Several weeks ago I penned a piece on some areas of focus that members of the state party should ask candidates for statewide office. See it here.I believe there is a great need to reform what we do. These items are not ideological, but mechanical. When liberals took over the state party they claimed that they would be inclusive (didn’t happen) and that they would focus on the basics.
Let’s look at one area that needs change. Voter registration this last cycle shifted from a bounty system that paid professionals and local activist groups could participate in to one statewid vendor. This year the party spent over 2.2 million dollars on voter registration.
Their program was to hire a vendor to pay people by the hour in only 13 California counties
The result I’m told under 130,000 registrations. (About $17 apiece) The party has not released a full accounting. It looks like they don’t have half the names yet and the fraud rate has not be revealed. Something that I think is a bad sign.
The problem with that program is that it killed of most local efforts. Los Angeles County had registered 30,000 voters through the joint Lincoln Club and LA Party effort at a cost of $90,000 to the state.
Another indicator that this program killed of other efforts is reflected in CRP Appointments. Traditionally, the Republican Women Federated generate another 10 or so appointments based on the CRP appointment formula for voter registrations. This year they received ZERO bonus appointments. In fact not one entity received appointments from registration. Not one!
Now the party is broke and as of last Monday the vendor was back in Arizona and there was no bounty. So how is the party going to encourage registration in ALL counties?
That is the question that CRP candidates and officers should have answer.
January 16th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Mike, keep up the good work. As the guy on the receiving end of this goofy voter reg program…I can tell you the marginal (loosely used) seats had no significant voter reg program and there clearly was no incentive to have registration programs in tough parts of the world like Western Kern, San Joaquin, Western Fresno….the kicked ass in Laguna Niguel and Walnut Creek I bet…but that’s no way to run a train.
January 17th, 2007 at 12:00 am
It has been brought to my attention that I poorly worded my comment about voter reg. Let me take another crack at it. It is a true fact that indeed Victory ’06 paid for voter registration efforts in the marginal seats I referenced. I know because I submitted the invoices that were paid. The point that I should have made clear was that rather than being able to participate within and in conjunction with the larger state-wide, per hour voter registration program which attracted the lions share of signature gatherers, our marginal seats had to create our own voter reg programs which were paid for by the CRP. Unfortunately those programs had to compete for bodies which naturally went with the larger voter reg program. I want to assert that Victory ’06 paid every bill we submitted and my beef is not with lack of funding, but rather simply the siphoning off of signature gatherers.
January 22nd, 2007 at 12:00 am
Joe, there are many reasons for the lackluster numbers derived from the Victory ’06 voter reg. program. They will be addressed at the upcoming CRP convention in Feb.