Rnc Chair Race: Hakuna Macaca?

RNC Chair candidate Saul Anuzis may not be thrilled with the recent endorsement by Dick Wadhams, Chair of the Colorado Republican Party. Certainly it's not the path to building a winning coalition.

In the crucial race for RNC Chair to be decided on Friday, the speculation has now focused on four candidates -- incumbent RNC Chair Mike Duncan, former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele, South Carolina RNC Chair Katon Dawson, and Michigan GOP Chair Saul Anuzis. Yesterday, Colorado GOP Chair Dick Wadhams endorsed Anuzis--an endorsement which may be more damaging to Anuzis than helpful.

Wadhams, a former top staffer to former Senator George Allen, is perhaps best known for managing Allen's 2006 campaign which was marred by Allen's "macaca" outburst to an opposition videographer (and by Allen's inabilty to respond to or deal with the charge, which destroyed his campaign). Wadhams has been party chair in Colorado since 2007 and while serving as chair was also managing Bob Schaffer's losing Senate campaign, in which Schaffer managed only 42.5% of the vote,

The GOP has taken sharp hits in Colorado recently. While it was never solidly Republican thanks to Denver and the suburbs, in this decade, the party has gone from a Republican governor and two Republican Senators to a Democratic sweep in those offices and only two GOP House members.

Admittedly, Wadhams has only been in charge for less than two years, but the party did poorly all across the board last year. Given that the "Official State GOP Blog" (elsewhere on the site described as "Chairman Wadham's blog") at www.cologop.org has a grand total of three entries for January, it seems that new media isn't really a priority for Wadhams in a state that by one measure ranks third in high tech.

The Colorado Front Range, like Northern Virginia, the Research Triangle of North Carolina, and suburban St. Louis, is a bellwether area that should be reliably Republican and will have to be once again if we are to build a new majority. Right now, in Colorado at least, we're getting creamed, so we probably can't take Wadham's endorsement of Anuzis as the path to build a winning coalition.