For most of the past decade and a half, the Ohio Republican
Party’s leadership was divided into two camps. There were the
tax-and-spend Republicans who built solid GOP majorities
throughout the state only to fritter them away through scandal,
sclerosis, and a lack of economic solutions. And then there was
Ken Blackwell, the government-cutting conservative thorn in the
state party establishment’s side.
There was no love lost between the dominant faction and the odd
man out. Blackwell was a persistent critic of Republicans in the
mold of George Voinovich and Bob Taft, whom he accused of
“campaigning like Ronald Reagan and governing like [1980s
Democratic Gov.] Dick Celeste.” The Taft-Voinovich Republicans
thought Blackwell too hard-edged for Ohioans’ tender Midwestern
sensibilities and unready for primetime.
When Blackwell announced he was running for chairman of the
Republican National Committee, many thought this history would
repeat itself on the national stage. He was quickly endorsed by
outside conservatives, including publisher, former presidential
candidate, and flat-tax maven
Steve Forbes and Club for Growth President
Pat Toomey. But surely cooler heads inside the national party
structure would prevail?
No one really knows what is going on inside the minds of the 168
national committee members who will elect the next party
chairman. But so far, no disconnect between conservative
activists and Republican leaders seems to have materialized.
Since Blackwell jumped in the race, two potential candidates for
RNC chairman have dropped out and endorsed him. One, Texas GOP
chairwoman Tina Benkiser, is now a candidate for co-chair as
Blackwell’s running mate. The other, Michigan national
committeeman Chuck Yob, is active in the Blackwell campaign and
has brought his family
along for the ride. Although relatively few of those who have
a vote in the Jan. 28 election have publicly endorsed a
candidate, a plurality of those who have are backing Blackwell.
Blackwell’s campaign message is two-fold. Philosophically, he is
running as a “no-pale-pastels” conservative who believes the
Republican brand has suffered from ethical lapses, overspending,
and a general propensity to govern in a “Democrat lite” fashion.
Strategically, Blackwell speaks of implementing “a genuine
50-state strategy.” According to a statement released before
Christmas, that means helping state party leaders raise money by
recruiting major speakers for their fundraisers and transferring
10 percent of the RNC’s net fundraising proceeds to state party
organizations. Blackwell promised to hold quarterly conference
calls with committee members from each state and to “allocate
millions of dollars to the precinct organizations in our party to
rebuild from the ground up.”
Roger Villere, who is chairman of both the Louisiana Republican
Party and Blackwell’s RNC bid, argues that such a 50-state
strategy is necessary. “We’re not getting the help or the
leadership we need from the national party,” he says. “They want
to tell us how to spend our money and who to hire without seeking
our input before they’ll help.” Benkiser contends that the
ideological component is equally important. “America is still a
center-right country,” she says. “We need leadership that focuses
on fiscal responsibility, a strong national defense, and
traditional values.”
“Ken Blackwell knows how to win,” Villere says, mentioning that
his man has come out on top in 13 of the 17 elections he has
contested. In addition to serving as mayor of Cincinnati and
under fellow supply-sider Jack Kemp in President George H.W.
Bush’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, Blackwell was
elected state treasurer of Ohio in 1994 and won two terms as
secretary of state in 1998 and 2002. Almost alone among Ohio’s
statewide elected officials, Blackwell campaigned hard for the
defense-of-marriage amendment on the state ballot that arguably
helped President George W. Bush win a second term in 2004.
One race in Blackwell’s loss column has raised questions about
whether he is the right man to lead Republicans back into the
majority: he was defeated in Ohio’s gubernatorial election in
2006. Scratch that: he was shellacked, winning just 37 percent of
the vote to Democrat Ted Strickland’s 61 percent. By comparison,
former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele — who is also running
for RNC chair — grabbed 45 percent in a blue-state Senate race
that same Democratic year.
There are two ways to look at Blackwell’s tanking in 2006, both
with different implications for the RNC contest. The more
moderate Ohio GOP establishment
pushed Blackwell out of the governor’s race in 1998, when he
might have won, and maneuvered him into another statewide office
that didn’t adequately showcase his zeal for tax cuts and
economic growth. By the time Blackwell’s next chance came he won
the primary with 56 percent of the vote, but Gov. Bob Taft — the
party bosses’ choice — had already tanked the Republican brand
in the state. On the other hand, Blackwell ran a campaign that
emphasized turning out the conservative base, which worked for
Republicans in 2004, in an environment where stemming the
bleeding among swing voters might have been more important.
Either way, Blackwell’s loss gave ammunition to his critics in
the Taft-Voinovich wing of the party. “We’ve now seen what his
style can do for us,” says one. “I’ll take winning with a
‘liberal’ like Voinovich any day of the week.” Even some of his
erstwhile admirers lost confidence because of the gubernatorial
results. One local conservative Republican activist told
TAS that Blackwell “is a great spokesman for
conservatism” but worried that he lost “independents” and “key
parts of the state.”
“Ken is a great guy, but not a nuts-and-bolts party person,” this
activist says. “Party chairmen should be organizational people,
not big speakers. He has no concept of the day to day
workings of a political party, is too ideological to raise the
money needed, has never recruited candidates, isn’t supported by
his own state organization, and is just not the right guy for
this job.”
Villere begs to differ, pointing to Blackwell’s ability to raise
$12 million in 2006 alone, his experience with redistricting as
Ohio secretary of state, and his success in the majority of races
in which he has run. “He also has a team that knows how to win,”
Villere says, noting that both he and Benkiser presided over
gains in their respective states in a bad election cycle for
Republicans nationally. “Sometimes you can learn as much from
losing a race as from winning one,” Benkiser concurs. “But I’ll
tell you this: Ken Blackwell has won a lot more races than he
lost and is definitely up for the challenges ahead.” Or as one
pro-Blackwell blogger
put it, “losing his last race did not stop Howard Dean
from becoming an effective DNC Chair.”
Ken Blackwell would probably prefer being seen as the mirror
image of Howard Dean: a potential party chairman who hails from
the Republican wing of the Republican Party.
