Posted by
Warner Todd Huston on Wednesday, July 27, 2011 12:13:42 PM
-By Warner Todd Huston
The nonsense going on in the DuPage County GOP is a perfect
example of all that is wrong with the Illinois GOP. It all rather shows why the
GOP is useless in the state of Illinois. The DuPage party organization took
what could have been a great public relations opportunity and turned it into
yet another secretive, back-room dealing that cut out voters and proved that
even its own party rules make no difference to party powerbrokers. Worse, this
isn't the first time DuPage GOP has mishandled the same situation.
On July 18, a Monday, DuPage GOP Party Chairman Dan Cronin
abruptly resigned from his post as chairman. It doesn't seem to have been a
long planned resignation -- though Cronin had mentioned he would not run for
reelection to the chairmanship -- and it certainly was not one enacted with
public note. In fact, no one outside of Cronin's inner circle even knew it was
coming until several hours beforehand when Dave
Diersen reported the coming resignation the Sunday before Cronin
stepped down.
After Cronin left his post that Monday evening, the nine GOP
township chairmen in DuPage County unanimously voted to replace Cronin with
Randy
Ramey, the state representative for the 55th district as well as
Wayne Township GOP Chair. Ramey is also the stepson of famed GOP politico Pate
Philip, onetime powerful leader of the Illinois senate.
Of course, the problem here is that Cronin resigned and
within hours the DuPage township chairmen simply replaced him in a closed-door
session. No other candidates were discussed, no one was given any notice, no
open discussion among Republicans was had. It all turned over before most were
even aware a resignation even occurred.
What did DuPage Republican voters think? These powerbrokers
sure didn't care.
Now, Doug Ibendahl
looked up the rules for such a situation and found that the
secretive, backroom method employed by the DuPage Party bosses violated their
own rules.
When Cronin stepped down, so did Pat Durante, his Vice
Chairman. The rules say that Durante would have taken over in the case of the
Chairman's resignation. Obviously they convinced Durante to quit just so they
would be able to anoint Ramey as Chairman. But Ibendahl found that if both the
chairman and the vice chair were to resign, party rules say that the next
chairman is to be appointed by the same method as the one that stepped down.
Cronin, the one that stepped down, was appointed by a vote
of all the precinct committeemen in DuPage. He did not get his seat by a secret
vote of only the nine township chairmen like Ramey just did. Yet, the precinct
committeemen were not given the opportunity to have a voice in Ramey's
immaculation.
This isn’t the only time this has happened, either. Secret
deals abound in DuPage County GOP history.
Naturally this is all a missed opportunity. The DuPage GOP
really missed the chance to show Illinois that it was the party of the people
by arranging a public show of its fairness and desire to do things in an open
and transparent manner. They could have made this quite a show to attract
voters in a county that has been losing its Republican voter base for some
time.
But what did these people do? They picked a crony Republican
that is connected back to decades of insider deals, they ignored their own
party rules to anoint him chairman, and they did so in secret without any input
even from their own committeemen much less the voters.
This is yet one more example of everything that is wrong
with the Illinois GOP. It shows that the Illinois GOP is a closed loop of
inside dealers, a tiny coterie of connected cronies, an insular group of
out-of-touch, toothless good ol' boys that simply aren't interested in fixing
what's wrong with their party. And they most certainly aren't interested in
sharing power with nobody, nobody sent.