Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 13, 1990 TAG: 9005130197
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROB EURE POLITICAL WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Recent revelations that the party has essentially operated its finances out of a shoebox have thrown Republicans into a frenzy of infighting that stands to cripple fund-raising and destroy Republicans' credibility as the state's minority party.
Moreover, the Republicans can no longer lay claim to being the party of fiscal responsibility - not while they still owe the bank more than $100,000 on loans used to pay back taxes.
"They don't seem content with losing. They seem bent on self-destruction," said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. "The Republican Party is not dead, but over the course of the last decade it has nearly disintegrated. Everyone ought to be concerned, because we no longer have a functional opposition party."
Al Cramer, a Culpeper physician who chaired the party in the early 1980s, said, "The Republican Party of Virginia doesn't even have a philosophy right now, unless it's this anti-abortion stuff, and they'll get the hell beat out of them with that.
"I wouldn't send them any money now," Cramer said.
The question has become not what the Republican Party is doing wrong, but what is it doing right.
Failure to elect a statewide candidate for a decade has left the party without a titular head and shifted more responsibility to the party's leaders and professional staff. With the staff's performance discredited, the crisis cannot be blamed on a candidate or on a philosophical split.
"The state party headquarters and leadership ought to be the focal point of politics for the party out of power," said Jeff Gregson, a former GOP executive director. "Right now, they are the laughingstock of political parties. The party has become a nonentity."
Despite what appears to be a strong resolve within the Republican leadership to stay in power and keep Don Huffman of Roanoke as chairman, some key leaders are growing restive awaiting the resignation of those responsible for the party's financial troubles.
Wiley Mitchell, a former state senator from Alexandria who now lives in Virginia Beach, said turnover may be inevitable as contributions dry up.
"The average contributor is going to be reluctant to send his money to the Internal Revenue Service via the Republican Party of Virginia," Mitchell said.
"I've been hoping the proper firings and resignations would come. But it doesn't appear that will happen without pressure," said Del. Frank Hargrove of Hanover, chairman of the caucus representing 49 Republican state legislators. "The caucus is not dormant on this."
Several sources said the caucus was searching for an agreeable candidate to succeed Huffman. The group then plans to confront Huffman with a demand that he resign.
The current crisis arose when an internal audit was leaked detailing how the party has operated with only the most rudimentary accounting procedures and piled up $170,000 in back taxes, interest and penalties in 1987 and 1988. The report was especially critical of Huffman, executive director Joe Elton and treasurer William Hurd, each of whom has condemned the report as flawed and the work of malcontents.
Huffman, who has said repeatedly he would resign if a majority on the central committee wants it, is one of those who signed a bank loan last year to pay part of the back taxes and penalties owed to the federal government. No one seems eager to step up and assume responsibility for the debt.
Moreover, the central committee appears to be so split among various old ideological lines that no single group has enough votes to install a new chairman. And no group appears hungry for a fight it cannot win.
"Republicans like nothing more than fratricide, and there could be nothing worse for the party right now," said Mark Strand, a member of the central committee and a press aide to Rep. Stan Parris of Fairfax. "I think the various factions respect Don Huffman as a genuinely neutral chairman."
Translated, Strand means that the Parris contingent, which includes much of the conservative wing of the party, does not have the votes to win a power stuggle to install its own chairman and would prefer to wait until it does.
Still, last week brought more signs that many in the party feel they need to start over with new leadership.
"They've got to do something overt," said former 6th District Congressman Caldwell Butler of Roanoke. "They've got to fire Elton; don't let him resign, but fire him outright. And fire Hurd, too. And if Huffman wants to stay in, well, that's too bad."
Butler lamented that "nobody has the grace to just resign anymore." He said Huffman "is not going to repair" the damage in the party at this point.
John Alderson, who ran Ronald Reagan's 1980 and 1984 presidential campaigns in Virginia, said Republicans must "not by words but by act" move to "re-establish our credibility. We are in danger of seeing our minority position become meaningless," he said.
There could hardly be a better example of the paralysis gripping the Republicans now than their silence on the controversy surrounding money left over from Gov. Douglas Wilder's inaugural fund. Wilder refused to say how much he has in the account and what he plans to use it for, because he is not required to do either by state law.
But Republicans cannot criticize Wilder's slush fund when they have red ink all over their own ledger books.
Butler and former Gov. Linwood Holton, who broke nearly a century of Democratic domination of Virginia politics with his election as governor in 1969, urged the party to turn to its stable of winners - the legislative caucus - for leadership.
"The elected members of the General Assembly, who understand the process of going to the polls and getting elected really do need to take a stronger leadership role," Holton said.
"I don't think the state central committee has the vaguest idea of how to win elections," Butler said.
Although legislators provided the bright spot in the party in the 1980s, increasing their numbers from about 30 to 49, relations between the party and the caucus have been strained in recent years. Legislators were turned down several years ago when they made a move to increase the number of slots they have on the central committee.
The latest snafu has increased the tension at the Obenshain Center, where the party and caucus are headquartered in Richmond.
"We draw distinct lines between ourselves and the party," Hargrove said. "The party is not really representative of the caucus attitude. We run a tight ship, and we get Republicans elected."
That could almost serve as the pitch that caucus fund-raisers are making to Republican contributors at the moment. Hargrove said the caucus is receiving money from "people who previously have only donated to the party."
If efforts to force Huffman, Hurd and Elton to resign do not succeed quickly, a drop in contributions could. A money crisis brought Huffman to the chair in December 1983, when several of the party's chief fund-raisers withheld contributions until Cramer resigned.
Internal warfare is nothing new among state Republicans. Squabbling over nominations and electoral defeats or between moderates and conservatives have become common in the past 12 years.
The electoral setbacks suffered by the state GOP in recent years have served to weaken the party. While Republican presidential candidates win with Virginia voters, the state party has thrice been swept by Democrats for the top three jobs in state government. In 1981, when Charles Robb began the Democratic roll with his gubernatorial bid, Republicans held 10 of the 12 seats in the U.S. House and Senate. The non-Republican senator was Harry Byrd Jr., that body's only independent member. The sole Democratic congressman was Dan Daniel of Danville, possibly the most conservative and Republican-voting Democrat in Washington.
Now Democrats have five of the 10 seats in the House, and none of the Democratic incumbents has drawn opposition this year.
In 1988, Robb captured a formerly Republican Senate seat in what was undoubtedly the Republican's most embarrassing race of the decade. Maurice Dawkins, a preacher who had no previous elective experience, mustered less than 29 percent of the vote.
Sabato said the Republicans appear as weak now as they did in the 1950s and early 1960s, when the party struggled to overcome the Democratic machine built by former Gov. Harry Byrd. "They were losing everything then, but the difference was they still had an upbeat attitude. Now, they don't."
by CNB