Posts Tagged → GOP
My impression of Paul Mango, candidate for PA Guv
Three weeks ago I spent half an hour on the phone with Paul Mango, newly declared candidate for Pennsylvania governor.
We talked about his candidacy, his background, political issues, economics, hopes and challenges, etc. We then followed up with several back and forth emails, each one of his expressing specific appreciation and thanks for how the exchange had benefited him in a certain way. He is a new candidate, new to politics (other than as a very generous donor to Republican candidates), and he is digesting a lot of new information and ideas, new ways of thinking.
Last week I met Mango at his formal campaign announcement at the Twin Ponds sports and fitness center in Camp Hill\Mechanicsburg.
Twin Ponds previously served as the region’s HQ for primary and general election candidate Donald Trump, who won Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes by a margin probably accounted for just by the simple dedication of Central PA’s “normal Americans” in both political parties. The big facility is run by a pretty, petite firebrand of a woman, Mrs. Patton aka General Patton.
Here are my impressions of Mango (and yes, I know, he’s just getting started):
He is impressive in several key ways: His family background and values, his education and military service, and his high level professional work experience.
Paul Mango is a very smart, confident, and empathetic man, who comes across as a reserved, reflective, nice person, and a responsive, good listener. He is positive and genuine.
I questioned him in person about how he will compete against candidate Scott Wagner, who has spent years battling in the trenches with a lot of conservative voters and activists, against entrenched establishment political hacks in politics for personal financial gain, and who has thereby built up credibility with many politically active citizens who value bravery and honesty.
When I pointed out that Wagner has also alienated a lot of people (including many of his former supporters) in that process (because Wagner seems selfish, arrogant, and unappreciative), Mango responded that he will not say anything negative because he has never seen valuable leadership succeed except through “inspiring people.”
That is a very high bar to set for one’s self, much less one’s political competitors, but it is worthy because it says Mango has integrity. The Wagner campaign has already criticized Mango for supporting Cruz first, and then Trump later, though I got the impression that is what Scott Wagner did, too, like a lot of us did in last year’s Republican primary. Here we go, the mud is already flying!
Well, to start, if Mango is going to inspire voters, then he needs to increase his positive speaking energy, his intensity, his passion. The other night he came across as a little nervous, and definitely way too deliberative, almost plodding, at his formal announcement. His prepared speech was long and the delivery was very, very slow.
Recall that Abraham Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg is so hard hitting because it was not long and plodding, but brief and hard hitting.
Despite serving in the 82nd Airborne and actually being a warrior, Mango’s even-keeled demeanor does not seem warrior-like, while his main competitor, Wagner, did not do military service and yet is a proven culture and fiscal political warrior.
Though he wore jeans, work boots, and an Oxford shirt, Mango is the very definition and personification of “corporate,” which will probably look or smell like moderate RINO to the trench warfare grass roots conservatives. Time will tell if that first impression is accurate.
His approach to fixing government is his approach to fixing businesses, about which it is best to just quote my activist friend Ron:
“The problem with these guys [corporate/business/ Chamber of Commerce GOP candidates who compare running government to running business] is they all have plans to fix government by running it like a business. This is not a unique viewpoint and it has never worked. This is politics, not business. Took me a while to accept that. He can have the greatest plan ever but it won’t matter because politicians don’t care [about people, policy, economy etc.]. They care about themselves and getting re-elected.”
It is a fact that careerist politicians in BOTH PARTIES do not act like corporate employees, because there is almost no accountability in politics. The old quip about the only accountability in politics resulting from being “found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy” probably doesn’t even apply today.
Like him or not, candidate Scott Wagner goes right to the key policy battles: Corrupt blood-sucking unions, ridiculous regulations that violate our federal and state constitutions, wasted and stolen taxpayer money.
That is where the rubber meets the road in the culture war for America’s soul and the war for a middle-income economy.
This is the battle front between America as it was founded and as we knew it, and America as a bastion of totalitarian socialism and politically correct thought police, envisioned by the Left.
Candidate Mango will probably arrive here at the same battle front, eventually, because the leftists’ violent street battles across America tell us that nice words alone don’t work, and Trump’s improbable win says it all (JEB! was also the quintessential corporate nice guy, and GOP voters utterly rejected him).
Mango’s steady personality seems to avoid conflict, which though commendable and reassuring in so many other settings, can send the message to some voters that he may be like a zillion other mainstream RINOs who are unwilling to dive into the bar room brawl that needs to happen for America to be set right. These careerist RINOs don’t want to get their hands dirty waging political war, which tells voters that they really just don’t care very much about political or cultural outcomes.
Mango is smart enough to see these facts and voter trends. Whether he arrives at that messy policy battle front sooner or later is the question. If he finds a way to comfortably voice his quiet intensity, his passion, his compassion for working Pennsylvanians, then he will overcome the potential impression that he is another empty GOP suit (I was told that PA GOP kingmaker Bob Asher has NOT supported Mango, which appeals to the conservative, independent-minded base).
I like the guy and I am looking forward to seeing him develop over the next six months, because, again, he is new to politics and just getting started.
Cruz Quixote
Ted Cruz was my candidate until he was clear he’d rather be used by the GOPe to block Trump than stand on his principles, do or die.
Now with another Super Tuesday primary election behind us and boosting Trump, with zero chance of a Cruz win, Ted Cruz has decided to go on a Quixotic anti Trump jihad.
Cruz has made damaging Trump his top principle. Not defeating Hillary. Not promoting an overhaul of the GOP. Nope. Hurting Trump is now Cruz’s raison d’etre.
Pathetic. And unpatriotic.
At this point, a real American would step aside and cheer on the front runner. A real American would consider the national interest before his own.
Not Cruz. Being an obstructionist is now his highest and best use. This is sad to me, as I had thought he was bigger than this juvenile behavior.
It’s so bad that some Pennsylvania Cruz -aligned delegates are talking openly of going to the Republican convention just to work against Trump.
Donald Trump still does not represent my values very well, nor do I trust him to be the warrior in office he is now. But Trump is a damn sight better than Benghazi Billary, and he’s now our standard barer, for better or worse.
Time to let go of personal ambitions in the greater interest of America. Or maybe move to Canada and just get out of our way.
Cantor loss is shocking only to those who are not paying attention
Yes, yes, yes, Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) was an important man, high up, famous, powerful…blah blah blah. And he lost his five-million dollar primary campaign to a grass roots candidate who spent a couple hundred thousand dollars.
Hey, Republican establishment folks, are you now paying attention?
Do you maybe now understand what so many of your own voters have been telling you for years?
To wit: America is worth saving, and it can only be saved by breaking from the creeping Big Government identity of “moderate” Republicans. That means No on amnesty, No on gun control, No on universal background checks aka gun owners database, No on ObamaDon’tCare.
In other words, Hell Yes on freedom and liberty.
Cantor failed on these issues, and his voters punished him for it.
While the NRA lost out to Gun Owners of America in this race, probably no group was more closely identified with Cantor, and the Republican establishment around him, than the Republican Jewish Coalition, a nice group I have had some exposure to. Sadly, RJC mishandled Cantor’s loss in a gargantuan way that may spell the organization’s descent or even demise. In many ways, Tuesday night’s RJC is emblematic of the larger Republican establishment, which also seems determined to drive itself over a cliff.
Late Tuesday night, 11:26 PM, to be exact, the RJC issued a brief lamentation about Cantor’s electoral loss and how great Cantor was and blah blah blah.
Did RJC acknowledge that REPUBLICAN voters had spoken? Nope. Did RJC congratulate the winner, economics professor David Brat? Nope. Did RJC publicly stake out hopes for Brat to follow closely in Cantor’s pro-Israel shoes? Nope.
Instead, RJC came across as soundly rejecting the wisdom of REPUBLICAN voters in Cantor’s former district, and failing to acknowledge the Big Government issues of a) gun (citizen) control and b) illegal aliens, who are destroying American democracy, disenfranchising American voters, and robbing American taxpayers.
RJC may be a small group with great intentions, but Tuesday night, they were the lost voice for the entire Republican Establishment. And it shows just how out of touch the establishment is with the American citizen. Every conservative activist who reads the RJC statement will wonder what the hell is in the DC Beltway water, because it sure isn’t anything they’d want to drink.
The folks who ran and funded Cantor’s campaign, who issued public statements for him, who stood by him when he wafted in the wind on critical issues, and who bewailed his loss, are incredibly out of touch with the actual voters, taxpayers, citizens, moms, dads, students, and out-of-work-car-won’t-run Americans who are slowly, surely, awakening to the crisis we are in, and who are not not shocked that Cantor lost.
But the experts…they are shocked.
What does this portend or mean to Pennsylvanians? Here is one suggestion: Political parties are supposed to represent the voters and stand for principles. Once the PA GOP returns to that model, winning elections will be easy.
Is it time to recall PA AG Kane?
In 2012, Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Kathleen Kane campaigned on being fresh, new, unconnected to party politics. She challenged the ultimate Republican insider, and crushed him by a good 15%. Kane became Pennsylvania’s first Democrat AG only because so many Republican voters defected from the GOP and voted for Kane.
Within six months into her four-year tenure, signs were evident that she was not this politically dispassionate, politically disconnected professional and fair-minded arbiter she represented herself to be.
Rather, it became clear that she was politically correct (dogmatically liberal) and willing to use the AG office to score partisan political points, going so far as to choose not to enforce or defend state laws with which she personally disagrees. That right there is pretty much the end of democratic government, when elected officials stop enforcing laws they personally disagree with. Democracy only works if everyone agrees that whatever the law is, it is, and it is the law of the land until it is changed.
Kane’s icing on the cake was to cold-stop an investigation of four Democrat elected officials in the Philadelphia area. Kane does not deny that the four had been caught on tape or video taking bribes. One of the officials can be heard saying “Well, happy birthday to [me]!” as he pockets a wad of illegal cash.
In what stinks of political favoritism, Kane simply made up a lame excuse and stopped the ongoing investigation of obvious official corruption.
When Kane was called out about it by the Philadelphia Inquirer, a newspaper unused to criticizing Democrats, she showed up to a meeting with the paper’s board with her libel lawyer in tow. A subsequent show of legal force and more open threats of a lawsuit against her critics, by Kane, has only made things worse for her. But she is not backing down. Mind you, the Inquirer merely reported the facts; the paper did not ascribe motive or allege that Kane herself was part of the cash scandal. So it is hard to see what kind of libel suit this elected official thought she was going to actually win. Intimidation was her first and last approach, however, which tells you all you need to know about her very low quality as an elected official.
Additionally, Philadelphia City DA Seth Williams, a Democrat, has criticized Kane for ending the investigation. Seth and I were close friends while students at Penn State, and yes, he is an active Democrat, and he is also a straight shooter.
Now, Kane says she supports another newspaper’s open records effort to get the documents about the terminated investigation. Well, actually, after opposing it, Kane only now supports releasing “certain” documents; you know, the documents that support her position. The investigation’s documents that will cast her political activism in a bad light, well, they should remain sealed, she says.
Governor Tom Corbett may well be a one-term governor, which presently it appears is his sad destiny, if the polling data is even close to accurate. Well, folks, let’s make this Kathleen Kane a half-term AG. She is incompetent, she is politicizing Pennsylvania’s established laws, and she is using blunt force legal intimidation to blunt honest criticism of her official job performance. Let’s start a recall of AG Kane, and get someone in that office who is a plain vanilla enforcer of The Law, as that role is supposed to be.
In an ideal world, party affiliation should not matter in the AG office. I myself am partial to the potential AG candidacy of Ed Marsico, Dauphin County’s present District Attorney. Marsico is an honest guy, a hard working guy, and has shown few partisan inclinations in his day to day work of making Dauphin County a safe place to live and work. Marsico would be a big enough improvement over Kane to warrant a recall effort against her. Surely there are other professional-grade DAs out there, too, who also would qualify to fill out the remainder Kane’s term.
Let’s get that recall effort started and Pennsylvania’s law enforcement back on track.
UPDATE: How on earth could I forget? Kane is having some difficulty investigating the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, where cash gifts and other toxic ethics violations have occurred recently. Now….why would Kane have such a tough time bringing to bear her full weight on such obviously corrupt violations of Pennsylvania laws? Why, it would not perhaps happen to be the presence of KANE TRUCKING contracts with the PLCB, right? The KANE TRUCKING contracts with the PLCB are worth millions of dollars to Kathleen Kane, personally. Got it. Fox guarding the henhouse here. Good old fashioned corruption, at least on the face of it. Time to end this sick experiment, and send Mrs. Moneybags Kane home.
Is our intraparty war “Mars vs. Earth”?
Scott Wagner’s crushing defeat of PA State Rep. Ron Miller (a very nice man, for those who do not know him) last week is just one more political race in a string of races over the past few years that have seen the Republican grass roots increasingly stand up to or defeat Republican establishment insiders armed with faux endorsements and tons of party cash (that should be used to defeat liberalism, not defeat conservative Republican candidates).
Here is an article from this week, in which Josh First is quoted about this sad phenomenon:
(Although I am conservative, I don’t know how I became a “hardline conservative,” but in the context of the grass roots vs. the GOP establishment, I’ll take it, as I am passionate about politics being an open, accountable, and transparent process)
This present situation (hopefully to be ended soon) reminds me of this scene from the movie Mars Attacks!, where Jack Nicholson is the grass roots activist and the Martians are the GOP establishment insiders…
Relishing the win over GOP machine politics
Four years ago, I ran in the US Congressional Republican primary for the Congressional seat held by then congressman Tim Holden. It was a four-way race, between me, state senator Dave Argall, Frank Ryan, and Baptist Pastor Bob Griffiths. From the get-go, different Republican leaders tried to get me to bow out. Dave himself met with me at GOP headquarters and asked me to step out (Ah, the irony…I had asked him to chair my campaign). Lots of heartache along the campaign trail as GOP insiders tried again and again to give Dave an artificial boost, an unfair advantage, and unequal opportunity. Lebanon County GOP tried to endorse him, and the committee disintegrated as a result of the infighting that ensued. Schuylkill County GOP did endorse him, and immediately afterwards lost its chairman and underwent radical changes.
It was a great race, we did very well (26% overall in a four-way race, with about $20,000 spent, and the highlight being the 51% we got in rural Perry County, which has my kind of people), and we got kudos all around for the excellent pick-up campaign we ran. Dave went on to win that primary by a few hundred votes, and then he got crushed by Tim Holden. All of the smart GOP consultants and insiders who told me that Dave would win, and that I should get out, well, they never called me to acknowledge they were wrong. Apparently losing races is OK so long as it is a GOP insider, but the consultancy insider class is terribly afraid of grass roots candidates losing.
In 2012, I ran in the GOP primary for the PA 15th state senate district, but only after I had cleared a bunch of artificial hurdles the GOP set up to keep me out of that race. First, the new district was not released until very late in 2011, and only then after former state senator Jeff Piccola had retired one week into the one-year residency requirement period (imagine that!), so that I could not get an apartment over the new district line just a mile from my house and thereby qualify as a resident of the district.
In January 2012, the PA state supreme court threw out the GOP redistricting plan, calling it unconstitutional and deeply flawed, and I found myself back in the old district. But even then, we were several days into the ballot petition process, with no volunteers, no committee, no paperwork, no money, up against two establishment candidates, one of whom was hand picked by the party, John McNally, our Dauphin County GOP chairman.
We got 850 signatures, got on the ballot, and started campaigning, grass roots style. Within weeks, the GOP-controlled PA senate had developed a new redistricting map and presented it to the court. Not surprisingly, I was once again outside the senate district. Making things worse, the GOP establishment staff began telling voters that I might win, but then be outside the district, and therefore unable to serve the people who had voted for me. Thankfully, the PA supreme court rejected the map as just as flawed as the first one, and the GOP had to live with my candidacy, which proved to be incredibly popular.
In other words, I know exactly what senator-elect Scott Wagner went through until this week.
What was refreshing to me as I worked Wagner’s district’s largest poll (Manchester 5 & 7) was the voter sentiment that came pouring out as they poured in to the polling place to write in Wagner’s name on the ballot. Voters were vociferously rejecting the contrived hurdles that the GOP had arranged to stop Wagner, they rejected the artificial support the GOP had thrown behind milquetoast career politician Ron Miller, and they strongly opposed the $700,000 in negative ads run against Wagner. That was $700,000 that the GOP could have spent, should have spent, to beat liberalism.
I do intend to run for the 15th state senate district again in two years. And I guess I will be facing a GOP hand-picked cookie cutter empty suit of a candidate, someone the party expects to be a rubber stamp, who will not pursue right-to-work legislation. And folks, I intend to win this one. Hope to see you there with me at the barricades.
Where is Admiral Gauoette?
SOS at CPAC: “Where’s Admiral Gaouette?” and the “Benghazi CBA”
New organization of former US Special Ops officers issues distress calls about urgent high-profile questions.
By Mark Langfan, at CPAC
3/16/13
“SOS” is a naval emergency distress call meaning “Save our Ship”, but at the CPAC, (Conservative Political Action Committee) convention, “SOS” stands for SpecialOperationsSpeaks.com, a new organization of former US Special Ops officers who are issuing distress calls about urgent high-profile questions, and critical unanswered mysteries about the 2012 Obama Benghazi debacle.
CAPT Larry Bailey, USN (Ret.), a former senior SEAL commander and co-founder of Special Operation Speaks, demands to know, “Where the heck is Admiral Gaouette?” ADM Gaouette was the commander of the USS Stennis Carrier Strike Group on station in the Persian Gulf area who was mysteriously summarily stripped of his command during the attack in Benghazi, Libya, in which Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were murdered.
Several days afterward, it was reported that ADM Gaouette was summarily relieved of his command during a major operational contingency event during the Benghazi attacks for the alleged claim of “inappropriate leadership judgment.” ADM Gaouette’s detention and total disappearance weeks before the November 2012 presidential election was a story that CAPT Bailey says “disappeared into a black hole of silence.”
CAPT Bailey, as a “Brother-in-the-Navy” of ADM Gaouette, has some urgent and vital questions:
Where is ADM Gaouette now, and where has he been for over 4 months?
Why hasn’t Congress called ADM Gaouette to testify about the 2012 Benghazi fiasco, when he clearly was a key operational senior commander in-theater?
If ADM Gaouette is under some type of detention, what does “inappropriate leadership judgment” mean, what is he specifically charged with, and does he have proper legal counsel?
CAPT Bailey urges anyone who heard or saw anything, or has even the smallest most innocuous piece of the puzzle, to tell them what that piece is. He says, “The more questions SOS asks, the bigger the black hole of silence becomes.”
Col. Richard F. (Dick) Brauer, Jr, USAF (Ret.), SOS Air Commando Coordinator co-Founder of SOS, has a slightly different, but still vital question: “Where was President Obama’s CBA (Cross Border Authority) for the Benghazi ‘rescue’ attempt when US Defense Secretary Panetta claimed Obama told him, ‘Do whatever you gotta do to save American life.’?”
Col. Brauer explains that an insertion of any US forces into Benghazi, Libya, or across any international border into a country where US forces were not deployed, would have required a special US Presidential CBA authorization to be issued. So, in effect, Obama’s telling Secretary Panetta to “Do whatever you gotta do” without simultaneously issuing a specific CBA enabling such action is like “telling a fire station to extinguish a 5-alarm blaze while the firemen were not legally allowed to even leave the fire house, go to the fire, or douse the burning building.”
So, Col. Brauer’s point is that President Obama may have known that verbally telling Secretary Panetta to “do whatever you gotta do” without his also issuing the legally necessary CBA was “passively ordering USSECDEF Panetta to ‘do nothing.’”
Col. Brauer says his group is considering filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all the documents and emails surrounding the ADM Gaouette and “missing” CBA questions.
Stay tuned; these soldier sailors have never left a man in the field, and they will never leave Admiral Gaouette in the field. They see the Admiral as a “man down,” and are doing everything they can to help a fellow sailor who may be in trouble.
From: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/166278#.UUZ56Vdo6sQ
Good News From Dauphin County: Redefinition of ‘Establishment Candidate’
Good News: Dauphin County, PA’s Redefinition of the ‘Establishment’ Candidate
By Josh First
March 15, 2013
Two consummate political insiders are quietly leading an interesting, even inspiring redefinition of ‘establishment politician’, and it’s happening in a quiet Dauphin County, PA judge’s race usually known more for voter disinterest and a lack of exposure to the candidates than as an all-out competition. That’s now all changing as a competitive scramble for limited primary votes gets the two candidates out into the cold, knocking on doors every day, asking for ballot petition signatures, and handing out their campaign literature.
Both Bill Tully and Fran Chardo have long and active ties to the local GOP political establishment, serving as county GOP committeemen and assistant district attorneys, among other official and unofficial roles.
Another political insider, Jim Zugay, until recently the Dauphin County Recorder of Deeds, dropped out of the race over a month ago after failing to obtain the Dauphin County Republican Committee endorsement. Reportedly, Zugay had been promised the endorsement, and would not compete in an open primary without it.
Both Tully and Chardo asked for an open primary with no GOP endorsement, instead relying upon their existing individual relationships within the party. Tully is endorsed by popular Dauphin County Sheriff Jack Lotwick, and Chardo has the support of his boss Ed Marsico, Dauphin County’s popular District Attorney.
Chardo has spent his career in the DA’s office, now serving as head assistant district attorney. Tully also served as an assistant DA, and has also done a long stint as a private defense and civil litigation attorney.
Both men are clean cut, personable, articulate, respected community leaders and family men, with excellent professional and political qualifications. Either one can pick up a phone and talk with nearly any elected leader in the state. Both are quintessential political insiders with roots in and allegiances to ‘the system’.
Except for one thing: By running in this race, these candidates both bucked their own system. You know, the smoke-filled back room system, where party bosses horse trade and usually weed out strong prospective candidates either through pressure and threats, or enticements of government jobs and contracts, future support, or party endorsements that provide some and deprive other candidates of campaign seed funds. That party machine system has been steadily eroding in Dauphin County over the past few years.
Indeed, it seems to be breaking down in the state Republican Committee, as well, where appetites are stronger for greater opportunity through healthy primary competitions rendering the fittest candidate to carry the GOP torch. Last year was a fiasco for the Dauphin County GOP machine, where party bosses ran untested, apparently unqualified candidates against independent-minded incumbents and self-starters, and lost, at great cost to party finances and credibility.
Now, these two self-driven judicial candidates face off, each with his own array of marquee supporters, and no party endorsement, which strikes me and most other Americans as the way American political races are supposed to be run. Chardo has a good strong personal presence, while Tully is older, more experienced, and probably a little more independent of party bosses. Each one has prosecuted bad guys before a judge. Either one will give you a fair and professional hearing as a presiding judge.
The primary election will be held on May 21st, 2013, and your vote absolutely matters. In my book, both candidates are already winners for bravely breaking new political ground, and letting the voters decide, instead of the party bosses.
Stay in the conversation at www.joshfirst.com and on our Facebook page
It Takes a Democrat Strategist & a Conservative Republican to Say What the GOP Establishment Can’t & Won’t Say
CPAC is going on now and through the weekend. CPAC is the annual conservative gathering held around America that pressures the GOP establishment to make sounds of conservativism.
Political strategist Pat Caddell sat on a panel at CPAC yesterday and chided the Republican Party for not fighting to win. Caddell said that the Democrats fight to win, and win they do, and he laughed at how gentlemanly Republicans and conservatives like to be, even at the cost of winning. He listed many examples that I will not reproduce here.
Caddell is a Democrat.
Slip over to the US Capitol around the same time, where US Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) was being asked simple questions about her view of the US Constitution by US Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). You can easily look up the exchange. Cruz asked Feinstein if her approach to gutting the Second Amendment would apply to the First and Fourth Amendments to the US Constitution, where, by her kind of legislation the US citizens could be told which books they could read and which parts of their homes were open to warrantless searches.
Feinstein had a snit and “took offense” to the question, instead of answering it. Liberals always, always, always take offense to anything that they don’t agree with. Being offended is silly, and is no grounds for dismissing an issue. If someone is offended, so what…keep going.
Recall that until very recently, Cruz was the outsider Republican, excluded by the GOP establishment and undermined by them at every turn in his quest for elected office. Conservatives like Cruz are always on the outs with the GOP establishment, because they say things that aren’t considered polite by GOP moderates.
In a nutshell, Thursday, March 14, 2013, was a significant milestone in the internal reformation of the GOP. A Democrat laughed openly in the faces of the GOP for being such weenies that they willfully lose races, and a conservative Republican asked a simple question not asked by any establishment R’s, highlighting the gulf between traditional conservatives and moderate Republicans.
Fortunately, Pennsylvania has US Senator Pat Toomey, a real American with basic American values representing our views in Washington. How sad it was and remains today that the PA GOP tried to promote Steve Welch as the GOP alternative to Bob Casey, instead of staying out of the primary race and letting the candidates contend among themselves. We might today have Tom Smith as our second US Senator, instead of the leftwing Bob Casey.
UPDATED: Tea Vs. Establishment Battle comes to Dauphin County
Aside from the epic power struggle over Lebanon County’s Republican Committee, and a smaller but equally strenuous 2010 battle in York County between 912 Patriots and entrenched Republicans, which ended in the summer of 2011 in favor of the Tea Party insurgents, Central Pennsylvania, and Dauphin County specifically, has not seen such a contest.
Until now.
Now, that open competition has fully arrived, and it may become open warfare. Oh sure, there have been some past skirmishes. The first skirmish involved former Dauphin County commissioner Lowman Henry being dumped in 2002 by the party in favor of a candidate the inner circle liked more; that planted a seed of factionalism.
Two years ago those rumblings erupted forcefully during the PA-17th Congressional District Republican Primary race, when traditionalists advocated party endorsements and the outsiders wanted an open primary, in the American spirit of “May the best person win.” That is, may the highest merit be rewarded with the highest accolades and well-earned support. No more skulduggery to edge out unwanted candidates and strong leaders by insiders whose interest is perceived by some to be retaining power and control.
In 2010, the outsiders prevailed in one way, with only one GOP Dauphin County group doing an endorsement (the Susquehanna Township GOP Committee). The other challenge came from a committee member, Alan, who unsuccessfully challenged party chairman John McNally for that chairmanship. Challenges are uncommon, and it was a second seed planted next to the Lowman Henry tree, or maybe it was fruit from that tree.
Soon after in 2010, those outsiders became identified with and then known as “Tea Party” activists. Their view was that they were merely seeking to return America’s conservative movement and Republican party to essential American traditions and principles. The way they were viewed by the established, inner-circle GOPers was with disquiet.
When the open insurrections began, no one thought they were more than disagreements between liberal and conservative Republicans.
Now, an open power struggle has erupted for the heart and soul of the Dauphin County Republican Party.
On the one hand are more conservative Republicans, feeling shunted aside and unappreciated, despite their significant sacrifices and hard work for the party. Some others had declared their interest in or intentions to run for certain seats, only to then find themselves carefully dissected from those seats in the new redistricting. Their own party did that dissecting.
Dauphin County GOP Chairman John McNally has declared his candidacy for the newly created and open state senate seat carved out of retiring senator Jeff Piccola’s district. York County businessman Steve Johnson has indicated his interest in the same senate seat. Johnson ran for lieutenant governor in 2010 among a slate of eight candidates.
UPDATE: Bill Seeds, a long time supervisor of Lower Paxton Township, is declaring his intention to run for the same senate seat, as is the York County Clerk of Courts. Each group is using the tried and useful divide-and-conquer method, as they cultivate new candidates from the opposing candidate’s county.
McNally has temporarily handed his chairmanship to Dauphin County commissioner Jeff Haste, with the expectation that McNally will re-occupy it if he loses to Johnson. However, long-time GOP activist and congressional candidate Toni Gilhooley has stated that she will seek the Dauphin County GOP chairmanship.
State representative Sue Helm is now challenged by a 26-year-old attorney, Jenna Lewis, who is endorsed by the GOP establishment, including much-liked Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico and her own father, Judge Lewis.
Susquehanna Township is a changing political landscape, where Helm, a well-known businesswoman, barely held onto her seat two years ago against Democrat activist Gene Stilp, of The Pink Pig fame.
Conservatives unhappy with Helms’ past performance now find themselves having to choose between Helm or the very young, inexperienced, and untested Lewis. Given that Lewis has the establishment wagons circling around her, the outsiders are quietly rallying to Helm.
What intrigues me is how the Tea Party began in Lebanon and Berks counties, when then-senator Arlen Spector spoke a lot of hogwash to fed-up American Joes. The Tea Party spread to Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and Massachussettes, where Republicans swarmed rickety barricades manned by corpulent, unprepared Democrats.
Now what? With the Lebanon County Republican Party firmly in the hands of the pluralistic Tea Party, will Dauphin County go the same way? And if it does, will Perry County and Centre County follow suit?
Centre County is, after all, the home turf of state senator Jake Corman, known to many as the “Silver Spoon Senator” for having casually inherited his father’s former senate seat. Corman voted for the legislative pay raise and remains one of the very few elected officials upon whom rural Pennsylvania taxpayers have not yet sought revenge.
Like Perry County, Centre County is a deeply conservative region ripe for the same frustration and political dynamic that changed Lebanon County and has now landed squarely in Dauphin County.
Corman’s presence could be the spark that lights those other Tea Party fires.
Stay tuned.