2007 Maryland GOP Spring Convention

Over the weekend I had the pleasure of attending the 2007 Spring convention of the Maryland Republican Party. Unlike the Fall 2006 meeting, which reflected some of the bitterness and rancor of the then-recent electoral defeats, this time we had more of a forward focus.

As one may expect, people representing the men regarded as the top three Presidential contenders on the Republican side were out in force. After I checked into the hotel and started off to my room, I noticed this:

Very elegant and understated, and a bit surprising with all of the “millennial generation” help he had secured via the Maryland Republican Youth Coalition. But around the corner I saw the Romney room.

All of this had to wait though because first on the schedule was the state Executive Committee meeting. Because our Chair, John Bartkovich, had a previous engagement and could not attend, the honor fell to our Vice Chair, Dave Parker. Parker definitely was a multitasker during this convention, because he also served on the By-Laws Committee and the Credentials Committee. He was one busy guy, and my hat’s off to him.

I sat in on this meeting as a guest. Many of the reports would be repeated during the general meeting on Saturday morning, but there were some highlights.

State party leader James Pelura was pretty upbeat and optimistic in our view, looking at some of the recent issues the party has suffered as “bumps in the road” but also talking about a number of achievements that have occurred during his brief tenure. I tend to agree that, at least by reputation of his predecessor, Pelura has made an excellent effort to listen to the local party leaders and get out the party’s side on the issues via the information superhighway. I get an e-mail update daily.

Pelura continued that the party must be the “voice of reason” and that the “madness in Annapolis is being noticed by the voters.” For my part, I intend to continue to hold the Democrats’ and Governor O’Malley’s collective feet to the fire.

We also heard from other speakers that the goal of this convention was to be a “training” convention, and a couple successes were recounted, particularly with the General Assembly adopting “Jessica’s Law.” As it turned out, we got more of a legislative lowdown in the breakfast session Saturday morning, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Once the meeting was concluded, the various hospitality suites opened up. Because of the nature of this convention (no party elections), the number of suites was down from the fall version. The host county, Anne Arundel, opted not to have their suite but PG County did, with karaoke as an added bonus. (They also had the best food.) Another group I’d not heard of previously, an outfit called Republican Rapid Responders, also had a small suite. Their main purpose at the convention was to plug their 2007 Speaker Series, which kicks off Tuesday night with House Minority Leader John Boehner as the guest speaker. (Particulars are noted on their website.)

But the McCain and Romney suites were where most of the action centered. I stopped by each and chatted up some old friends plus a few new ones. I also did sort of a mini-poll of the various suites and how much interest was generated by each.

Here’s a picture of the McCain suite I took at 8:55 p.m. By this point the executive session that the chairs had to attend had wound down, but you can see there wasn’t a whole lot of interest or buzz with the attendees.

One minute later I walked around the corner and snapped this shot looking into the Mitt Romney suite. In the shot below, it was 9:15 p.m. and probably about the peak time as far as suite attendance went. Both of these were wrapped up about 10:00 or so.

It’s also interesting to note that during the week prior I had a message left on my voice mail inviting me to the McCain suite, but Romney’s campaign sent me a direct mail invitation with the imprimatur of our two RNC representatives from Maryland, Louis Pope and Joyce Lyons Terhes. I’d be led to assume they are on board with the Romney campaign.

And I guess not everyone was in favor of McCain being the nominee:

So things wound down as the evening grew later, and as I noted I caught up with old friends and chatted up new ones. One man I met was Andrew Harris, whose campaign for Congress I remarked on last week. As promised, he was checking out his support base at the convention. Now, go check out the article and then look at the picture below:

Scary, huh? Well, one of the people I ran into in Annapolis was Dustin Mills. Obviously he read my website and, whether by design or coincidence, that slogan was on these stickers. I also saw current Congressman Gilchrest working the crowd Friday night. From what I was told by two different people, this was the first time they recalled Gilchrest being at the convention. Whether true or not, it obviously shows he’s concerned about his base.

We started Saturday with breakfast, of course. The featured speakers for breakfast were the two Maryland GOP legislative leaders, Senator David Brinkley and Delegate Tony O’Donnell.

Both of these speakers noted that day’s Washington Times article where Governor O’Malley is now shifting the blame for his pending tax increases to mismanagement during Governor Ehrlich’s tenure. Brinkley added that the Democrats were governing as if they had a “mandate” to increase spending, when no such thing existed. Further, Brinkley also derided the O’Malley administration for firing more political appointee employees from the Ehrlich era than Ehrlich was accused of firing during the year-long hearings on the case.

O’Donnell hit on several of the same themes but added that, with the Times article it was clear that O’Malley was “conditioning Marylanders for massive tax increases,” and that he should get no free passes for it.

You may wonder if the so-called frontrunner for the nomination, Rudy Giuliani, was represented. Well, he didn’t have a suite in his name, but his campaign came to the Saturday portion of the convention loaded for bear, with this table full of campaign items.

After breakfast was finished, we returned to the convention hall. It was set up just a little differently this time.

As I noted earlier, several of the speakers for the main convention session already spoke during the Executive Committee meeting. While most of his content was the same, I noticed Chairman Pelura also spent a bit more time pointing to our legislative successes, with Jessica’s Law being strengthened, in-state tuition for illegal immigrants being stopped, and the paper trail for voting deemed as victories. Our RNC representatives, Joyce Terhes and Louis Pope, spent their time at the podium hammering on national issues, particularly the immigration bill. Terhes described the “Z-visa” as “amnesty” while Pope said it was “not fair to those waiting in line.” They also declared that the time was now to pick a Presidential candidate and work with them.

Also, we had an addition to the agenda as State Sen. Janet Greenip asked to say a few words about the early voting bill that will be on the November, 2008 ballot. She had handed out a flyer discussing the bill and its problems, which are many. Personally, I think it should be called the “Early and Often” voting bill, or just the “Invitation to Fraud” act – so you already know how I’ll be voting on it come 18 months from now.

We also did a little bit of party business, as three resolutions were passed at the affair. Two of them were pretty basic and straightforward and passed without much issue. The third, which had to do with voting on the Executive Committee, survived an attempt led by Montgomery County to table it. In the revised system, the Eastern Shore goes from partial votes for each county to a full vote for each, so obviously we were in favor of it. Vice-chairs also get a vote for the first time under our new system.

Because we overshot our scheduled time slot, we only had one training session afterward. I chose to attend the communications session hosted by RNC press secretary Summer Johnson. It was helpful to hear how things were done insofar as dealing with the media goes. But while maybe paranoid isn’t quite the right word, I almost think that the relationship between us and certain members of the press is too adversarial. Obviously when dealing with the New York Times or Washington Post we need to be on our guard but I’m not sure we need to be as wary of local papers. Just my view on things; of course, I like to think that as a journalist I’m pretty straight up. I have my opinions but it’s also clear where I stand. We did have a little bit of discussion on blogs and websites, and I found out that there’s 12 million of us writing them – a number that’s doubled in the last 2 years. Well, hopefully I’m in the top million. I did learn a tip and actually I’ve noticed Joe Albero using it as well, so maybe I’ll begin to do it myself.

The final event of our convention was the luncheon and awards ceremony, with keynote speaker former Lieutenant Governor and now GOPAC Chair and FOX News commentator Michael Steele. (Sounds better with the extra two job descriptions, doesn’t it?)

I got a couple shots in, they’re a bit dark because of the room. Two others I didn’t use because of how they turned out.

Michael made several points during the speech, which had a theme of overcoming adversity. He compared struggles he faced during his life and his recent election loss to those facing our party as we move forward into the 2008 and 2010 election cycles. But he also stated that the “Steele theory” about the 2006 election debacle was that we strayed from our principles that got us elected in 1994 – an “inability to honor our commitment.” He also took Democrats in Annapolis to task, remarking that “raising taxes is not the way to govern,” and that Republicans need to “convince people we don’t bite” but bite back when our opponents speak falsely of us. We need to stand for what is right, but call them on their “lies.”

He concluded by stating that we need to build a “farm team” for 2008 and 2010, and come ready to play. It was our generation’s job to cultivate our future American leaders.

I was sort of surprised to see someone lurking in the back of the room taking notes (besides me.) It would be my guess that this someone was Tom LoBianco of the Washington Times because there’s an article about Steele’s speech in today’s paper.

Finally, there were awards given out for excellence in the Republican Party. While all of the award recipients are worthy, I wanted to extend my congratulations to our cohorts in Worcester County, which was selected as the outstanding Republican county in the state of Maryland. They were the only county in the state that retained a higher percentage of Ehrlich voters from 2002 to 2006 than we did here in Wicomico, and ranked second in the state in improving GOP voter registration behind (surprisingly) Baltimore City. So a tip of the hat goes to our friends on the ocean.