Yet Another Unforced Error From Our RPV Chairman
Leave it to John Whitbeck to have me defending Ron Hedlund. And leave it to Ron Hedlund to have me agreeing with John Whitbeck.
For those who have not been following the latest round of manufactured political outrage on social media, 7th District State Central Committee candidate Ron Hedlund, well known for being anti-establishment before being anti-establishment was cool, has accused RPV Chairman John Whitbeck of a variety of misdeeds, including actively opposing his campaign for SCC and paying for delegates to attend the 7th District convention to cast their votes for Anybody But Ron.
When Ron took to Facebook and John Fredericks’ radio show last week to lodge that complaint, the vast majority of Virginia’s political observers yawned and just assumed it was Ron being Ron.
When the psychiatrists put together their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 6.0 in a few years, Ron will have single-handedly caused Cantor Derangement Syndrome to make the cut. If you’re in Virginia GOP politics and Ron hasn’t accused you of being part of a vast Eric Cantor/Bill Bolling/Ray Allen/Boyd Marcus plot to destroy America and force us onto the metric system, you ain’t cool.
That’s just Ron being Ron. And needless to say, while I love the guy because he’s hilarious in his own way and we’ve always gotten along personally, he’s one of the last people I want to see on State Central Committee.
But as the old story goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
Oddly enough, Ron wasn’t being paranoid this time. John Whitbeck has admitted that he wants to see Hedlund defeated, saying in statement released today (which we’ve offered to post on Bearing Drift, an offer that has so far been ignored) that “I believe [Hedlund] does not have the character or temperament to serve on State Central.” Whitbeck confirmed he is actively opposing Hedlund using funds he raised for his Chairman’s campaign. He also accused Hedlund of being an inveterate liar, saying “Ron has spread … disgraceful falsehoods about me,” and noting Hedlund’s opposition to at least one past Republican nominee, Ed Gillespie.
Let me be frank:
I agree 100% with John Whitbeck that Ron Hedlund should not be allowed in the same zip code as an RPV State Central Committee meeting.
And I agree 100% with Ron Hedlund that John Whitbeck has no business interfering with the 7th District State Central Committee race.
John Whitbeck has an annoying tendency to stick his nose in where it doesn’t belong. He did the same thing in my primary race last year, intervening on behalf of one of his campaign volunteers in a ham-fisted attempt to play identity politics during the 2015 campaign season. The result was that we lost a winnable Board of Supervisors seat in Fairfax that had been held by a Republican for over twenty years.
Now, to be fair, it’s not unprecedented for RPV Chairmen to put their thumbs on the scales during primaries or conventions for elected office. Many of them have done so, including Pat Mullins and his predecessors. What is apparently unprecedented, however, is to have a sitting RPV Chairman try to do the same thing in intra-party races. State Central is the governing body of RPV. It can amend the Party Plan and it can even oust the RPV Chairman or replace one who retires – as Whitbeck knows because that’s how he got the job in the first place. That Whitbeck would seek to influence the make-up of the governing body he is accountable to is just inappropriate. It’s also bad politics. If Hedlund wins, Whitbeck just stuck a thumb in the eye of somebody who will have no reason to work with him and plenty of reasons to sabotage his priorities.
RPV doesn’t need any more headaches or bad press. After the nonsense with the “anti-Trump” affiliation statement, RPV’s credibility with rank-and-file Republicans is hovering right around the same level as Charlie Sheen’s with his probation officer. Now, with the Chairman of our party openly campaigning and taking sides in races for State Central, we will see a perpetuation of the absurd and completely counterproductive establishment vs. grassroots fight that has consumed the party for over half a decade. Whitbeck can’t have it both ways – he can’t preach party unity and for us to all rally together to defeat Hillary Clinton in November while he’s wading into intra-party fights to settle personal scores. It doesn’t matter that he’s right. This wasn’t his fight.
As RPV Chairman, Whitbeck has a responsibility to stay away from these kinds of controversies and do his best to be impartial. Trying to influence the outcome of this race only exacerbates tensions that already exist and causes unnecessary internal strife. That internal strife, when it spills into the media and becomes known to a wider audience (read “donors”) has an impact on the party’s ability to raise money. It makes the party look unstable, and after the loyalty oath fiasco, the last thing the party needs is to look unstable. We certainly don’t need to add any more fuel to the anti-establishment dumpster fire that’s already burning out of control and has the potential to consume the entire party later this year.
I also think it’s inappropriate for him to use money he raised for one purpose – namely, his reelection campaign – for another. If I had donated to him, I’d have a problem with that money being spent this way. But I didn’t, so that’s somebody else’s beef.
Whitbeck is right that Hedlund should absolutely not be elected to the State Central Committee. But John Whitbeck is not the right guy to make that case. He should have stayed out of this race. There’s no need for the RPV Chairman to wade into this fight, muddy the waters and give the state party another self-inflicted wound.
We have real elections to win, money to raise and candidates to support. That’s the best use of the RPV Chairman’s time and effort. These kind of intra-party food fights are the last kind of thing that should be occupying the time of Virginia’s GOP Chair in the middle of The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime™.
