When it comes to this year’s internal GOP political contests, you don’t have more of a marquee match-up than Speaker of the House William Howell v. former chairman of the Stafford County Board of Supervisors, Susan Stimpson.
The race for the GOP nomination in House District 28 has been characterized as a battle between “The Establishment” ™ and “conservatives.”
While this serves as backdrop, one of the most important elements of these intra-party squabbles is the sincerity of the party apparatus to remain at least moderately neutral. This has not remained the case here.
Eric Herr, chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia’s First Congressional District Campaign Committee, has been clear in his support for Stimpson for some time. And while I disagree with him being so public with his support, he can probably justify it because his district committee is not responsible for managing this nomination contest.
But Steve Albertson is a bit of a different story.
Steve not only runs the political website “The Bull Elephant,” which also covers Virginia politics from a right-of-center perspective, but, most importantly, he is chairman of the Stafford County Republican Party.
And at a recent candidate forum in White Oak, Albertson was seen to be publicly supporting Stimpson – which is newsworthy because of Albertson’s roles on TBE and within the GOP.
From a blogger’s perspective, I personally feel that it’s important to cover politics with an open mind, balanced approach and a degree of impartiality (at least when it comes to the participants). I think I owe that to you as readers.
This certainly doesn’t mean I don’t have my biases, but that comes through in my writing and is generally disclosed (if germane).
I reached out to Steve and he tells me that he is indeed endorsing Stimpson.
“I do plan to note this support on TBE so that people can take that into account when reading anything I have written, or will write, about this race,” said Albertson.
This is important because Steve has been especially critical of Howell on his site.
Steve also tells me that he is not endorsing in his official capacity as Stafford GOP unit chair and he disagrees with my thoughts that there should be a degree of neutrality form the party.
“Not sure why you would say there is an expectation of neutrality, particularly when acting in my personal capacity–not on behalf of the Stafford GOP–and in an election in which the Party has no role in operating the mechanics of the election,” he writes to me in an email.
Perhaps that’s the case, but other units think differently.
“In Virginia Beach our party bylaws prohibit me as the chairman from endorsing a candidate if they both are members of our party,” wrote Ken Longo, chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia Beach, in an email to me this morning. “My personal feelings are that no sitting unit chairman should endorse a candidate if they are both members of their local party.”
And that’s not just limited to Virginia Beach.
Both Brian Schoeneman and I served on our respective unit executive committees and the expectation both in Fairfax County and Chesapeake was for the party to keep the process fair, if it’s party run, or otherwise get out of the way.
“One of the things you generally give up when you get a party office is the ability to pick a side in nomination contests. We were always asked not to endorse anything when I was on FCRC exec committee,” Brian wrote to me.
I also share that same assessment from my time on the Chesapeake committee.
And it should be noted that the RPV party plan explicitly prohibits unit committees from endorsing. This, to a certain extent, serves to curtail endorsements from executive committee leaders as they generally do not want there to be a perceived unit endorsement from those who perhaps don’t follow politics as closely.
However, apparently this idea of party impartiality does not spread to this campaign.
“I join First District Chairman Eric Herr (the person with whom I’m speaking in the photo, also with a Stimpson sticker), Fredericksburg GOP Chairman Michael Hirsch (seated to my right off camera with a Stimpson sticker) and Spotsylvania GOP Chairman David Ross in supporting Susan Stimpson. I should also note that there were elected Republican officials at the same forum wearing stickers from each side, and we all got along as friends,” Steve wrote.
While it’s good that Steve thinks everyone is going to remain on friendly terms, I do have to wonder how things would have worked out had any of those chairman – not electeds – endorsed Howell? I also wonder if the general public is ever going to think that the party can ever be trusted in future years to run a fair process given that there is now a known bias?
Update: In an interesting development, Stimpson endorses Howell? Not really, but the Howell campaign is pretty pleased with their new video:
