really care about the people or the community…..That’s what you are saying.
Anonymous,
If he didn’t care about people he would not have worked to get contributions from business in the area to fund Project Lifesaver for people with Alzheimer’s and other memory or wandering issues.
He was able to deliver when the BOCS and the Police Department couldn’t, and he did this with out being fully funded by taxpayer expense…sounds like a good individual that sees a need in our community and gets things done with out raising our taxes.
Yeah, right, 40 years….(is that your problem….too many years in Woodbridge?) You think that the present sheriff has no massive ego???
Every photo op which presents itself, he jumps in front of the cameras,
or haven’t you noticed? He DID NOT start the Project Lifesaver, contrary
to what you may think. There is so much waste in his department that
if he is such a “good individual” who is concerned about our taxes, he would
certainly dump some of the dead wood not needed to run an efficient
force….why does he need so many deputies if his chief responsibility is
is court security? Anonymous is right….he is there to collect a paycheck
and for no other reason which is visible.
BTW, he ran for office on the Republican ticket, yet spent a lot of time
“encouraging” the deputies to vote for his bro Obama. He’s as big a
fraud as Obama.
Hey, Billy Bob,
Who DID start Project Lifesaver in PWC??
Please keep Jeff in his position, he is well along the way of running the Republican Party into the ditch in VA. In addition to the RPV does his company have sole source deals with the federal government? If so he should wave those good bye.
Anon, to answer your question….I can only tell you that it was NOT
the present sheriff. To the best of my recollection, the program was
initiated by (you won’t like this) Stoffie sometime in 1999.
Billy Bob,
You are WRONG!!!!! Please educate yourself.
The prior program of which you speak was called “Safe Return” and was funded through a grant that expired almost 4 years ago. That program was nothing more than a bracelet with the persons ID info on it. If a patient went missing it took enormous County and State resources to locate the missing person.
Project Lifesaver is a program that has special bracelet worn by the patient that emits a radio signal and if they go missing the Sheriffs office will respond with a wand used for tracking. The tracking takes minutes as opposed to hours or days. Several years ago they had a 100 % success rate with for finding lost patients. I have not heard of any changes and would suspect that it is still the case.
A request was made to the BOCS several years ago to look into Project Lifesaver and after research the PD came back that they could not justify the cost. At that time Prince William County was the only one in the area that did not participate.
Those of us with loved ones with medical issues desperately needed this program; we held our breath hoping our loved ones would get lost.
Thankfully Sherriff Hill and his staff worked to bring this innovative and technologically advanced program to Prince William County and funded it through an out reach to local business.
40YIW, I have found that the vast majority of Hill detractors have absolutely no idea of what they speak, and they most certainly don’t seem to have the wherewithal to get the actual facts. They tend to use the shotgun approach, hoping that one of the pellets hits something.
Yes, I have seen that approach multiple times. Nothing peeves me more than someone being factually inaccurate, especially about topics that I am very passionate about.
People are entitled to their opinions, I may not agree….and often don’t, however if they start stating facts they need to be accurate.
Sadly sometimes it comes from some of our own R’s. I truly believe if we spent more time within the ‘R” family in finding ways to come together on the topics that we are all strong on and sitting down and civilly discussing our differences and what we can do about those areas we would be far better off in presenting a uniformed front
All Hill has to do is get off his a*s and do something to serve the people, to help make the county a safe and better place to live and stop making excuses why he doesn’t do that already. He is not there to serve the ego of the police chief, he was put in office by the people to serve the people…so do it.
Anonymous, I’m afraid we are going against another “Obamamania”, for
these posters, for the most part believe that Hill is out of the realm for
any criticisms, so they continue to bury their heads in the sand, turn their
heads to all the incompetency coming from that department. They
choose to call us “uneducated” on the facts, but it is his fans and admirers
(continued) who know not what is going on…yes, he is the RINO
of all times, having encouraged his employees to vote for Obama,
so I hope all my party members reward his efforts for voting the
lib into the highest office in the land.
Hill makes Sheriff Joe (in Arizona) look like the true Savior.
BTW, I should not have used the word “encouraged”, so “intimidated”
works better.
You folks in the “Hill Derangement Club” making all these crazy attacks on Glenn, were doing the same exact thing about the time that the voters in both the Primary AND General elections were overwhelming re-electing him to a second term.
So, in your original post, are you suggesting that a unit chair is somehow less important becuase he or she is from a smaller locality? Their voices are not to be heard because they live in a small town? They are devisive because they dare say what tons of other people have been thinking but too afraid to say?
The truth is, she’s right - Frederick started the finger pointing during his campaign for chairman when he ran against Hager - he blamed Hager for losses. So, if he’s going to blame another chairman for losses, he has to take responsibility when he is chairman. Had he not started the finger pointing to the chairman, I wouldn’t feel that way. But what’s good for the goose…
As with the criticisms of Kopko, I don’t find those of Frederick to be particularly persuasive. Of course, if some of those commenting here applied to Kopko’s successor the same standard that they applied to Kopko, they’d be demanding Lyle Beefelt’s head on a pike, based upon County election returns.
Such arguments would be equally lacking in merit.