Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Both Lisa James and Randy Pullen have their sites up for their races for Republican Party Chairman. Both of them, of course, have supporter lists up. Being from Baja Arizona, I noted which Southern Arizonan’s were on the lists. James features NRA chief Sandy Froman, Rep. Jonathan Paton, Rep. Jennifer Burns, Sen. Tim Bee, Mike Hellon and Margaret Kenski. Randy Pullen’s includes Randy Graf and former legislative candidate Paralee Schneider. What strikes me is that Pullen’s lists of Elected officials and statewide party officials only includes two people outside of Maricopa County, Schneider and Sen. Ron Gould. He does have several on his list of other Republican officers and there are probably several on his list of other State Committeemen, but unlike James, he does not give geographic cues on his.

Pullen’s list of state committeemen is a bit padded though, with some, like Tom Smith, Graf and Schneider, listed elsewhere. Pullen also lists himself. I don’t see Lisa James on her own list. Does this mean that she is voting for Pullen? The woman doesn’t deserve the chairmanship if she can’t lock down her own vote!

On our side, things have shifted a bit. On Saturday, I recieved what looked to be a late Christmas card. I opened it up to find out it was actually a note from Dr. Mark Osterloh, who had been talked about as a candidate for chairman. The letter instead announced that he is running for one of the Vice Chair slots. Jeff Latas, also made it clear a while back that he was also running for Vice Chair. I was a Vice Chair for four years. I hate to tell you this fellas, ‘cept for the First Vice Chair (which, because of the way the rules are written, will likely have to be a woman this time, not much Latas or Osterloh can do to qualify between now and then), there are few, if any actual responsiblities or decisions to be made in these jobs. When I ran, I was hoping to use the position to help the Young Democrats with their bid for a National Convention. It turned out that the group had enough ins with the state party that they really didn’t need me to help with the State Party, but just having the name on the list and the title “Vice Chair” helped give them credibility with the Young Democrats of America, who thought that the position meant something like actual power.

Every chair that we have elected says that they will find a way to give some responsibilites to the Vice Chairs. Never seems to happen.

Randy Camacho is still running for chair. He was handing out flyers at Saturday’s Pima County Democratic Party reorganization meeting and had at least one supporter he brought from Phoenix doing the same. Camacho has also seemed to have gotten the support of the Sonora Progressives, some of whom were talking up his candidacy. David Waid, who has told party staff that he plans to run again, hasn’t yet done a big campaign style move, at least none that I’ve seen.

CLARIFICATION: Jeff Latas made an excellent point in a comment. I didn’t make this clear in my post: the Sonora Progressives have not, as a group, taken a stand in the state chair race, but many of their members are supporting Camacho.