Tim Hannigan, candidate for Chairman in Fairfax County Republican Committee

Do We Want to Win Again in Fairfax County?

written by Guest Contributor Lou Di Leonardo March 7, 2018

It’s a very simple question. The past few election cycles in Fairfax have been disastrous for the GOP. In 2016, President Trump scored only 28% while Hillary Clinton got 63% of the county vote. In football terms, that is 9 touchdowns to 4 touchdowns, a rout by any measure.

In the November 2017 statewide elections, the GOP candidates for Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General lost in Fairfax County by an average of about 35%. How could they expect to win statewide with such miserable results in Virginia’s largest county? They couldn’t, and didn’t. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. There were seventeen delegate elections to represent various sections of the county; FCRC could not even field a candidate in nine of those races. This was a Godsend for Democrats who didn’t have to waste any time, effort, or money in those districts and could concentrate their political fire on the 8 Republicans who did run campaigns. Predictably, the GOP representation in the House of Delegates fell from 65 to 51 and that 51st delegate had to win a coin toss to be seated. In Fairfax County, only Tim Hugo survived, barely, to represent Republican voters.

Clearly, something must change or Republican citizens are stuck with “representatives” who do anything but represent their core beliefs and values. In the face of these ruinous results, the current Chairman of the Fairfax County Republican Committee (FCRC) has graciously decided to not run for reelection. Therefore, there will be a Convention on March 17th where his successor will be chosen by Fairfax County citizens who registered to vote in that election.

Two good men are running: Tim Hannigan and Mike Ginsberg. Everyone knows their credentials by now but my vote goes to U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Hannigan because we need new blood and new ideas at the top. Mr. Ginsberg, the current FCRC Operations Chairman promises to recruit candidates years in advance, to have past candidates mentor new candidates, to identify a handful of issues for them to run on, to reinvigorate high school Republican clubs, to welcome ideas from all corners, etc., etc., etc.

As, arguably, second in command in the current FCRC structure, why did Mr. Ginsberg not make any of this happen before? Why has the FCRC been silent on issues important to the citizens of Fairfax? Why were confiscatory property taxation, illegal immigration, the Board of Supervisors penchant for wasting our money, ever rising water bills, unrelenting traffic congestion, and an extremely generous retirement system for county employees (to name a few issues) never addressed by the FCRC? How about the abominable Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee (FLECAC) that introduces various types of sexual activities to elementary school kids? Will his proposed “virtual precincts” yield virtual candidates to run virtual campaigns and virtually win elections? They could hardly do any worse than we’ve seen lately.

Tim Hannigan is an outsider who doesn’t speak in clichés and platitudes. He intends to establish a database to manage volunteers who will do work they like and are good at during times they decide they can work. He intends to incorporate a voter application system to target, survey, and document voters to improve their participation during elections. He will, in fact and not rhetorically, highlight issues important to Conservatives in Fairfax and actually get candidates to run in EVERY election. FCRC meetings will be a venue for committee members to share ideas and concerns rather than just sharing smiles and cold pizza. I have never been asked for an opinion at any FCRC meeting. Have you?

Tim’s plan is to raise exactly the kinds of issues listed above and use them to return control of the out-of-control Board of Supervisors and School Board to Conservatives who respect common decency, the right of taxpayers to not have their pockets picked daily, and to not have their children propagandized and told they can be male or female depending on their mood that day.

As I said, these are 2 good men and both have a place in the FCRC going into the future. But, only one is cut out to be the leader who can reverse the recent electoral debacles. My vote is going to Tim because I want to win again; I hope you do, too.

Guest Contributor Lou Di Leonardo

I worked for the US government in various agencies but, most importantly, am A founding member of ICE when US Customs (where I worked) was joined with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) on March 1, 2003. Working out of ICE Headquarters and satellite offices, I was a Program Analyst and wrote statistical reports and designed databases. I retired on Jan 1, 2010. I lived in NYC, where I encountered people from every corner of the world, for my first 33 years and moved to Northern Virginia in 1988.

Donna W

Excellent write up Lou! Under the current leadership donations and membership have dropped. Part of this is due to the treatment of volunteers and the condenscending attitude by some in leadership roles towards volunteers.

Volunteers have come to the conclusion why waste time and money being part of a committee that could careless how their volunteers feel.

Tim will bring fresh ideas and respect towards the Republican activists who stand out in front of precincts, man tables at events, work back to school nights,etc etc.

Tim has the leadership skills to organize and motivate a base that has been disenfranchised for years by the Establishment who expect you to go along to get along. Most importantly, Tim doesn’t act like he has all the answers and wants to hear from everyone whether you support him or not. This would be a welcome change to be able to express a concern to your Chair without being shouted down and disrespected.

Tim as Chair won’t bore everyone in a committee meeting by simply reading off agenda items. He will prepare a list of action items,listen to concerns from the audience, and give ideas and suggestions in ways to volunteer.

I agree with Lou that both candidates are good men. Only one has the demonstrated leadership skills whether on the battlefield,running a companyor in precinct organization. Tim won’t be controlled by the elitists on the committee.

Vote for Tim Hannigan who will do the right thing even when no one is looking!
Burke Patriot

Lou,
Spot on. Mike Ginsberg will be a continuation of a failed system. Mr. Ginsberg is supported by all the same no-issue liberals that are in leadership today who have left 70% of registered voters sitting at home on local election day. That’s right, 70% of registered voters don’t come out to vote in our local elections. Who can blame them. People want leaders not flaccid fighters as the current county GOP displays. The current FCRC gives no reason to join or even vote for Republican candidates because of a lead from behind approach. Sad.
Here is Mr. Ginsberg in his own words letting us know that the FCRC will be more of the same under the “part-time” management of Mr. Ginsberg.
https://youtu.be/45oHbz0SLzU
Rocinante

It seems like this race is a lead choice between two different approaches — one an offensive straight up battle, the other a more passive nuanced struggle.

Looks like Fairfax will get to decide whether the best defense is a good offense or the best offense is a good defense.

However to us outsiders, it does also seem to have the activist vs. establishment as well.

Any predictions??
- Julie Williams
  
  A good offense wins = Hannigan
  - Rocinante
    
    I think this should be a no-brainer, and I hope that all the players will be grownups and work to Make Fairfax Great Again. Being on defense all the time at best results in a tie, but that is the high bar.
Pam

I heard both men speak at an event, and Mr. Ginsberg talked about the 2019 election, not mentioning the 2018 election (even though a 2018 candidate was also at that meeting). My thought is that Mr. Ginsberg realizes that with a job and a young family, he will not have the time to get “up and running” by 2018. Maybe it was just a slip of the tongue; but I believe Mr Hannigan has wonderful plans now that he is ready to implement….and ready to focus on the very important 2018 races! Please vote for Mr. Hannigan!
adrian mungiu

Mike Ginsberg is supposed to be a nice guy but I wouldn’t know because we’ve never met. That is a problem because I was and am an active volunteer in the 8th District which he used to “lead”. I knocked on over a thousand doors in the 8th when Romney was running and never met Mike Ginsberg. I actually don’t think I heard of him until his current run for FCRC Chair. I knocked for Cuccinelli and Edmunds and never met Mr. Ginsberg. I knocked doors in Sterling only twice and met their District Chair and Newt Gingrich, but I never met Mike Ginsberg. For an active volunteer to never meet or hear from a District Chair tells me the Chair was much less active than the volunteer. Now he asks for my vote and promises a flurry of activity once elected… He sends me emails telling me he plans to develop new ideas and recruit candidates and use former candidates to mentor them. Well his resume makes it pretty clear he is smart and capable of developing new ideas, so why hasn’t he yet? Everything he asks to be elected in order to develop/create should have been developed already. Maybe he needs to hold the position to implement these ideas but he has not yet developed them much less shared them with prospective voters. Whenever someone asks me to vote for them so they can create something that does not require a position or title to create, I don’t believe them. Since 9 delegate races didn’t even have a Republican running, what mentors is he thinking of? So Mike Ginsberg may be a great guy and we may have been best of friends, spending weekends together and having lunch occasionally. But we never met, and since I spent many weekends knocking on doors for Republican candidates in the district he was in charge of and theoretically organizing, that is a problem.
- Rocinante
  
  You know, with all these slams against Mike, let’s pause for a minute and review the list of actual political and policy gains made during his leadership of the 8th and FCRC:
  - Former NY’er
    
    Wait, you forgot these:
Miriam Sullivan

Lou Di Leonardo’s write-up was right on target, as usual! I’m voting for Tim Hannigan also. I believe Tim is a winner & a fighter for values, ethics, & for republican principles & standards. I also believe Tim Hannigan
truly wants to re-establish Virginia’s Fairfax County as a republican county and reverse the trend & many many losses & defeats suffered under the leadership of the current, weak, & embarrassing, “establishment”, FCRC we’ve witnessed for years. Several, current, FCRC leaders are
rude, arrogant, & condescending to
volunteers who work at the polls, make calls, etc,… This arrogant behavior from some FCRC leaders & clique is insulting & guarantees the defeats we’ve seen over & over again the past 6-8 years. In my opinion– the current leadership of the FCRC is SAD & SHAMEFUL & DISGUSTING!
Tim Hannigan’s the right choice for the FCRC chairman and can save us
from the clear & present danger Fairfax County (a sanctuary county) has evolved into😡🙄😒! Vote for Tim Hannigan 17 March 2018!
Susan Lider

Thank you Lou for articulating so well why Tim Hannigan is the best choice for FCRC chairman. I have known Tim for several years and worked with him to promote healthcare freedom. He is an honorable man and has the leadership skills and time needed to lead Fairfax Republicans to victory.
Lawrence Wood

“Why has the FCRC been silent on issues important to the citizens of Fairfax?” Excellent question! Many of the issues you mention are impacting Democratic voting county households just as significantly as Republican ones. Staggering property taxation, illegal immigration, the Board of Supervisors fiscal mismanagement (waste), rising utility bills, increasing traffic congestion, and significant county financial funding commitments to employee retirement benefits which you mention are all KNOWN issues that have been present in the county for well over a decade and indeed are a common malady across all of the Northern Virginia Tier yet are rarely effectively exploited or seriously discussed at all among the vast majority of Republican local candidates. Why?

What voter value propositions are the Republicans bringing forward in their messaging and proposed policies that ever makes any serious attempt to leverage this level of economic and fiscal dissatisfaction among the voting population of this metro tier? The plain straight forward answer is NONE. This doesn’t require leadership, unit membership or even large quantities of candidates running for every available local electable position it just requires some basic policy knowledge and a coherent, targeted, even handed campaign messaging effort by effective candidates communicating some specific correctional directions.

If you have nothing to say to voters that resonates besides the same repetitive talking points why are you surprised they are no longer listening? It’s way past time to cease the bitching and hand wringing regarding President Trump and his administration among too many in the party and make the effort to learn a few lessons out of his message marketing playbook. He clearly proved in 2016 and continues today to prove he is a master at it. The state party’s ongoing issue that never seems to rise to the top of the queue to be addressed is NOT organization but solely state Republican voter messaging content and policy. Unfortunately the state’s fractured party splinters stand directly in the way of achieving any hope of a revitalization of voter messaging hence continued failure and worse a declining Republican voter enthusiasm for the party’s offerings. To distill it down to its simplest terms, in my opinion, we have a vast gulf here in Virginia and that gap just keeps increasing year after year between what policy messaging the party and its candidates produces and what voting base actually wants.
Cathy Trauernicht

I’ll add my own experience with Mike Ginsberg here. Last year, at a Dranesville District meeting, someone lamented that the Democrats always have a visible, prominent sandwich board sign outside the Fairfax County Government Center, directing voters to vote for their candidates. So I and one other attendee offered to pay for TWO sandwich boards for the GOP. Mike was enthusiastic about the idea and asked us to follow up with him. The next day, he informed us that it was against FCRC rules to accept donations for specific designations, and we would have to simply send a check to the FCRC. There was no guarantee that our donation would be used for the sandwich boards, though. After that, we never heard a word from Mike Ginsberg. HE WAS HEAD OF FCRC OPERATIONS! Needless to say, the sandwich boards were never made. If Mike Ginsberg couldn’t navigate FCRC rules to have two sandwich boards produced, I certainly don’t have confidence that he can lead the entire FCRC organization. My confidence is in Tim Hannigan.
Stonewall Jackson

Lou– this blog has a couple of guys you need to set straight on immigration’s reality for politics.

Do We Want to Win Again in Fairfax County?

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