More than 450 attended the 4th annual Roanoke Conference at Ocean Shores over the weekend.
OCEAN SHORES, Jan. 28.—After an election that might convince Republicans they ought to stay away from sharp objects and the rooftops of tall buildings, the party faithful gathered at Ocean Shores for a weekend of commiseration and contemplation about the future of the GOP brand.
President Obama gave Republican candidate Mitt Romney a national thumping, of course. And in Washington state, although Republicans scored gains in the House and Senate, they lost all but one statewide race last election – the most painful loss being that of Attorney General Rob McKenna in his bid for governor, a candidate whom many considered the party’s best hope in years of retaking the mansion after 28 years of Democratic control. It made for a reflective tone at the fourth annual Roanoke Conference, the state’s be-there-or-be-square gathering for GOP leaders, strategists and elected officials.
“Last year we were pretty optimistic about Rob being elected, and I think for most of the people here, it was a shock that he wasn’t,” acknowledged state Republican Party Chairman Kirby Wilbur.
So giddy excitement it wasn’t, but the annual conference did provide a forum for plenty of sober talk about the party’s future. Republicans seem to own the education-reform issue, they said, and voters appear to be with them on taxes – so how come they have so much trouble winning statewide? There were the usual calls for party unity, the usual discussions about the party’ need to expand its appeal to minority voters, and the usual debates about whether Republicans ought to downplay the social issues that the other team has used as a wedge with voters, particularly those who reside within the Seattle city limits. But perhaps as significant for the direction of the party — while some 450 gathered on the coast, another meeting was taking place in Yakima of the newly formed Republican Liberty Caucus, as 170 conservative activists declared their intention to position the party firmly on the right. In Ocean Shores, the talk was about the three Es – the economy, the environment and education. In Eastern Washington, judging by press accounts, it was the three Gs – guns, God and gays.
Refresh and Regroup
State Sen. Bruce Dammeier, R-Puyallup, introduces Republican lawmakers.
The Ocean Shores gathering attracted the lions of the party – Wilbur, McKenna, former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, U.S. Reps. Jaime Herrera-Beutler and Dave Reichert, state legislators, prominent figures within Republican ranks and those known best within party circles. The speeches and the panel discussions may not have been the primary thing – just as important was the steady buzz of conversation out in the lobby of the Ocean Shores convention center, the after-hours gatherings, the networking. “I think there is work to be done in building unity,” said conference president Eric Garcia. “That’s one of our main themes. When you are beat down a little bit by the election results we saw in 2012, it is important for us to come together and move on.”
You might say another main theme was learning to smile despite the pain. The tall-rooftop line, for instance, came from Saturday-night keynote speaker Bob Herbold, former chief operating officer of Microsoft: “Stay away,” he advised. And if Republicans get really gloomy, he said there was one good thing about the election — they’ll be able to buy legal marijuana.
Problem With the Brand
The Washington Policy Center’s Todd Myers introduces a panel on the future of the party: Erik Iverson of Moore Information, Matt Walter of the Republican State Leadership Committee, Judy Yu of Washington Strategic, and 2012 legislative candidate Dixie Kolditz.
Here’s what has Republicans thinking it’s a problem with the brand, rather than a problem with ideas: McKenna lost narrowly, with 48.5 percent of the vote. And yet, on a measure that provided a key indicator of the public mood, last year’s Initiative 1185, voters said yes by a whopping 64 percent. The measure requires a tough two-thirds vote of the House and Senate in order to raise taxes, and last November’s vote marks the fifth time in the last 20 years Washington voters have approved the restriction. It was one of the puzzlers of the election: At the same time voters were making it virtually impossible for the Legislature to raise taxes, they elected a governor, Democrat Jay Inslee, who says he hopes the restriction will be overturned by the state Supreme Court.
That means 400,000 voters who voted for Inslee didn’t trust him as a steward of their tax dollars, says Randy Pepple, McKenna’s former campaign manager. If just one-eighth of those voters had changed their vote for governor, that would have put the Republican over the top. “The fundamentals still work for our party,” Pepple said. “What we need to do is to become the party of reform, and not let Democrats define us as the party of the rich. The Democrats have done a consistent job of demonizing the word Republican, just as the word liberal came to be demonized in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. We need to speak for ourselves about what being Republican means, so that those who agree with us on policy, like fiscal responsibility, like reforming education, will vote for our candidates as well.”
Another interesting stat: McKenna won everywhere but Seattle, and it was the Queen City that made all the difference. If one were to eliminate Seattle’s 7th Congressional District from the vote total, or just two legislative districts within Seattle, the 36th and the 43rd, McKenna would have won the race handily.
Matter of Messaging
Dixie Kolditz, a black House candidate who fell short in the 19th Legislative District last fall, no doubt had an uphill battle trying to unseat incumbent Dean Takko — she lost 61-39. But she told an interesting tale that seemed to get to the heart of the problem. “The moment I started talking, people went, ‘I love the message, I love everything you say – can’t you get rid of the R?’”
Erik Iverson of Moore Information said his polling firm asked Washington voters why they think the state has not elected a Republican governor since 1980. Thirty-one percent said the Republican Party has become too focused on conservative social issues. Forty percent said the party too often puts forward policies that help the rich rather than average voters and their families. “It is about economics and we are losing elections,” he said. “That is our own fault. We have better ideas on economics. We don’t have the better message.”
Speakers said Democrats have managed to take the most extreme positions advocated by some in the party and use them to brand Republicans as a whole – last year’s Democratic “war on women” campaign theme being a prime example. What’s happened is that the Ds have been allowed to define the Rs, they said. “As it relates to the principles of the Republican Party, a fundamental underlying faith in the individual and a belief in the American dream — when our principles and policies are rooted in that area, we are successful,” said Matt Walter of the Republican State Leadership Committee. “So I don’t think there needs to be wholesale change in the direction or the principles of the Republican Party. But as far as projecting that message and messengers that send it, we have a problem.”
Into Action
Translating that into action is a mite more difficult. Some suggested the party ought to decide once and for all that issues of gay rights and abortion ought to be considered settled and move on, and others bristled. One attendee called out, “When we ask Republicans why did you stay home or go to Yakima, I believe it is because we are not defending the social issues, and this is one Republican who will not be a Republican if we throw away the plank that supports life.”
Wilbur said Republicans have considerable work to do in presenting themselves as an inclusive party with room for all views on social issues, all races and genders and all socioeconomic strata – a major topic of discussion not just here but at a meeting of the Republican National Committee in Charlotte, N.C., over the weekend, which he attended. “The American dream is that message that applies to everybody,” he said. “We all want our kids to have a better world and a better life than we did. I don’t think we need a black message or an Asian message or a Latino message – we have a message that applies to all of them. We need to be better deliverers of that message.”
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