Category: Michael Steele

Priebus Elected RNC Chair on 7th Ballot

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UPDATE XV: On the seventh ballot, Wisconsin GOP chairman Reince Priebus got 97 votes and was thereby elected the new chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Tough fight. Congratulations to the winner.

Hopefully he won’t seek vengeance against his opponents. They say those Cheeseheads can be heinously vindictive.

Just ask Troglopundit.

UPDATE XVI: The final account at The Hill.

Linked by Fire Andrea Mitchell — thanks!

* PREVIOUSLY *

UPDATE XIV: Tea Party favorite Ann Wagner of Missouri quits, does not endorse any other candidate. I now expect Reince Priebus to clinch on the seventh ballot.

UPDATE XIII: Sixth-round results – Reince Priebus 80, Saul Anuzis 37, Mario Cino 34, Ann Wagner 17. That means Priebus is just five votes from clinching. Cino is fading, and if Wagner or Anuzis want to stop Priebus, they must unite their votes now — and then try to peel some votes off Cino.

UPDATE XII: Sixth-round balloting is now under way. With incumbent Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele now out, there are four candidates left. Should Wisconsin GOP chairman Reince Priebus gets more than 70 votes on the sixth ballot, either Saul Anuzis of Michigan or Ann Wagner of Missouri will have to drop out and throw her or her support to another candidate, if they want to stop Priebus. The important question is, “Do they want to stop Priebus?”

UPDATE XI: With Steele now having dropped out and Priebus at 67 votes after the fifth ballot — with 85 votes needed to clinch — it is now reported that Saul Anuzis is meeting with Ann Wagner.

UPDATE X: Fifth ballot results – Reince Priebus 67, Maria Cino 40, Saul Anuzis 32, Ann Wagner 28, plus one vote for an ineligible write-in.

UPDATE IX: He Who Never Linketh:

Cino . . . happens to be Boehner’s pick and an establishment favorite. She’s also a Bush pal, so she should have no trouble getting big donors on the phone if she wins.

He Who Never Linketh got burned by citing a Tweet from Dave Weigel that had Steele denying he would drop out, right before Steele did, in fact, drop out. The fifth ballot voting is over. We’ll have the tally in a moment.

UPDATE VIII: Steele endorses Cino — rhymes with RINO. The battle will get ugly now.

UPDATE VII: STEELE DROPPING OUT! Fifth ballot voting is about to begin.

UPDATE VI: Fourth ballot — Priebus 58, Steele 28, Wagner 28, Cino 29, Anuzis 24, and an ineligible write-in vote. The Steele drop-out rumor is still just a rumor. Lot of backroom meetings reported. But he’s losing support on each successive ballot, and unless he throws his support one way or the other, his support could become irrelevant, if Priebus keeps gaining steadily.

UPDATE V: I just heard via Ali Akbar that incumbent chairman Michael Steele dropped out after the fourth ballot. Results of that vote in a minute.

UPDATE IV: Nobody has dropped out yet. Fourth ballot is now under way.

UPDATE III: The latest rumor is that Steele is meeting with Wagner, the Missouri state party chairman who has strong support from some leading Tea Party activists. If Steele drops out and can swing all of his support to Wagner, that would put Wagner ahead of Priebus and within 20 votes of clinching it.

UPDATE II: Steele has reportedly called his supporters into a closed meeting, which may indicate that the chairman is ready to drop out and throw his support to one of his challengers.

UPDATE: Third ballot — Priebus 54, Steele 33, Wagner 32, Cino 28, Anuzis 21. So Wagner and Priebus gained, while Steele, Cino and Anuzis are losing support. My source reports a rumor that Anuzis will drop out before the fourth ballot, but no word yet on who (if anyone) might get his support.

ORIGINAL POST 3:03 p.m. ET
Second ballot count: Reince Priebus 52, Michael Steele 37, Maria Cino 30, Ann Wagner 27, Saul Anuzis 22. More RNC news at Memeorandum. The third ballot was getting underway when I got this news.

Only 85 votes are needed to win the chairmanship. Unless there is a powerful “Anybody But Priebus” sentiment among RNC delegates, it looks like the Wisconsin GOP chairman will lock it up soon.

RNC: Saul Anuzis Under Fire

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The rough stuff continues in the contest for the Republican National Committee chairmanship.

A week ago, Wisconsin  GOP chair Reince Priebus got blasted for his law firm’s stimulus-pimping business. Now it appears that Michigan’s Saul Anuzis is in the oppo-research crosshairs. 

An anonymous e-mail calls attention to tax liens against B & S Telecom (PDF documents here and here), a firm co-founded by Anuzis, and also refers to a Nov. 17, 2006, article from the Grand Rapids Press:

“In a letter to media, Zandstra details that since Anuzis became chairman [of the Michigan GOP] in February of last year the party has paid $85,000 to Quick Connect USA. ‘The conflict of interest is obvious,’ Zandstra writes. In addition, Zandstra claims, Anuzis hired staff members from Sterling Corp. consulting firm in Lansing, a group that did work for his run for state party chairman in 2004. The state party has paid Sterling $1.7 million this year, Zandstra writes.”

Two years ago, Sterling Corp. threatened legal action against Dan Tollis, who challenged Anuzis for the Michigan GOP chairmanship in 2008. In announcing his bid for the chairmanship, Tollis sent out an e-mail accusing Anuzis and the state party’s executive director of corruption:

Our current Michigan Republican Party heads have continuously exploited their positions of power to bolster their own business interests; and that is no longer tolerable. It is important to emphasize that Saul’s executive director, Jeff Timmer, served as a VP for the Sterling Corporation. In the 2006 and 2008 elections, Anuzis and Timmer funneled millions of dollars to the Sterling Corporation. With Anuzis, Timmer, and Sterling at the helm, we’ve been creamed at the top of the ticket, as well as losing the majority in the Michigan House of Representatives, two Congressmen, The Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, Republican majorities on several County Board of Commissioners, and several seats on the statewide education boards.

Sterling Corp. evidently considered that accusation by Tollis libelous, and I don’t know if they also took action against Zandstra. From my point of view, the two relevant facts are:

  1. Some disgruntled Michigan Republicans thought Anuzis was shady and blamed him for the party’s election losses in 2006; and
  2. Somebody who doesn’t want Anuzis to be RNC chair is calling attention to these accusations.

As for the tax liens against B & S Telecom, we saw during the recent election campaign that many Republican candidates for Congress (including Ann Marie Buerkle) were hit with attack ads making hay of similar situations. Perhaps people with small-business backgrounds can comment on whether such disputes over unpaid taxes are routine.

During the 2008 contest for RNC chair, Anuzis was a favorite of many online activists and bloggers because he “gets it” in terms of New Media. I’ve met Saul and like Saul and have no reason to oppose him or to believe the accusations against him.

Nevertheless, we can see that there are some Republicans who don’t like Saul and — as with the Reince Priebus story — Republicans are playing hardball in the battle for the RNC chairmanship.

MELTDOWN: Wisconsin GOP Chair’s RNC Bid Destroyed by Stimulus Scandal

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Wisconsin Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus was, until tonight, a contender to replace Michael Steele as chairman for the Republican National Committee. But Priebus’s evident involvement in soliciting federal stimulus funds for his law firm’s clients emerged Tuesday as a scandal that will likely destroy whatever chance he had, as Dan Riehl explains at Big Government:

Reince Priebus is currently being touted as a front-runner to replace current RNC Chair Michael Steele. But Priebus’ leading role among a select group of high-powered Wisconsin attorneys targeting clients to assist them in maximizing stimulus dollars, at the same time the anti-stimulus RNC employed him as interim general counsel, raises some troubling questions, not just for Preibus, but for the Republican Party as a whole.

Go read the whole thing, including Dan’s links indicating that Priebus attempted to flush the evidence down the Internet memory hole. In fact, when contacted by Tim Mak of Frum Forum, Priebus denied working on the “Stimulus Legislation Team” at his Milwaukee firm, Michael Best & Friedrich LLP — but Mak produces abundant evidence contradicting that denial.

In a year when the Tea Party movement has made opposition to the Obama administration’s stimulus spending a key issue for Republicans, Priebus would obviously be hurt by this revelation. But the apparent effort to to hide the contradictory online evidence raises even more serious issues.

Exactly how this story was made public the same day both by a conservative like Dan Riehl and by the “centrist” GOP site Frum Forum . . . well, I don’t know the answer to that question. At a minimum, we can conclude that some Republicans aren’t members of the Reince Priebus Fan Club.

UPDATE: “I Did Not Have Sex With That Stimulus Package.”

Man, that’s cold. Maybe you see why I always say I’d never want Dan Reihl mad at me. Maybe you don’t want Dan as your friend, but you sure don’t want him to be your enemy. He’s from Jersey, you know.

UPDATE II: Now a Memeorandum thread.

UPDATE III: “Is it just me, or does ‘Reince Priebus’ sound like a character in the Star Wars prequels?“

Steele to Step Aside at RNC
UPDATE: New Report Says Steele Will Seek Another Term as RNC Chair

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UPDATE 5:38 p.m.: Guess somebody guessed wrong:

Controversial Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who last month presided over the GOP’s biggest electoral gains since 1938, will announce tonight that he is running for re-election, Fox News has learned from two RNC members.
Ending weeks of rumors that he would not seek a second term, Steele plans to throw his hat into the ring during a conference call with RNC members at 7:30 p.m. ET, the sources said. Steele is said to be amused by false reports of his retirement and intentionally kept his plans secret for the last month in order to flush out competitors for the post, Fox has learned.

PREVIOUSLY: Creating an open contest for the chairmanship:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is expected to announce he will drop out of the highly contested race to keep his post, multiple RNC sources told FoxNews.com on Sunday. . . .
Critics have described the chairman as gaffe-prone and said he hasn’t raised enough money. The criticism has resulted in an array of challenges for Steele’s job from Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus, former RNC Co-Chairwoman Ann Wagner, longtime Republican official Maria Cino, former Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis and former RNC Political Director Gentry Collins.

Via Memeorandum.

Democrats Reward Failure

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Of course, that’s the principle of their social-welfare policies, but who thought they’d apply it to politics?

Rep. Steve Israel (N.Y.) promoted an internal candidate to be the new executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Israel, the new DCCC chairman, announced Monday that Robby Mook would be the committee’s next top staffer.
Mook led the DCCC’s Independent Expenditure effort in the 2010 cycle, during which the party lost more than 60 seats and its majority. . . .
“Robby has the right combination of experience, political know-how and leadership savvy to help make this the shortest Republican majority in history,” Israel said in a statement.

Translation: He’s an experienced loser! Note that Republicans, despite their huge victory in the mid-term elections, are staging a mutiny against RNC Chairman Michael Steele, who is being blamed generally for the GOP having failed to win more.  

In their dissatisfaction with a less-than-complete victory, Republicans remind me of the ancient Athenians, as described in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War: “And what they have planned but not carried out, they think that in this they lose something already their own; what they have attempted and gained, that in this they have achieved but little in comparison with what they mean to do.”

Related: Tea Party Nation promoter wants Sarah Palin to seek the RNC chairmanship.