Opinion/Editorial

The Real GOP (Printable VersionE-mail to a Friend )
Most of this is Politics 101, but the obvious bears repeating from time to time.
by Michael Bates

Maybe I’m easily amused, but when people talk about the Republican Party as if it is some monolithic, highly-disciplined, powerful institution I have to laugh out loud. I’ve been a registered Republican for nearly 24 years, a party activist for 16, a candidate twice--once the party’s nominee--a delegate to the national convention, and an elected county party official since 2003. I know better.

This misperception of the party takes at least three different forms. Form 1 is when a voter gets offended at the stand an elected Republican official takes on an issue:  He doesn’t like the President’s stand on immigration, or that he added a Koran to the White House library, or his nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. He doesn’t like Bill LaFortune’s stand (whatever that happens to be at the moment) on the IVI toll bridge, whatever.

The voter decides to “retaliate” by changing his registration to Independent or another party. “I’ll never trust those Republicans again.” This is what we call cutting off your nose to spite your face. (There’s another, more apt analogy involving a dark suit and a warm feeling that no one else notices, but it’s a bit rude, so I’ll skip it.)

Same goes for the other party, too, I am sure. But back to the GOP.

Form 2 is alarm from within the party or gloating from the press or the Democrats that the Republican Party is split. “The Democrats are on the sidelines, laughing at our disunity.” “Can the Republican Party heal its differences in time to win the general election?” 

Form 3 covers references to “party bosses” or the “GOP establishment,” as if elected party officials had a legion of robo-volunteers ready to obey their every whim or the ability to handpick nominees. For example, there were groundless complaints that the Tulsa County Republican Party took sides in the District 5 City Council election to replace Sam Roop.

If you understood all the different forces within the big tent of Republicanism, you wouldn’t be shocked at all when an elected official betrays his party’s principles, and you wouldn’t wonder at the sharp differences among elected Republicans on city and county issues.

In this country, a major political party is an empty vessel, defined by what fills it. It is a box to check on the voter registration card, a reserved spot on the ballot. If you want to be a Republican, all you have to do submit a form to the county election board. No one is going to quiz you on your ideology. You won’t get kicked out if you vote for a Democrat. By the mere act of signing a registration card and then showing up to vote in the primary, you have a say in which candidate will carry the party banner into the general election--a say equal to every campaign donor, every elected official, every Republican activist.

(In fact, the publisher tells me he knows of a good friend, a brilliant strategist, who remained a registered Democrat in order to help elect candidates he considered the lesser of evils in this once predominately Democratic state.)  

You don’t have to pass any litmus test to become a Republican nominee, either. All you have to do is persuade enough registered Republican voters to vote for you in a primary.

I don’t mean to suggest that party labels are meaningless. I have good reasons for being a Republican and not a Democrat. But the definition of “Republican” wasn’t carved in stone at the party’s founding. It’s a dynamic thing, shaped by a variety of forces, each of which wields some combination of power, time, money, or votes.

The Tulsa County Republican Party is the most visible force, locally, but it is also the weakest. The county party has no money to fund candidates. It does not have sway over political patronage. There is not an army of volunteers or donors ready to jump into action at the word of the County Chairman. The official party provides some very basic infrastructure--a place to meet, a focus for organizing, an opportunity for networking, an information resource for candidates and voters.

Most of the chairman’s time and attention is spent on raising enough money to pay the bills for the headquarters and having a volunteer or, if there’s enough money, a part-time office manager available to answer the phone. At the state level, headquarters offers training for potential candidates and campaign volunteers and a database of information about registered voters and past election results.

Party officers are chosen and a platform is drafted through a series of precinct, county, and state conventions. Any registered Republican can participate in his precinct’s caucus, and anyone willing to take the time to participate can be a delegate to the county or state convention.

Party officials can’t stop you from registering as a Republican, running as a Republican, or getting elected as a Republican. It’s not always the case in other states, but in Oklahoma, the official Republican Party stays neutral in primaries and will only disavow a candidate if he’s a Klansman or a crook.

A candidate needs money, volunteers, and ultimately votes to win, and since the official party structure won’t take sides in a primary campaign, every candidate has to build his own organization and raise his own money. That’s where the activists and the big donors come in.

Key grassroots activists have considerable influence over who runs and who gets elected. They work tirelessly for the candidates they support, knocking on doors and making phone calls. They carefully screen candidates before they offer their support and their endorsement, and because of the thorough research they do, many other activists seek their advice before deciding which candidate to support. 

Back in 1994, when candidates were lining up to succeed Jim Inhofe in Congress, a group of social conservative activists met to try to avoid splitting the pro-life vote in the primary.  Two TU football greats, Howard Twilley and Steve Largent, were considering the race. After hearing from both men and deliberating a while, they settled on Largent, and Twilley decided not to make the race. The activists who gathered in that non-smoke-filled room were in on that decision because they had each built a network of influence among like-minded voters, and their support would be needed to prevail in a primary.

Funny story, though. The former U.S. Rep Largent, now apparently retired from politics and working in Washington, D.C., admitted at one point before he was elected that it was only after he began seriously getting involved in running for office that he knew what “GOP” stood for.

In the December 2001 Republican primary to serve out Largent’s unexpired term in Congress, a state representative beat the First Lady of Oklahoma, a nationally-known figure with high-profile endorsements and plenty of cash. John Sullivan came from 20 points down to 15 points ahead on election day, and the biggest factor in that come-from-behind win was the network of grassroots, pro-life, pro-small-government conservative activists that he successfully courted.

A month later, many of those same activists were persuaded to back Bill LaFortune in the 2002 mayoral primary, giving energy and organization to a floundering campaign. Those same activists are dismayed by LaFortune’s failure to deliver on his promise to reform and streamline city government, the result of his apparent fear of the development lobby, the Metro Tulsa Chamber bureaucracy, and the daily paper. That’s why LaFortune only has the support of 38% of likely Republican voters for re-election, a career-ending level of disaffection.

But LaFortune’s 60% primary win in 2002 was also the result of an unprecedented level of financial support--and the fear of losing those donors for a re-election bid and future political ambitions seems to have shaped the conduct of his administration. The folks who can make $5,000 contributions have a profound effect on candidates and elected officials.

We’ll take a closer look at how that influence is wielded, and at the other factors that shape the GOP, in a future column.

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