Tonight I drove down to the San Diego Republican Party’s monthly Central Committee meeting. Well, to be most accurate, State GOP Southern Vice Chairman Keith Carlson drove, and I warmed the passenger seat. County Chairman Ron Nehring ran an excellent meeting with about 200 Republicans in attendance – including many VIPS (the introductions took quite a while). Curiously, disgraced criminal Randy “Duke” Cunningham is apparently still a member of this committee. He didn’t answer his name when the roll was called – go figure – he’s not here. That said, it does seem like there may be 100 candidates here running for Duke’s seat. Apparently the rumor is true, that FR Contributor Duane Dichiara is no longer Chief of Staff to Assemblyman Mark Wyland. I just met his replacement. Fresh from the Congressional office of Florida Representative Dave Weldon comes Paul Webster. I don’t know much about Paul yet, except that he has good taste in employers – Wyland is top notch. The big speaker tonight – State GOP Chairman Duf Sundheim. The Chairman spoke about some of the Governor’s staff picks, and some of his controversial policy measures. Duf make a case that while the Governor is pushing some policies that all Republicans may not agree with, Ronald Reagan also made unpopular decisions as Governor (including, he said, the largest tax increase to that date in state history). Concerning the bond proposals – the Chairman said that a lot of focus should be on our Republican legislators, and their efforts, along with the Governor, to make them as fiscally sound as possible, should they pass out of the legislature. Sundheim closed his remarks by making a strong stand against the outrgeous corruption “locally” (Cunningham) and nationally (Abramoff and ??), and by talking about the immigration issue – as he believes it will be an important one in this election year. The Chairman really laid out a comprehensive program – I am going to see if I can get him to write on this for FR readers! Funniest question to Duf:“You had lunch with Susan Kennedy, who bought lunch?”. Duf ducked the answer – but he then spend five minutes discussing policy “lines in the sand” that he told Kennedy were deal breakers – and if she worked to get the Governor to cross the lines, there would be trouble. (The lines were on taxes, gay marriage, workers comp, and drivers licenses for illegal aliens.) The final end to the meeting – Joel Anderson, candidate for Assembly in the 77th District Republican Primary, made a motion to expel Cunningham! There are procedural issues to work out – but kudos to Anderson for his leadership.
