The votes have been tallied and analyzed and former television news anchor Susan Hutchison has taken in NW Daily Marker’s informal online candidate preference straw poll of the race for Washington State Republican Party Chair.
Of 644 votes cast between 9:50 a.m. Wednesday and midnight Thursday when the survey was closed, Hutchison received 222 votes, 34.5% of all votes cast, to top the list of preferred candidates among respondents.
Not surprising to anyone who has watched the groundswell, Clark County Republican operative Christian Berrigan was the second-highest vote-getter with 159 votes (24.7%). Berrigan began the race with primarily Clark County support but has since increased his backing from libertarians.
Current WSRP interim-Chair Luanne Van Werven – whose campaign for the seat has generated a steady stream of key endorsements among voting delegates to the state committee, and who Republican insiders say has lined up the votes she needs to win when members conduct the real vote this Saturday in Spokane – made a third place showing with 122 votes (18.9%).
Rounding out the results among the seven candidates: Grays Harbor State Committeeman James Walsh earned a fourth place finish with 90 votes (14%), state Sen. Pam Roach took 48 votes (7.5%), former state Sen. Lawrence Faulk received 3 votes (0.5%) and Benton County Precinct Committee Officer Lloyd Becker received no votes.
The straw poll was not scientific and so a true margin of error cannot be calculated.
People just don’t trust the GOP.
And the GOP hasn’t given us any reason nationally to trust them. And at the state level they continue to punch us in the gut.
We will not come back if the current state GOP is run by the members of the Mainstream Republicans of the State of Washington. You will continue to lose no matter how slick your tech might become.
You have to bring back trust. And after last year and the dirty tricks of last year, it’s not going to be easy, if it’s even possible.
I quite honestly think the GOP is a sinking ship. But if you want it to sink further just get someone in who things “the message just wasn’t High Tech enough”. Actually having it be just more milk toast but “Flashier” or “More Techikey” will just further erode people’s trust.
Give us a reason to trust you first. I don’t even know how you are going to do that but without that reason, we won’t come back.
Van Werven: “The simple truth is Obama’s machine hammered us on the tech front in 2012″ Vows to do better w. RNC help.”
That person has no idea why we lost in 2012. We had a base that felt disenfranchised from their own party. In fact if the party establishment wins (which I assume they will) they will totally be defeated.
I have conservative friends, friends who have voted Republican for years, who I can’t use the word “GOP” anymore for it makes them so angry.
It’s not a tech problem. It’s a spine problem. If they don’t understand that then you can county out 2014 regardless of who becomes chair.
But then again, anyone but Susan Hutchison would further disenfranchise the base. They all seem too “connected” and that is exactly not what will energize the grassroots, which will be difficult enough to energize considering all that is going on in with Boehner selling us all out.
Perhaps Christian Berrigan as she doesn’t have the baggage Hutchison has from her King County run, and she might be able to pull in libertarians. But it be hard to get the grassroots back after the generation of betrayals and sleazy tactics that the party elite has done against them most recently suppressing the vote in the caucuses last year by scheduling meeting places they knew were too small and in one case even talking over the meeting from the elected chair. For the grassroots to return there’s got to be seen some change in that regard.
If they don’t realize that the reason they lost was because the grassroots finally (after a long time coming) totally rejected the Republican Party as something to support they are going to continue to lose. Former generations might have voted for the “lesser of two evils”. But no more. We have seen “where they will go”. They will STAY HOME.
It is going to take a lot to build back trust between the party establishment and the grassroots. If the same groups (the mainstream Republicans of the State of Washington) and the Log Cabin Republicans continue to control the state party, the grassroots will continue to stay away in droves. Many of us have indeed given up on the voting process and it is going to take something incredible to bring us back.
You have lost the people who helped you in 2010. Because of that you saw what happened in 2012. And if you don’t do something real soon, you will see what will happen in 2014. Same olde same old milk toast doesn’t cut in anymore.
I fear that if we see Susan Hutchison step into that position she might “live long enough to become the enemy”. After all I wasn’t really impressed with her in her run for King County Executive. She seemed way too willing to compromise.