As promised, we are following up on the summit and its
outcomes.
Background
The purpose of the summit was both to surface ideas about
problems and solutions that are holding the NY GOP back and to begin to bring together,
through networking and face to face encounters, the various GOP groups and
activists in the downstate area.
We signed in 89 people and were aware, at the end, of a
number who told us they had failed to sign in. Based on this, it's not
unreasonable to assume we got close to a hundred attendees.
Speakers included Queens County GOP leader State Senator Serph Maltese; former Queens City Councilman (and
minority Council leader) Tom Ognibene; current
Queens City Councilman Dennis Gallagher; 1st vice Chair of the Queens County Exectutive Committee Ed Coyne; Chairman of "Save New
York" (a conservative PAC) Michael Benjamin; Republican activist and
insurgent candidate for mayor Steve Shaw; and Robert Hornak,
Chairman of the Young Republicans of New York and founder of the Urban
Republican Coalition.
Speakers were welcomed by George Greco, Chairman of the
Rockaway Republicans (host for the evening); the subsequent discussion was
moderated by Patrick Hurley, President of the Regular Republican Club of Woodside
Queens. Luke Vander Linden, President of the Brooklyn Young
Republican Club, offered closing remarks.
Outcomes
The meeting was fully attended but the speeches
lasted longer than we'd hoped and the subsequent discussion proved to be less
substantive than planned. However, a number of interesting outcomes
occurred including a surprisingly strong attack upon incumbent NYC Mayor
Michael Bloomberg (he had a representative in the audience) and an
unplanned confrontation between Queens County leader Serph
Maltese and a number of Rockaway Republicans over that group's failure to
receive a State GOP charter after 10 months in existence and five months with
an open request on the Queens leader's desk.
During and directly after the meeting a number of items were
put on the table and these are presented below, along with preliminary comments
offered by participants to date.
Where Do We Go From Here?
We're requesting that you now take a few moments to
review the material below and get back to us with your comments, suggestions,
criticisms, etc. We are interested both in adding new ideas, if warranted, and
in amplifying/building on the ideas already on the table.
In order to prevent momentum from flagging, we are
looking toward a follow-up meeting, albeit on a smaller scale, within the
next couple of weeks.
We also want to urge participants to remain in touch and to
begin working together on upcoming election plans. The election season, as most
of you already know, commences in late spring when clubs must hit the streets
to get petitions for their candidates signed so they can have a place on the
ballot. Actual petition carrying commences in June and ends mid-July.
But this is not all there is to finding and running good
candidates. Clubs must pursue a careful recruitment and vetting process in
the winter and early spring, must identify and research the issues on which
their candidates will make their stands, must build a support team for
candidates and must plan for effective fund raising and campaigning that
gets candidates "out there" early and often so voters
will learn enough about them to make an informed voting choice.
The Rockaway Republicans Club believes that we must all work
collaboratively if we are to be effective in running candidates and winning
elective offices. That is the true measure of an effective political
organization. Toward that end, ongoing contacts as we go into the election
season are proposed and will be supported by the Rockaway Republicans and other
affiliated groups.
Ideas On The
Table
Below please find the issues and proposals, with some
preliminary comments, which grew out of the Downstate
Summit. Additional comments and feedback are welcome so that we can have a
productive follow-up meeting in the near term:
____________________________________________________________________________
THE TEN BIG IDEAS FOR FIXING THE NY GOP
____________________________________________________________________________
1. Create a Downstate
"Czar" to Coordinate Local Efforts
It's been proposed that we need some kind of five boro (or greater) coordinator to increase and support
cooperation between the separate county organizations and their
distinct districts. We need this because of the obvious lack of
coordination we now have and the consequent continued shrinkage in size,
strength and activism of district level groups.
This has been manifested in the continued lack of
candidacies being developed and supported at the district level and the failure
of the different district groups to work together to support one another.
Pros: This will fill a real gap and could very well serve to force
folks together in a constructive and valuable way. Information could start to
be pulled and shared and disparate groups could start working together under
the auspices of this kind of a leader.
Cons: This has the potential to create another layer of bureaucracy and
another power base for some politician in the future. If this is done through
the existing organization it could prove particularly stultifying.
Alternative: Create a democratically constructed "council" that
would be constituted by reps and activists from the base to meet and coordinate
in this same fashion but who would not be beholden to the higher-ups.
2. Convene a Multi-Boro Working Group to Address Ongoing Concerns
The summit was useful but will not yield much if we let it
die now. The only way to proceed is to start a process of meeting at a
leadership level to address what now needs to be done. Moreover, many of the
suggestions proposed below would require just such a group, on an
institutionalized basis. This group can be constituted by leaders, activists
and club officers who are willing to put some time into thinking about changing
the nature of our currently shaky party structure and into taking the steps to
accomplish such a change.
Pros: This is what democracy is supposed to be about.
Cons: This will be hard to organize and keep going; this may antagonize
the existing party hierarchy.
Comments:
1) Similar to the
committee. This is a threat to the current leadership. The status
quo (a weak party organization) exists because someone benefits from it.
In this case, its incumbent GOP senators (among others) who have millions of
taxpayer dollars in lulus to distribute in their districts to buy support from
local civic groups, but not one cent for the party organization, which is
starving for lack of resources. A weak GOP organization cannot threaten
an incumbent GOP senator. In many cases, he controls the organization,
and deliberately keeps it weak, powerless, and working for him, rather than
empowering an organization that could threaten the senator by creating rivals,
or creating an agenda hostile to the incumbent. Because the GOP is likely
to lose the Senate in 2006, the lulus are about to stop, and the GOP senators
are about to be emasculated. They’ve deliberately kept GOP organizations
weak, which will boomerang on them when they lose their majority status, and
have no organizations to fall back on.
2) Meetings should be
"working" meetings, not just a soapbox for the disaffected or a
"meet and greet" disguised as a campaign event for some would-be
candidates. Aspiring candidates will benefit, but without mastering
the mechanics of a campaign, little progress will be made .
3) Should be envisioned
as a kind of "club of clubs" with a long term agenda to research new
ideas and keep coordination alive; in this way this working group can also
serve as the "czar" or as the locus for placing a "czar".
4) Where is
everybody from? What leadership and clubs do we have at our
disposal? We should map and quantify all the clubs and groups
to determine what strengths we have and what we're missing. Definite need for a follow up with the Clubs.
5) One of the first subcommittees this group should set up
is an Issues Committee to research and find those local issues that will
galvanize our support. In the club-of-clubs model, this is exactly what
we use those feet on the ground for. I know the issues in Bay Ridge
(re-zoning, parking, express bus service) but I haven't a clue what people care
about in, say, Rockaway. But those in Rockaway do! We just
have to get folks to do the research and then write it down and share it with
others. Then we can have candidates who know everything that's going on
in the entire city!
4. Develop a Common Set of Political
Themes to Better Hone the NY GOP Message
A caucus of representatives from key groups should
periodically sit down and hammer out common themes and principles around which
our efforts to find and run suitable candidates can be based, given that there
are various factions within the GOP, e.g., social conservatives, fiscal
conservatives, libertarian conservatives.
Pros: This will help craft a common Republican message while
fostering continued dialogue and increased cooperation.
Cons: Finding consensus and amity may prove elusive; the increased
sense of division that could result may actually work against greater
cooperation, driving us farther apart.
Comments:
1) Without a
platform, we have no message. Without a message, why are we wasting our
time?
5. Introduce a Goal Setting Process
Real organizations advance based on attention to the future.
This means thinking strategically and knowing how to set goals. Setting goals
also means monitoring them. The NY GOP ought to have a goal-setting mechanism
that captures input from all levels of its hierarchy and reshapes the needs
identified into doable goals. Such goals should then be set on an annual basis
(e.g., increase the number of local candidacies, target critical races, etc.)
and then the organization should set itself key tasks needed to make
the goals happen. Assessment each year of past goals should be relied
on to help the party gauge its successes and failures. The current system is too hit and miss, too focused on pointless fund
raisers and dinners with little or no attention to systematic thinking and goal
driven activities.
Pros: Would modernize the current party apparatus.
Cons: No organization now in place that is equipped to
operate in this way.
Comments:
1) Goal setting is very
good, in theory but its not happening.
2) Every district must
aim to have a candidate in every race.
3) It's wasteful to run
candidates in every race just to run them; better to target races that are
winnable. But then we have to be serious about winning and find ways of
developing the resources and support to win.
3.1 - Need to build a
petition carrying capacity since that is the currency of local politics. People
often don't like to do it but without that you can't get people's names on
ballots.
3.1a -
Petitioning should be planned early
and petitioning efforts ramped up the first few days of the
process. Invariably, there are problems and the final few days
become a fire drill. The result is that people get worn out by
July. Also, if a candidate has a primary, that candidate is at a great
disadvantage. The standard advice needs to be repeated, because there are
few repeat candidates. A campaign that has to spend its capital on petitioning
(paying carriers-witnesses, extensive legal costs including transcripts, etc.)
is at a vast disadvantage if there's a primary.
3.2 - Along with petition
carrying comes the issue of legal challenges; need a resource for handling, as
these can get quite costly and time consuming, thus scaring off candidates and
clubs from taking action.
3.2a - Need to find
ways to support this highly technical side of the process; need experts in the
field and attorneys with political experience. Primaries may not be avoidable
and, indeed, sometimes may be better than not having them as they engage the
rank and file and energize party members. But they do demand financial,
legal and technical resources.
4) An important goal is
registering new Republican voters; need to develop a broad initiative to
accomplish this systematically rather than as is currently done, hit or miss.
5) A frequently forgotten
goal is the one of inclusion. We need to reach out to a broad range of voters
including those in communities that have historically not been comfortable with
the GOP agenda or voted the GOP ticket. You can't grow a party by remaining insular
and inward turning. We need candidates from all groups and a message that
resonates with everyone.
___________________________________________________________________________
6. Develop a Comprehensive Candidate
Recruitment Strategy
Currently local groups are on their own when it comes
to fielding candidates and many aren't up to the job of finding the kinds of
candidates who can run and win . . . or finding candidates at all. In some
boroughs there isn't even any substantial interest at the county level in
developing and supporting candidates. Proposal is to start an annual
centralized process to find, vet and support good candidates around the
city.
Pros: This fills a critical gap.
Cons: No one in place to do it; could make candidate selection less
responsive to local needs and interests. Can't work without a
larger candidate support system in place.
Comments:
1) Candidate recruitment
is a very good idea, although the organization should be able to
deliver more to candidates than signed petitions!
7. Develop Fundraising System
to Support Candidacies
A database of donors and a candidates' book should be
developed and updated periodically and a coordinated effort to garner support
for candidates should be undertaken based on this. If candidate A is running in
district B and is underfunded, then it is not
impossible he or she might find needed fiscal support in other districts
interested in his or her success at the polls. Right now there is no
comprehensive and systematic way to access this kind of opportunity.
Pros: Can vastly increase support of underfunded
candidacies and thus our chances of winning elections.
Cons: A lot of work required to develop and
maintain; no one is currently in place to do it.
Comments:
1) The National GOP
already is doing this effectively in N.Y. To get started, we can acquire
their lists, if the leadership doesn’t interfere.
2) Individual candidates
won't share lists. If they do, others may overuse them (in their eyes
anyway) and ruin them for whoever first got them (i.e., if someone has
only $50/yr to give and they had been giving all $50 to that candidate, now
they'll give $25 to the new candidate and only $25 to the original
candidate). What we need is to research the major donors that give to national
races (Bush). That info is avail online. Also, it would be great it
we could get a former candidate who raised a lot of money to give us his/her list.
8. Develop
Statistics on voting patterns available to local districts
tend to be difficult to access while no one seems to be looking at these
demographics on a wider scale with an eye toward shaping election
strategies. We need a centralized and coordinated capability for
systematically capturing and analyzing this kind of information to support
local and area-wide decision making.
Pros: Fills a critical gap.
Cons: No one in place to do this; expensive to set up and maintain as
will require not only manpower but some real computer capacity.
Comments:
1) You can purchase
access to commercial databases of voters, which are kept current, and have much
more information than voter registration (such as magazine subscriptions,
etc.) There are GOP experts here in NYC who would be happy to come to
9. Create a Web-based Open Forum
Develop and build an on-line site to which people can come
to find the latest information about what's going on in our district
organizations.
Many people don't like to be bothered by reading and typing
and will wait for meetings. But in today's world things move much faster than
they used to and, if we want to keep up, information technology, particularly
internet capability, is invaluable. But it's not enough to have a website,
though that's a start. What's being proposed here is a an interactive site
where people from all over the city and beyond can come and post ideas and
learn about what's going on and what others are thinking. This doesn't
eliminate the need for meetings but can be a valuable
resource in making meetings more productive because people will be further
along on the curve when they actually sit down to discuss things.
Moreover, this can help put an end to the isolation which has become the bane
of Republican Party efforts in recent years.
Pros: This has the advantage of institutionalizing and broadening
what we are doing now (discussing on-line the things that need doing instead of
waiting from meeting to meeting).
Cons: This is likely to be somewhat expensive to undertake and will
involve finding and using committed people with the skills to set up and
maintain such a site. Further, there is the risk that this could increase
inter-district friction between competing groups and/or that information which
should never be posted for public consumption would find its way onto this
website. (Controls for that would have to be built in.)
Comments:
1) Interactive Website: A great idea. Restrict access to more
sensitive chat rooms and web pages to people willing to sign up and give up
some personal information for the privilege, and run promotions, also
encouraging participants to give up their personal information to create
lists. Michael Benjamin has already done this with SaveNewYork.org.
1.1 - Develop and implement a blog
(the next generation beyond listservs) to allow for
on-line discussion and dialogue.
2) Have to be careful this kind of thing doesn't replace in-person
activities since there are some things that can't be done except
eyeball-to-eyeball.
In
It has been proposed that the county leadership group be
restructured as a pyramid of caucuses, beginning at the club level, moving
up to the districts and then on to county. Clubs can be formed in different
districts which can then support district leaders through volunteers to man
phones, stuff envelopes, fill out papers, etc., and by remittance of a part of
their dues; the district leaders in their turn can then call on their various
club members to man and support the county level office through voluntary
efforts in the same way. There's no reason for a county office to sit empty for
weeks on end and for phone calls to go unanswered.
Pros: This will serve to immediately revitalize sleepy
county organizations and give them some muscle to start becoming proactive
again, which is what they're supposed to do.
Cons: County leaders may perceive this as threatening, preferring to
man their offices with their own loyal supporters, even if this leaves their
office undermanned and underinvolved in the business
of
2) The first task is to take
over the organization, dump leadership that’s selfish, get the party united,
stop backstabbing each other (backstabbers should get dumped), and get to work
building the party. Effective political organizations care about the
communities they strive to represent. I don’t see that grassroots
commitment here yet .
2.1 - Becoming the
establishment: Every county is divided into ADs,
which are further divided into EDs. Each of
these has representation in the
2.1a - In
the Rockaway area, there appear to be 96 ED representatives, two in each ED
(one male, one female). Of these 96, it looks like only five actually reside in
Rockaway! All the rest are residents of other areas. How can a district be
represented by people who don't even live there?