Kate Must Go!

Kate Obenshain Griffen took over the chairmanship of the Virginia Republican Party in 2003. In three short years, we went from controlling two senate seats and on the verge of reacpturing the governor's mansion to one senator, the most prominent Republican in the state humiliated by a political novice, and a trouncing in a governor's race. We are on the verge of losing Northern Virginia for a generation. Very little leadership has come from the party. Lets go over the record:

2003-Mark Warner raises taxes, Democrats gain in the General Assembly
2004-Virginia breaks for Allen
2005-The party splits in Northern Virginia during the primary over taxes. Tim Kaine demolishes Jerry Kilgore in NOVA, and we lose every open race in NOVA. Republican Bill Bolling wins in a slim margin over ultra-liberal Leslie Byrne, and Bob McDonnell wins over Creigh Deeds by only 300+ years.
2006: Institutes the NOVA Strike Force that does nothing but reccomend, leaving NOVA Republicans on their own, Presidential contender George Allen (who a year earleir was one of the most popular politicians in the STATE) loses to political novice James Webb, Northern Virginia slides further away.

To be fair, things like "maccaca" happened that Griffin had no control over. But as a NOVA conservative, I fear we are losing this region for good, and I see no answers coming from the state party. We can have consistantly lost election after election since Ms. Griffin took office. She belonged to the Allen-Kilgore wing of the GOP, and both are now jobless, having lost in humiliating fashion, her political backers are gone. What did the Strike Force do for NOVA? What answers to these questions came from Griffin? Where was the candidate recruitment? Where was the pressure in '05 to keep the Club for Groth from destroying our NOVA candidates and elections? Coming from a NOVA viewpoint, I see nothing but failure after failure in her record. Its nothing personal. I believe she works hard and is a dedicated Republican and conservative, but her time is up

Its clear to me that Ms. Griffin, while a dedicated conservative and loyal Republican, has no plan and no idea how to stop the bleeding. She has failed. The Party is in a weaker position then when she took over. We need a change.

Comments

[Doug]

Posted at NLS- Go Mason, btw.

Thanks for being gracious, the Republicans who post here. I think the residual anger you see from Democrats here, see above, is because the seriousness of Iraq. You can say we are not being gracious in return, but it is not a usual thing and it certainly is warrented criticism, in my view.

But I'm not going to do that. I think this whole process just showed we are all human, that politics relates to most everything and that the war is a HUGE issue- because so few have sacrificed for something supposedly so important while most of us (certainly everyone here) has not had to.

But I really do appreciate both sides here. I'm not sorry Allen lost, but I'm glad the process worked. You all have some solidly principalled Republicans out there who you should encourage to run. Encourage those who are more interested in governing than winning.

Or, if you want to lose Virginia more and more, encourage Allen to run again. If he were a Democrat, I would encourage him to go back to private practice, but that's just me.

And MC- I owe you a night of drinks, per a bet we made, because Webb was clearly not ahead in the polls at the beginning of Oct. I'm willing to honor that, but you'll have to understand I'm a cranky winner and I'm still very upset about the war. I'm happy to take you out for booze, and I'll even bring a very conservative friend of mine. I'll treat to cigars as well.

[Not Ben]

MC -- interesting point. You made one minor typo: "Bob McDonnell wins over Creigh Deeds by only 300+ years."

I thjink you meant votes, not years.

[Stephen Braunlich]

You really want NOVA to go conservative (as opposed to Republican... we can run liberal Rs and get them elected) start educating the public on ideas and organizing the grassroots. Party's exist to have majorities, not to advance ideas. Rahm understands that, and he recruited candidates that would win.

[Mason Conservative]

Stephen, your absolutley right! Thats what Kate is NOT doing! Thats what we need! I did not see the RPV drawing any strategies towards NOVA, she sat back as we killed each other.

[Eric]

Tom Davis is a perfect example of a moderate Republican who still holds a safe seat (though did you notice his was the second closest reelection in the state, next to Drake) but when he bids for Senate, you can consider that seat lost to Dems. And don't blame Kate for George Allen, I feel his campaign is more to blame. He blundered but they started really losing ground as they went more negative (not Kate's fault). And I would argue that Kilgore's defeat was of a similar nature.

Though don't give lots of credit to Rahm. He runs the show with an iron fist, but he can't always deliver. IL-06 and IL-10 were the two main races he oversaw and he didn't win either of them. KY-03 and NC-11 and all the PAs were really run by other people (de facto).

And the idea of running moderates may not always work either. This was just a blue year. The moderates up north lost their jobs because this was 2006. Steele was an incredible candidate but lost because it was 2006. She may not have a recovery plan, but I doubt Kate's to blame for VA's blue tendencies.

[Eric]

Also (and sorry these are random)...

I see all the new voters in NOVA as economic conservatives that will concievably go back to voting more Republican once the war in Iraq is over. Though, I can't see them voting for social conservatives.

[Matt (not the usual one)]

Once again, I dont know if it was Kate's strategy but going out there in the woods of Virginia and constatnly labelling NoVa residents as some kinds of aliens or fake Virginians, that too by a dude who himself is not a Virginian doesnt help IMHO.

Even if if Siddhart was not brown and Allen dint call him macaca, I found it really disturbing that he kept calling a guy who was btw born and raised here in Virginia (something Allen cant claim) an outsider and kept saying NoVa was not a prt of Virginia. Doesnt take a genius to figure out that if you do that, you cant expect peopl from there to support you.

Just because someone doesnt agree with your regressive and exclusionist social agenda doesnt mean you completely disown and abuse them. There are other issues on which you can find common ground! I am pretty sure that white collar professional NoVa would find more common ground with Allen's economic principles than they would with Webb's populist, almost semi communist agenda.

But then again, dint seem like that was Allen's priority.

[Not Jerry (nor George)]

Hey Hey... Ho Ho... Kate O Griffin has got to go!

The time has come to replace the neo-con viper with a big tent Republican.

How much more ground can we afford to lose?

Republicans should call for the resignation of Kate Griffin. That - or fire her.

[JOTB]

so who?

[Rob]

No names come to mind, but we need an old-school conservative a la Goldwater (NOT a neocon, NOT a social conservative).

[nickfinity]

If there is a person to blame I'm not sure if Kate is it. Is she actually involved in the decision making? I thought she was more a figurehead than anything. Please correct me if I am wrong.

[Randolph]

If you want to lay blame take a look at the specific campaigns you named -- Kilgore ala Ken Hutcheson, Allen ala Dick Wadhams and you won't have to look too hard to see who should take the brunt of it.

Kate Griffin has ably managed and administered the RPV while she's been there. I won't say she's been dynamic, but she only has so much to work with the little resources that RPV has. And, she's brought some ethics to the group in the wake of Thompson and Matricardi's abuses.

As far as this race, and the losses... I'm not going to get into all the dirty details, but try talking to anyone with RPV or the local parties about how much the Allen campaign worked with them, or even wanted to work with them! I think you'll be amazed to find that even in their desparation over the last few weeks, the Allen campaign worked little with RPV because they didn't think it mattered. Months ago the Allen camp brought in their national political hacks to run this campaign, with the belief that on Nov. 8th, they could all be dispatched for Allen's Presidential bid. Likewise, LaCivita is a wanna-be political consultant who did best when he was driving Allen around. It wasn't until late in the game that Allen brought in a Virginian, Mike Thompson, and even then, it was way too late.

And, that doesn't even bring in all of Allen's waffling and backpaddling that truly lost him this campaign.

At the end of the day, Early, Kilgore, and Allen, resulted in the same common denominator: nothing from nothing makes nothing.

I do believe that you are correct in that Griffin may soon leave, but she should not do so for any of the reasons you mentioned, but rather, that she's done all that she could do. In fact, if anything could be said, it is that Griffin has held the party fairly steady while many others almost brought about its destruction.

When that time comes though to choose a new leader at RPV, the real decision will be which ideological direction the state wants to go... will it be the route of the Giuiliani's and McCain's of the party, or back to its conservative heritage and values. I would hope they would choose the latter, because that is where Republicans have won the most votes here in Virginia. I was here when the ball started rolling in the early 90s, and saw conservatism win the day time and time again. We've now come full circle as this party has abandoned its values and become the party of the "big tent." That is not principle, it is politics.

You want a leader for this party? Look to going back to the issues, fighting for conservative beliefs, and advocating principles over politics. Today, we need the same direction we did in the early 90s, and we've had that leader in our midst through this whole ordeal: Pat McSweeney. He brought us out of the darkness then, and his guidance could revive this party again today.

[Mason Conservative]

I agree. McSweeney would be tremendous.

[Southside Independent]

I'm not all that familiar with the inner mechanics of RPV, but.....I am familiar with a host of activist Republicans and Democrats in Southside.

An earlier comment was echoed here by the GOPers I know. Basically, the Allen campaign gave the local parties a "we don't really care what you have to say" flip of the hand. They believed that they had all the answers and didn't really care what local officials had to say and in cases openly mocked them.

Here's an example: One very nice woman who's sweet as sugar and does anything the local GOP asks, apparently called the campaign HQ and alerted them to an event she felt passionately about. Now, candidate scheduling is a very well planned aspect of a campaign, and I'm sure that the event the Senator had scheduled was more of a priority. However, there was no need to tell the lady that she was clueless and the campaign didn't have time for such a "small" event.

The point is that I don't think you can blame the GOP structure for this defeat. It sure seems as if the Allen campaign was the problem more than anything with the state party.