The first part of 2021 was an absolute nightmare for the Republican Party of Virginia’s (RPV) State Central Committee (SCC), which is the policy making body for the RPV. A group of “establishment” Republicans held the entire SCC – and thus the entire RPV – hostage by refusing, until no other option was left, to go along with the majority’s vote to use a convention to nominate our candidates for statewide office.
Thankfully, once we selected our nominees at the convention we finally managed to hold, everyone worked together to get those three candidates elected. Obviously, a unified Republican Party can be successful. This compares to the two prior statewide elections, both of which we lost in large part because of a divided Republican Party.
Now that our candidates are elected, the same group who caused so much consternation at the beginning of the year are back to their old tricks. A letter written by SCC member Mike Ginsberg (CD 11, Fairfax) outlines the elements of the issue here. [I agree with Mike on all points, and I have Mike’s permission to use his letter. I have modified small bits of it to protect innocent people.]
Mike’s letter starts by registering his “deep and profound disappointment” that the insider cabal, by arranging for ineligible people to vote on the Executive Committee, selected one of their cronies as “RPV Volunteer of the Year.” Mike writes:
First, I strongly believe these awards should be reserved for rank-and-file volunteers. We should be recognizing volunteers who generally do not get recognition, who toil anonymously in the vineyards asking nothing for themselves. [The selectee] was an elected member of the State Central Committee and [he was another GOP organization’s] Chairman. In these positions, he received plenty of recognition and publicity. SCC should not be in the business of giving awards to its own members. …[T]he runner-up, is the very definition of the type of volunteer we should be recognizing. He has given hundreds of hours to the party, not to see his name in lights, but to work for victory. He’s never received recognition of any kind. [The selectee] has received plenty of public accolades in his time; [the runner-up] has never received any. That the ExComm cannot see this speaks volumes about its priorities and its consideration for the grassroots.
Given that last year’s volunteer of the year award recipient was also a… member of the SCC, we will give the appearance that RPV is a club of insiders scratching each other’s backs. In this case, I fear, the appearance accurately reflects reality, and our rank-and-file volunteers will see that.
Second, [the selectee] played, in my view, a deeply unconstructive role in the nomination fight that consumed the first six months of the year. His behavior on public Zoom meetings was abhorrent and repeatedly embarrassed the party. [The selectee deliberately insulted] members supporting a convention. He rebuffed several of my direct efforts to seek compromise…. His behavior, and the behavior of the… organization he led, was a disgrace.
This is not behavior RPV should reward. That it has is an insult to me and to all those who genuinely believed the convention was the best method of nomination and who behaved with decorum during the course of the debate.
[L]et me be blunt: I am convinced more than ever our convention set the table for a statewide sweep. (I’d also note that the Democrats’ primary left them with their weakest possible ticket; I think we would have had a much harder fight had the Democrats nominated McClellan, Carroll Foy, or Jay Jones.) Our decision to hold a convention – particularly in the wake of the events of January 6 – was the smartest strategic decision anyone made all year. My colleagues and I understood this and played chess, not checkers…. To reward one of the chief architects of all of [the aforementioned]misbehavior is a slap in the face and an abject disgrace.
District Chairmen are the only voting members of the Executive Committee. However, some non-voting members of the Executive Committee were allowed to vote on this selection. It seems that certain members of SCC will hold everyone else to the Party Plan, but not themselves when it suits their own needs. We may be in the process of fixing some things in our state government, but we apparently need to fix some things within GOP leadership as well.
Here we go again
