The California Republican Party, in conjunction with the Governor’s campaign embarked on a bold experimental Registration campaign in 2006. 

All professional vendors were paid $13.00 an hour whether they produced or not. This effort was led by a Nathan Sproul of Arizona with his dba  California Grass Roots Mobilization. Sproul was paid over $2,100,000 last year. 

This bold initiative was designed for three reasons: a ] to go to places where GOPers generally don’t , such as San Francisco. [ Sproul’s team never made it there ] and make it worthwhile to go door to door , b] to avoid the nasty publicity two criminal investigations in San Bernardino and Orange County DA’s were conduction against fraudulent registrations, and c ] a new state law required, adding a considerable burden,  that all registrations contain either a social security number or a driver license number. Who knew? . At $13,00 a hour how could this not work. 

The Governor’s people, from the Bush 2004 campaign,  insisted on the services of Mr. Sproul. 

Sproul’s method of hiring was no different than anyone else in the registration business. He hired the usual suspects: nationwide nomads traveling from state to state, demanding weekly payments, some possibly having interesting personal lifestyle issues—folks generally hard to track or track down. But at $13.00 an hour…without any quota…it was the deal of the decade. 

The results? As of two weeks ago, Sproul delivered a total of 125,469 GOP registrations. At a cost of only $ 16,74 each. But there was a problem.

Sadly, the CRP verifying the "new" registrations [ most were change of address] by calling, checking for duplicates and sending letters, discovered an "error" rate of of 33.33 %. Ouch. 

Figuring that of the 125,469 gross GOP registrations, about 83,464 were valid. Meaning that the average cost escalated to $25.11 a card. On the average, the vendors were getting one reg in TWO hours. 

All this rather breathtaking. CRP officials are still wondering if they were trapped in a bad dream. Last August when party officials suggested dramatic changes in the program , the Governor’s political team…wanted to stay the course. At least something was coming in. Oh well,  they were paying 100% for the registration effort. 

When I served as Chairman from 2001 to 2003, our paltry $3 dollar bounty brought in 405,000  registrations, closing the gap between both parties. i know 405,000 is accurate, because the party actually paid $ 1.,200,000 for the registrations from women federated to county organizations. Watch out for those volunteers!

The CRP’s very limited  existing Bounty Program, in 2006 , brought in a 37,500 registrations. Less than 5% were invalid. 

Registration stats  are  strictly for the most serious afflicted political geek. But my guess is that future CRP leaders will avoid the hourly pay like the plague.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.