This morning’s Star-Advertiser features a good story on the gubernatorial campaign by AP writer Herbert Sample, who talks to both Republicans and Democrats for perspective on what factors played into the somewhat surprising margin of victory for Neil Abercrombie.
One missing perspective is that of one of the GOP’s most vocal internal critics, Eric Ryan, who sent out a press release following the election calling for the resignation of all party leaders. It’s a scathing critique of the party’s overall strategy. I apologize for the pdf, which cuts off some lines at the top and bottom of pages. I’ll try for a better copy later but, in the meantime, hopefully you’ll get the basics of what he has to say.
Although Ryan is on the conservative end of the GOP spectrum, his assessment doesn’t really rest of ideology. Instead, he criticizes party leaders for appropriating party resources and channeling them to only a favored few candidates rather than spreading then through “down ticket” legislative races where, he believes, modest financial backing from the party could have made a real difference.
Just look at the voting percentages received by Republicans. If you remove the general election results for incumbents Ching, Pine and Slom, the average Republican candidate in Hawaii received 27.57% of the vote if running for State Senate or 30.42% if they were running for State House. Clearly the party did not do anything at all over the past two years to improve the public’s perception of Republicans, nor to diminish their perception of Democrats. Our voter base is abysmally puny. The proof is in the numbers.
Ryan then attacks the party’s focus on HB444 and the issue of civil unions. In Ryan’s view, this was at the expense of Republican arguments about the economy, which he says would have carried more weight.
Ryan says party organization was weak, claiming the GOP’s executive committee and state committee had continuing trouble getting quorums for their meetings, but key individuals put their effort into the top campaigns rather than the Republican ticket.
Candidates statewide had to mount organizations from scratch and communicate with voters who’d never even heard from Republicans before, yet had heard plenty from Democrats in their neighborhoods during the past two years. Why? Because districts and precincts and obviously counties and the state party itself were extremely poorly organized, if organized at all; during both the off-season and during the campaign. This is not very righteous either. The party’s job is to set the stage in advance of the campaign so that our candidates look like heroes coming over the hill. They are not supposed to be set up to fail year after year after year while all resources get diverted to Miriam Hellreich’s clients and Jonah Kaauwai’s former boss and Dylan Nonaka’s client and Lynn Finnegan’s running mate and so on and so forth.
Ryan also calls for an audit of party finances.
Also, I hereby demand a full independent audit of the party’s finances and that the millions of dollars that were looted from the party and diverted to races for Djou and Aiona/Finnegan without any legal authority should be immediately repaid. In particular, tens and tens of thousands of households in CD1 received at least FIFTEEN different expensive glossy color mailers in recent months for Djou alone which were clearly marked “Paid for by the Hawaii Republican Party.” Likewise, online advertising and television commercials were paid for by the HRP in support of Djou, not to mention those useless newspaper attack ads with the ancient hippie photo of Abercrombie, paid for by the HRP for the benefit of Aiona. I’m sure this spending is just the tip of the iceberg. No such budget was ever approved nor would it ever have been approved by a State Committee which would not want to see so many candidates and especially the Republican brand thrown to the wolves in 2010 for the sake of one or two longshot campaigns, whose loyalists were signing party checks and diverting party resources for the nearly exclusive benefit of their patrons.
Overall, it’s quite an interesting take on the state of the Republican Party.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
A legend in his own mind.
Sad.
Okay – I’ll bite. What does L.L.I.F.E mean or stand for? Best I could come up with is Linda Lingle Is Finally Extraneous.
The trouble with a system that aallows Da Odda Guys to get elected is that they want to deprive the rest of us Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness by sending young adults off to war, ensuring that poor people stay that way, making women become baby machines, creating a lose-lose situation on critical social justice, denigrating environmental & renewable energy issues, and _____________(fill in the blank) while enriching their rich friends with tax cuts and no-bid contracts.
Tell me – why should these kinds of people be allowed on either side of Punchbowl Street or inside the Beltway?
Whoops!! aallows = allows
critical social justice = critical social justice matters
Charles et al, with each needless ad hominem you mindlessly illustrate my point. Look, I’m sorry that you are experiencing Keith Olbermann withdrawal. But just watch Rachel Maddow over and over; you’ll get the same sensation. And soon, you’ll be hearing from Hawaii’s genuine Obama proxy: Gov. Neil Abercrombie. It’ll be like a slice of agnostic heaven.
I think the posting of Mr. Ryan’s comments by Ian was very valuable for those of us who are engaged in the political landscape.
I stopped reading Mr. Ryan’s blog long ago and would have never read this if it weren’t for Ian’s efforts. Although I may not agree with Mr. Ryan’s political beliefs or his method of delivery, I think he makes valuable points about problems shared by the democrats as well.
Some of the complaints that I heard during this election by some legislators was that there was scant money trickling down and the party lacked the ability to provide even the tiniest bit of support. Mailers and polls, services that were provided to down ticket candidates in previous elections, were the sole responsibility of the candidates regardless of their experience. The reliability off polls has been question at length by this blog, but the value of polls to these candidates is that is gives them a sense of what is gong on in their district.
Say what you will about Mr. Kaauwai, but the man showed up to support his inexperienced candidates during small candidates’ night events. Where was Mr. Carpentar?
Why were there no candidates fielded to oppose Marumoto, Thielen, and Ward?
The democrats did a lot of things right, but we need to learn from the failures of the HRP during this election and make sure don’t succumb to them.
It’s ad hominem if it’s fallacious. And even then that’s not always true.
But semantics aside, Ryan admits he was paid to work on seven campaigns. One won; that is, Pine’s campaign and being that she’s the incumbent it wasn’t a lot of heavy lifting.
Yet, Ryan makes these hoary annoucements and proclamations that he is the savior of the Republican Party.
Boy, I wish the Party hires him to run every race so that the Republicans shrink even further.
Then again, maybe not. Their numbers are so pathetic that by not hiring Ryan maybe they have a chance to increase their numbers.
One can only hope.
There’s no museum big enough to hold Charles’ exhibits which illustrate my point. Now, I’m going to have to hold a fundraiser to build a new wing for the “Charles the Nameless’ Louvre of Lunacy”.
Just stop already.
While I often hear the “We need a two party system to keep balance” we in fact already have balance. Those who believe the legislature is not already diverse are not paying attention. The Democratic is already filled with different groups with different beliefs. The brand name Republicans however are much less diverse or are almost monolith in philosophy making them vulnerable when facing a diverse voter base. Until Republicans embrace all comers there narrow views will limit their revival.
OldDiver,
I agree the Democratic caucuses in both chambers are diverse. SO to SOME extent the political struggle normally expressed in a two party system finds expression there.
But, as I am sure you know, the legislative factions are not really along programmatic or philosophical lines.
Part of the advantage of having distinct political parties is that they provide a (rough) way for voters to choose between competing social visions. When the legislative factions are largely unknown to voters and when those factions bear little semblance to competing political philosophies, that advantage is lost.
Because the Democratic Party so completely dominates the legislature, a lot of people runs as Dems with little or no commitment to the party platform. I would prefer “Better fewer but better” Dems instead of such an unwieldy, often unprincipled collection.
No one mentions Greens or other parties.
Eric, stick to the facts. You worked on seven races. One won. Do you call that successful?
A simple yes or no will do.