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Rockaway Republicans Eye Turnaround

Rockaway Republicans Eye Turnaround

BY MEGHAN CLYNE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
January 11, 2005
http://www.nysun.com/article/7486

Republicans nationwide cheered their party's expanded influence in November, and its successful grassroots campaign. But the celebration was muted among GOP faithful in New York.

The party's candidate for the U.S. Senate, Howard Mills, was defeated by a record-breaking margin, and Republicans ceded control in some traditional strongholds. To several city and state Republican activists, the 2004 slippage was part of a long downward spiral - one they aim to stop with tonight's Downstate Grassroots Republican Summit.

The meeting, which begins at 8 p.m. at the Belle Harbor Yacht Club in Rockaway, is sponsored by the newly formed Rockaway Republicans. They will be joined by the Brooklyn Young Republican Club, the New York Young Republican Club, the Regular Republican Club of Woodside, and the New York chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus.

Party activists, and past and present Republican candidates and officials, will address what they see as the state GOP's current ailments and offer advice for revitalizing what they consider a virtually defunct organization.

A scheduled summit speaker and the chairman of the New York Young Republican Club, Robert Hornak, said one crucial flaw last year was the defeatism of the state party's leadership.

Most people assumed "the state party got something that wasn't what they wanted" when Mr. Mills, an assemblyman, received less than one-fourth of the vote in his bid for Senator Schumer's seat, Mr. Hornak said. But "the party wanted to lose," he explained.

Mr. Hornak, who is also president of the Urban Republican Coalition, said the state GOP was in an "emergency situation." If New York Republicans want to win races in the future, he said, the state party must develop a grassroots operation that will get more Republicans involved in the political process.

He also said the state party, no longer identified as the standard-bearer for small business and fiscal responsibility, lacked an issues-based platform to run on.

To heal those ills, Mr. Hornak said, Republicans must drop their current modus operandi. A "Pataki cult of personality," he explained, "does not help build the party."

Also expressing concern about Governor Pataki's influence over the state GOP is Michael Benjamin, chairman and founder of Save NewYork.org, a nonpartisan political-action organization.

Mr. Benjamin, a former Wall Street trader, sought the Republican nomination in the race against Mr. Schumer but said he was pushed out of the contest by intimidation from the state GOP.

Mr. Benjamin, who is also scheduled to speak at the summit, said his remarks would come from the perspective of someone who had "been on the front lines of the party throughout the state." During his campaign for the GOP nomination, Mr. Benjamin said, he had traveled to all of New York's 62 counties and met with Republicans at all levels. From that experience, Mr. Benjamin concluded that "the GOP in the state of New York is in shambles."

"Under the leadership of George Pataki and Sandy Treadwell, the former chairman, the party has completely collapsed ... like a house of cards," Mr. Benjamin said. That demise, he added, "was basically caused by an elite few who have used the party infrastructure for their own personal goals."

Republican candidates hand-picked by the governor "show their loyalty to Pataki by losing, miserably, and are then rewarded" with high-ranking positions in the party or state government. Mr. Benjamin pointed to Mr. Mills's recent installation as state insurance superintendent, a post with a $127,000 annual salary.

That sacrificial system, Mr. Benjamin said, works to the governor's advantage.

"I think it maintains a very cozy relationship between him and the Democrats," Mr. Benjamin said. "It says, 'I won't support anybody to take you on, and you'll take it easy against me.'"

Mr. Treadwell stepped down as state chairman and was succeeded last month by a Monroe County party leader, Stephen Minarik. A spokesman for the state Republican Party, Ryan Moses, declined to comment for this article.

The people of New York, Mr. Benjamin said, were being "cheated" for Mr. Pataki's "personal political gain." At the summit, he intends to outline a plan for restoring ownership of the political process to New Yorkers, he said.

Part of Mr. Benjamin's plan calls for freer competition within the Republican system. "The Democrats at least have statewide primaries," he said.

"The Republican Party under Pataki and Treadwell have done everything they possibly could to prevent primaries," Mr. Benjamin said, adding that their "hand-picked candidates" nevertheless "lose by record margins."

Mr. Hornak agreed that the state GOP needs to open itself up to more internal competition.

New York Democrats, he said, participate in frequent primaries and internal debates. "They have a better model, and their success in New York shows they have a better model," he said.

Of a similar mind-set is the vice president of the Rockaway Republicans, Stuart Mirsky.

"If a candidate comes from the bottom up and has the wherewithal to win people's attention, they ought to let democracy take its course," Mr. Mirsky said of the state party.

But the Albany leadership doesn't do that, he said, adding, "There's an undemocratic orientation to the way things are currently structured in the Republican Party."

"That doesn't mean they're a horrible party," he said.

"We don't want to create a war with our leaders," Mr. Mirsky said. "We want to give them something to lead."

Toward that end, he and a few friends started the Rockaway Republicans last March. What had been an idea born out of a "few guys smoking cigars in a garage," the group's president, Tom Lynch, said, became an organization of 150 committed Republican activists.

Mr. Lynch, a retired firefighter and lifelong Democrat who became a self-styled "9/11 Republican," said the Rockaway Republicans were organized to "help do something locally for the president," who the group's organizers believed was being unfairly vilified by the Left. In the wake of President Bush's victory, they plan to turn their attentions to improving ties between the state party and Republican activist groups.

Another goal of the summit will be establishing greater cooperation among those groups, known for their often acrimonious relations.

The Rockaway Republicans also plan to focus on increasing the number of Republican candidates in city races. Said Mr. Lynch: "In our area, the current Democratic officeholders run unopposed, and the object of any political club ... is to run candidates."

The chairman of the Queens County Republican Committee, State Senator Serphin Maltese, agreed, saying, "I want a candidate in every council district in Queens County."

Mr. Maltese said he and the party do not consider the grassroots organizations outsiders.

"What I'm hoping is that we can welcome them into the fold," he said, "but the truth of the matter is, it's very difficult for the new guys on the block to reshape the policy of the whole state party."

Still, he said, he looked forward to cooperating with the Rockaway Republicans and other groups "to find candidates to run at the federal level, and to assist the state organization to find a candidate against Hillary," referring to Mrs. Clinton's presumed bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate in 2006.

According to Mr. Benjamin, that kind of cooperation between the state party and grassroots groups will be vital in any contest against Mrs. Clinton, along with the other races next year.

"In 2006 there are four statewide seats up, and the Democrats will have a strong candidate running for Senate, comptroller, attorney general, and governor," Mr. Benjamin said.

"Part of this summit," he said, "is getting together and rallying behind candidates who can put up a strong slate. If nothing changes, we will have all five statewide seats run by strong liberal Democrats."

There was universal agreement on the need for putting aside past grievances and for making sure that the summit was more than just a "griping session."

"Our first goal is to demonstrate how widespread and how strong this desire to improve the GOP is," said Mr. Benjamin. "The second goal is to come up with clear and specific suggestions to build and strengthen the GOP, and that's where I think the real value is going to be at this event.

"The follow-up," Mr. Benjamin said, "is going to be very important as well."