The Leadership ALGOP Needs

This weekend the Alabama Republican Party will elect a Chairman who will lead our Party through the 2014 election cycle — the first in which we will be defending every constitutional office and majorities in both chambers of the legislature.

After considering my personal experience during the past election cycle, reviewing November’s election results, and watching how the Party has operated over the last two years, I truly believe it is best for our Party to make a change at the top.

As I said in December, this decision is not personal. Chairman Armistead is a good man and I appreciate his service. There are also some solid conservatives who I respect greatly who are supporting him in his reelection effort. But after I got to know Matt Fridy, I realized he is exactly the right man to lead our Party forward.

Matt’s conservative credentials are beyond reproach. He first got involved in the conservative movement at an early age as a pro-life activist. He’s spent countless hours since then volunteering his time helping to elect Republicans. If you asked freshmen Representatives Kurt Wallace and April Weaver what was their campaigns’ most valuable asset in 2010, I would bet almost anything they’d point to Matt Fridy. He’s been the model of a servant leader, from knocking on doors to Chairing the Party organization in our state’s most successful Republican area — Shelby County.

We deserve a Chairman who will lead by example and bring unity to our ranks. If you’ve spent any time with Matt, you know that he is drama-free. He’s the kind of guy who will build relationships with County organizations around this state. He will return the Party’s operation to what it’s meant to be: a machine that elects conservatives and pummels the liberal Democrats’ agenda day in and day out.

Matt will spend the Party’s money wisely and allocate resources where they will be most effective.

I can’t help but think how much more successful the GOP could have been in 2012 if the Party’s current leadership had been more prudent with our money.

If our Party’s current leaders didn’t spend tens of thousands of dollars at the Ritz-Carlton in New York and other fancy hotels across the country, we would probably have a Republican Probate Judge in Madison County, one of the most conservative counties in the state, where our candidate lost to a Democrat by about 100 votes.

If our Party’s current leaders didn’t get over $56,000 in expenses reimbursed (including over $16,000 for mileage), we would probably have probably kept long-time Republican Probate Judge Reese McKinney in Montgomery County where we instead allowed the Joe Reed Democrat political machine to take back territory.

If we had allocated our resources effectively, we could have at least won ONE office in Jefferson County.

And those are far from the only examples.

I’ve heard a lot of talk after the November elections about Republicans winning offices in places we never have before. But the more research I did as I tried to objectively assess the 2012 election cycle, the more I realized how much we underachieved.

Here are a couple of maps the Yellowhammer team put together that really illustrate it.

This map shows county by county results from the Presidential election:

Now compare that to this map which shows where Republicans lost countywide races, or didn’t field a candidate:

As you can see, a lot of Republicans lost in counties where our Presidential candidate won — in spite of him being a disappointingly weak candidate.

But this race is not about the failures of the past, it’s about the exciting future we have ahead of us. Republicans are afforded the opportunity in Alabama to enact conservative change and continue to be the last line of defense against the overreaching federal government. This is a sobering responsibility that requires serious leaders to rise to the occasion and accomplish the task ahead of us. With Matt Fridy at the top of our Party, we’ll have the leadership we need.