Daves state chairman, Kindley says he won't run again for his county spot
Update: Click here for Sunday's story.
Linda Daves and Charlotte will head up the North Carolina Republican Party for the next six months. She was elected by the party’s Executive Committee during a meeting in Greensboro Saturday.
For local folks, this of course means that Marcus Kindley, who heads the Guilford County GOP, didn’t get the job. (Nor did State Sen. Andrew Brock.)
Kindley said after the meeting that he wasn’t planning on running for county chairman next year. He has held the post since 2001. Six years is seen as a pretty long tenure for a county party chairman, at least around Guilford County.
When asked to be clear, would he run or would he not, Kindley said this (after the jump):
"I’m planning not to right now, unless some people tell me no, they really want me to do it."
Kindley said he also planned to run for state party chairman in the Spring when the election comes up again.
Daves is filling out the term of Ferrell Blount, who resigned the post on Election Day. Daves was his vice chairman.
From the story I’m writing tomorrow:
After the meeting, Daves said she was focused on positioning the party for the 2008 elections."I don’t feel any pressure to perform or make people like me,” she said. “The pressure I feel is to move the party forward.”
However, other party leaders say she will have about six months to win over skeptics on two fronts if she wants to keep her job. Recent press reports said that U.S. Senators Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr wanted a delay in the election so they could find a bigger fund raiser. Meanwhile, some grass roots organizers like Kindley say local party officials have been frustrated by a lack of cooperation by state party officials such as Daves, who has served as the party’s vice chairman.
Kindley said that Daves will be under “huge amounts of pressure” in the next few months.
“One of the questions I kept getting asked was, 'How much money are you going to raise over the next six months to show you can do it,’” Kindley said. “She has a very thin string she’s swinging on right now.”
For background on some of that, click here or here or here or here.
From everyone I talked to during and after the meeting (it was a hand full of folks, but not an exhaustive run through by any means) the selection of Daves was a pretty civil affair, lacking any of the personal attacks or intra-party sniping that can sometimes develop in these types of things.
Quirk of language alert: Daves insists she should be called “party chairman,” not “chairwoman.”
So what does a state party chairman do? Well, they’re the organization’s chief spokesman. In the Republican’s case, the party chairman is the senior official in the state and often called upon to voice reaction to Democratic leaders who control the House, Senate and governor. The party chairman also has some say in certain appointments to boards and commissions. They're also supposed to head up the party's fund raising efforts and organize the various levels of campaign apparatus.
As the snippet above mentions, I spoke with Daves after the meeting. Among other things, I asked her why the Republicans close their executive committee meetings and such to the press. (North Carolina Democrats typically keep their doors open to such proceedings.)
Her answer: “This was like caucus, are you going to sit in on the House caucus tomorrow?” she asked, referring to the meeting of Republican House members scheduled for Sunday. My colleague Mark Johnson of the Charlotte Observer quipped “We would if they let us.” The rest of her answer:
“This is a caucus and that is the decision we make. And you need to know, because I try to be very honest, this is a thing with your profession. We have had so many reporters come into our meetings where they go out and they slam and misrepresent and break down sentences and piece them together with something else, that if we do not let reporters in there’s a part of the responsibility there from your profession. And I’m not trying to be harsh, I’m just being honest with you. We don’t mind if anything’s reported honestly. But you get slammed but an inaccurate report long enough you say ‘Hey man, this is party business, we can close this if we want to.’ So there is level of responsibility you need to go back and talk to your coworkers.”
She then paused and asked, “You don’t like that, do you?”
My response – and I went to the tape to double-check: “I think that’s a load of hooey.”
Which is not to say that Daves isn’t a terribly nice lady (she is very gracious) or that I think she didn’t mean what she said (she seems very earnest).
But I have never found that being kept out an event improves the accuracy with which anyone reports it. It is a fabulous way for a group (any group) to control their message and spin.
And Daves is 100 percent right: it’s their party (as well as their capital-P Party) and they can keep us out if they want to.