GOP’s County-Level Leadership to Blame for Party’s Losses

The November election was the latest of many Republican nightmares. The blame for the loss of the California governor’s seat and many traditional Republican congressional seats cannot be placed on the national Republican Party, but rather on the local leadership at the county levels.

Recent articles by members of the Ventura County Republican Central Committee have pointed the finger of the poor Republican election results on “platform issues,” such as education, abortion and taxes. Others blame the conflicts of Republican philosophies: liberals versus moderates versus conservatives versus the moral right wing.

I strongly disagree with the above reasoning. As a member of the Republican Central Committee at both the county and state levels, I believe that our poor showing in November can be summarized in two words: minorities and outreach.

Ventura County has a large multiethnic population. However, the county Republican Central Committee does not have an outreach program or a constructive grass-roots program that would attract minorities to the party. It is the responsibility of the Central Committee leaders to see to it that all Americans in Ventura County receive the proper contacts, communications and materials regarding the Republican Party. These leaders should be out in the minority neighborhoods and associations explaining that conservatism is not synonymous with racism, anti-welfare or anti-immigration and that the Republican Party does not embrace David Duke just as the Democratic Party does not embrace George Wallace.

As one of the two African American members of the Ventura County Central Committee, I know firsthand about the refusal of the Central Committee to break up its “Anglo-Saxon country club” atmosphere. However difficult it is for the Central Committee to comprehend the importance of a strong and aggressive outreach program, it will have no choice but to do so because the minorities will be the majority in Ventura County by 2006.

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The local Republican leadership either does not know or has forgotten the very foundation on which the party was built as it relates to minorities and African Americans in particular. The Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln the emancipator and Frederick Douglass the abolitionist. The party’s birth and black emancipation were sufficient to wed the Republican Party to black America. It is the party of progress, opportunity and most importantly, of inclusion.

However, the white Republicans in Ventura County have not made any effort to communicate with conservative blacks, Latinos or Asians. They have failed to support qualified minority Republican candidates through endorsements or fund-raising. The same goes for the state in general: There are no black Republicans in the California Assembly or Senate and only two Latino Republicans in the Assembly. Now, there is something wrong with that picture.

There is a minority response awaiting a Ventura County Republican stimulus, which should include:

* Issues of minority concerns consistent with the Republican Party’s philosophies of self-help, self-reliance, self-realization and self-confidence.

* Establishing networks with voluntary grass roots in the minority communities to spread the Republican philosophies and to dispel the lie that conservatism is synonymous with racism.

* Establishing viable local registering and recruiting units.

* Including minority Republicans in policymaking committees at all levels.

Ventura County can become the model for GOP inclusion by implementing the above points. However, the first step must begin with county leaders taking an honest and objective look at themselves.