(Subtitle: In a Failing Organization, It’s ALWAYS a Leadership Problem)
As of today, Monday morning January 13th, regarding the May primary elections (per the Oregon Secretary of State website):
State Treasurer: no Republican candidate
Secretary of State: no Republican candidate
Attorney General: no Republican candidate
2 of 5 U.S Congressional Districts: no Republican candidates (40% unchallenged)
8 of 15 State Senate seats: no Republican candidates (53% unchallenged)
25 of 60 State House seats: no Republican candidates (43% unchallenged)
This is mid-January. It’s barely three months until primary ballots are mailed. The serious candidates have already filed. No matter the impending Trump landslide, if the above numbers hold, Democrat progressives will dominate the state even more than they do now.
But wait. There’s more: redistricting happens in 2021. If we lose big-time in November, we’re screwed for a decade.
Have you heard about this lack-of-candidate problem from the state-level Oregon Republican Party Chairman or his Executive Committee?
This isn’t an apathetic-Republican-voter problem. It’s an Oregon Republican Party leadership problem.
Truth is, Oregon Republican voters are ON-FIRE. In just the last 7 days, MOGA2020 Posts reached Oregon Republicans over 386,000 times and the engagement was incredibly intense, almost always over 10% per Post, which is unprecedented. (I will explain these numbers in an upcoming post).
Here’s the thing: passionate, Donald Trump-supporting voters can’t cast votes in November for Republican nominees who don’t exist.
The leadership of ORP Chairman Bill Currier is less than perfunctory. Part-time and unpaid, he’s doing nothing to cultivate primary election candidates which is one of the two central responsibilities of any state Party Chair. The second central responsibility? To raise money for general election candidates. For years, pretty much no one has donated to the state ORP because who wants to support a consistently failing organization? Last year the Deschutes County GOP raised more money than the state-level ORP (much credit goes to the Deschutes County GOP Chair at the time, Paul deWitt…).
The 21-member ORP Executive Committee, or at least their top leadership, is obviously satisfied with this non-action – it’s been going on for years. They show zero concern about the lack of Republican candidates or contributions.
But I know for sure the much larger ORP Central Committee, made up of County GOP party brass, does not find the Executive Committee’s failures amusing.
So, do we REALLY want more of this?
No, we don’t. What we need is new state-level Oregon Republican Party top leadership.
We need Executive Committee top brass that actually wants to take back power in Salem rather than churn away in useless hours-long conference calls about bylaw changes, social gatherings and political strategies intended to keep them in power. Somehow, these people at the very top must go away, and then the organization must be stripped down to the essentials and focused only on what matters. That is, unless Oregon Republicans prefer it to continue to be a social club catering to maybe 200 establishment loyalists.
And we need a full time fire-in-the-belly ORP Chairman, making 80-100K per year base salary like any normal small-organization CEO. This highly professional, media-savvy Chair must travel, working closely with our county organizations to recruit and enlist qualified, passionate candidates, and he or she must raise money. And not a little bit. Millions. (And no, that Chairperson will not be me.)
Only a thorough desk-cleaning will provide new respect for our state Party, and hope for Oregon.
You know this already: leadership is everything! In a failing organization, It’s ALWAYS a leadership problem.
Between our current Republican political status in Salem and the outlook for the upcoming elections I noted above, is there ANY Republican, outside the existing state-level ORP power structure, who thinks all-is-good and that we should continue down this road?
(And to our imbedded RINO contingent, don’t give me the sappy “we’re in the middle of an election cycle so don’t stir things up now” rebuke in order to give your leadership another ten months to hide under their desks. Things are already stirred up! You may not like me personally, but that doesn’t change the facts on-the-ground. We Oregon Republicans must deal with those facts. We must deal with reality.
If you agree with what I’m saying here, share this Post, and join our mailing list at www.makeoregongreatagain.com.
Although it’s not looking good right now, 2020 is not a trainwreck quite yet, and there’s always 2022, and under new ORP leadership and with our wonderfully on-fire, Trump-supporting voters, we CAN turn things around.
Your thoughts?
-sam