Rift makes party look bad

The News Virginian / News Virginian
Published: April 11, 2008

As lapses of lucidity go, the one on display Thursday night in the Augusta County Government Center was substantially more intriguing than most. Undaunted by democratic spirit in the lower-case sense and the sentiments of 141 party souls who voted against him, county Republican Committee Chairman Kurt Michael appeared to play with stunning clarity the part of vanquished lover stubbornly refusing to accept his beau's desire to part ways.

But, alas, the picture is murkier than appearances might indicate.

Larry Roller, the challenger to Michael's county GOP throne, captured 58 percent of the vote for party chairman, which by most rudimentary calculations equates to a majority. Apparently conceding as much, Michael opted for a course logical in the upper-case, Democratic sense. After all but two Roller backers left the building, Michael orchestrated a second vote, based on the rationale that meeting rules had not been properly established. The results were considerably more to Michael's liking. He won by a count of 57-2.

Confusion settles like a dense mountain fog on the point of the rules. Last month, the committee agreed to hold the chairman vote by magisterial caucus, with votes being cast by district delegates in a fashion similar to state delegates in a presidential election. Similar to the thinking behind the electoral college, which seeks to ensure equal strength of voice among population centers and rural regions, the ostensible aim was to prevent large districts, with well-organized cadres of voters, from seizing control of the chairman election.

Of course, there is an intensely political nature to these politics as unusual. The confrontation Thursday was not one between Michael and his challenger, but between Michael and state Sen. Emmett Hanger, sudden rivals who have waded neck-deep into acrimony over the past year.

The anticipation that Hanger could corral a sufficient number of allies to topple Michael in a popular vote likely drove the push to switch to a delegate format. Sensing the improved chances for Michael under the delegate format, his opponents backed a last-minute return to the popular vote, precipitating Roller's apparent victory.

Thus emerge two principal questions, the first the most salient - who precisely is in charge here- And, since when is the Florida election debacle a model for county Republican politics- The state GOP, which is investigating the matter, assuredly will focus its energies on the first question and leave the rest of us to ponder the second.

The chorus of disharmony within the once placid county party emanates from last spring's primary, when Hanger staved off a surprising challenge from Scott Sayre, a virulent anti-tax candidate. Ridding the South River of mercury would be sooner accomplished than cleansing the party residue from that bitter campaign.

Michael led a wave of local power players aligned in support of Sayre as an anti-tax tide swept over the party. Hanger, whose support of a sales tax increase particularly spurred the ire of some among the party base, scarcely veiled a feeling of betrayal beneath the veneer of country cordiality. With Michael's position up for grabs, Hanger and his backers gathered a cadre of challengers, Hanger's wife among them. Their support finally coalesced behind Roller for Thursday's vote.

Sadly lost amid the comedy of the mass-hysteria meeting and the sound of guffaws that event engendered is a philosophical discussion well worth having over what it now means to be a Republican and a conservative. How to structure taxes - a subject about which Hanger is passionate - is a question that desperately needs further consideration.

Instead, just as Republicans at the top of the statewide ticket have maneuvered to unify in pursuit of victory next year - a process that included Hanger surrendering his ambition to become lieutenant governor - the local GOP has plunged into a depth of chaos equal parts laughable and pathetic.

Whatever Michael's point might have been, and we do not dispute that he had one, in backing Sayre's challenge, it appears to have been cast aside in pursuit of power over principle. Rarely is the truth so obvious, at least in the realm of rational thought, as it is in this case. Neither the cause of conservatism nor that of representative democracy is served by Thursday's debacle. Both sides wear a stain of pettiness that won't soon be washed away.