It's Already Broken, So Just Break it Some More

Monday night the Johnson County Republican Party chose new leadership. After watching Kris Kobach lose to Dennis Moore, you would think the Republican Party would be ready to get over its intramural fights, you would be wrong.

Bruce Anderson, Chairman of the Olathe Republican Party wouldn't even agree to the order of the agenda. Anderson made a motion that outgoing Party Chair Andy Wollen and National Committeeman Steve Cloud not be allowed to speak until the end of the meeting, instead of allowing them to give officer reports at the top of the agenda as would be customary for any normal group. Things got worse from there.

The highlight of the evening was the race for County Party Chairman, initially a race between conservative Doug Patterson and moderate Bruce Mayfield, which got interesting when Andy Wollen was nominated from the floor, while many expected Wollen to decline the nomination, he chose to run. Patterson gave the speech you would expect, vowing to build the party.

Wollen positioned himself as a candidate in the middle, neither moderate, nor conservative, but a Chairman who would really work to build a strong party. There were two highlights to Wollen's proposal, first that leadership should be shared by conservatives and moderates, and second Wollen acknowledged that different factions exist in the Republican Party. Most leaders want to pretend that there are not serious divisions and that we can all just get along and "unite". Wollen didn't do that, he proposed recognizing the divisions and building party structures that deal with the division that exists. I think Andy has some good ideas, if we keep trying the same strategy, we will probably keep getting the same result, division and loss.

Mayfield gave a sincere speech about how the party used to be, when there was not serious division. He pictured a time long past where the Party was well funded and supported by all factions, when there could be events that draw from all sides of the party. Then Mayfield did something truly remarkable, he withdrew his name and encouraged everyone to support Wollen. Now there are plenty of people who think this seemed a little staged, after all Wollen is definitely a moderate.

Patterson won the vote, and as you would expect, the rest of his slate won too. Now the JoCo Party will be run by conservatives (not that there is anything wrong with conservatives). However we missed a real opportunity. Instead of electing leadership that would have representation from all sides of the party, we have social conservatives leading the party, they will chase the moderates, and the fiscal conservatives out of party leadership, they will rule for a while, then they will lose an election and be replaced by another faction, and we will start the cycle all over again, a losing cycle for the Republican Party.

The problem is not necessarily that the leadership are conservative, or that new treasurer Michael Welton is a radical in the first degree. The problem is that instead of acknowledging the problems in the Party, we just keep perpetuating them. For the first time in many years, the Republican congressional candidate lost in Johnson County this year (P.S. full analysis of the Kobach loss Tuesday afternoon). If the Republicans don't get their act together soon, the 2006 elections may be a first class disaster for the Republican Party in Kansas.

Timothy Burger