Bucks
Dear Friends,
Good morning. Is the Bucks County Republican Committee beginning to come apart at the seams? There hasn’t been that possibility since Harry Fawkes became the GOP Chairman 36 years ago. Although Fawkes lost his election bid to become a County Commissioner in the 1971 general election, Republican committee people selected him to lead the party in the following year.
It’s been clear sailing for him ever since…until now.
I can’t remember a time when anyone
challenged his leadership. When former County Commissioners Mark Schweiker and
Andy Warren resigned their posts to become Lt. Governor and Penn Dot chieftain,
respectively, the GOP ratified Harry’s choices…
In the past, Harry wouldn’t sit back and let two people vie for the Vice Chair of the GOP. But that’s precisely what he’s doing…at least publicly.
Karen McIlhinney-Putman has been Harry’s Vice Chairman for three decades. Her son, Chuck McIlhinney, is the State Representative for the 144th legislative district. But Pat Poprik, the state Republican Treasurer, is opposing her. McIlhinney-Putnam abruptly quit the Vice Chairperson race late last week.
Harry Fawke’s letter to 380 Republican Committee people sent an interesting message. “There may be more than one candidate for the position of Vice Chairperson; and I am telling you that I am NOT taking apposition on that candidacy,” Harry wrote.
I’d bet that his previous letters wouldn’t have been ambivalent. In years past, he urged the committee people to vote for Karen McIlhinney-Putman and himself. Does the absence of clarity mean that Harry was quietly supporting Pat Poprik? Both women are from Central Bucks.
The answer lies in the father/ son like relationship between Fawkes and Fitzpatrick. Insiders say that Fitzpatrick is still smarting over his congressional loss to Patrick Murphy and blames the McIlhinneys for it. Although voters in Central and Upper Bucks supported Fitzpatrick in 2006, they didn’t give him the plurality, which he needed to overcome Democratic strong holds in Philadelphia and Montgomery Counties.
So it’s no surprise that Fitzpatrick supports Pat Poprik whose husband, John, was Fitzpatrick’s campaign treasurer.
My prediction is that Fitzpatrick will succeed Fawkes as Chairman two years hence. What will the political landscape look like in 2010? If the Quinnipiac University poll is correct, Barrack Obama will defeat John McCain decisively in Pennsylvania. If the election were held today, that poll predicts Obama beating McCain by a margin of 52 to 40 percent. Should Obama win the presidency in a landslide, Republican organizations like the Bucks County Republican Committee will be in shambles.
I remember Senator Barry Goldwater’s devastating defeat in 1964. It took years for the Republican Party to rebuild itself. One year later in 1965, Bucks County Democrats won two row offices thanks to a coalition of Democrats and Republicans who were angry with the GOP. That coalition was known as the Bucks County Alliance.
These days, the Bucks County Democratic Committee is having a better time of it. “The Party’s happy and peaceful,” Congressman Patrick Murphy told me. “We’re a big tent party and we’re trying to move the ball forward for working Americans.”
And then he fired a broadside at the GOP. “My wife’s been a Republican all her life,” he said. “She voted for George Bush twice. But she became disillusioned and told me, “I didn’t leave the Republican Party. The GOP left me.”
How often have Republicans been saying that these days?
Diane Marseglia is a Democrat and the minority Bucks County Commissioner. She agrees with Murphy. “We Democrats have been alive and active for years,” Marseglia began. “It just took us a while to get going.”
Thanks to the unhappiness that local Republicans have with the Bush administration, plus the Clinton/Obama primary fight, new and cross over registrations helped the Democrats become the majority in Bucks County, the first time in 50 years.
“Democrats do fight and we definitely don’t quiet people down like the GOP machine does,” Marseglia continued. “But we kiss and make up. The Republican machine didn’t have to work with the people [at the grassroots level]. We do.”
The letters which the McIlhinney-Putman and Poprik forces have been sending to committee people could wall paper your house…in flaming colors. The situation reminds me of the 1962 Republican [Bucks County] Chairman fight. Incumbent Chairman Fred Ziegler represented the old days when Lower Bucks Republican politicos (Harry Fawkes included) led the party. District Attorney Paul Beckert whose strength came from Central and Upper Bucks opposed him.
Beckert won.
Things don’t change much. I suppose. Who said, the more things change, the more they are the same? The GOP votes for Chairman and Vice Chairperson in two days. Will it be déjà vu? I guess not, now that McIlhinney-Putnam has bowed out.
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith