At this weekend's Hawaii GOP state convention in Waipahu,
party members have to stop pretending that everything is fine.
As an organization, our officers have caused the Hawaii GOP to hit rock bottom. A shockingly high level of internal dysfunction, disarray and disorganization reveals itself in tragic yet predictable ways
each and every day since the disastrous 2014 General Election.
That's why our rivals, the Democrats, and the news media are
laughing at us. They know the Republican Party of Hawaii is in serious trouble and that we are facing another 60 years in Hawaii's political wilderness because we refuse to take a long look in the mirror and confront our serious problems. They know that the Hawaii GOP has been reduced to a social club controlled by a tiny clique which doesn't mind losing.
CATASTROPHIC FAILURE
What exactly do Democrats see that we don't? For starters, Democrats watch TV and don't see any of our
commercials, because these
don't even exist. They
canvass neighborhoods across the state (including the handful which we might be 'targeting') and they
don't bump into any of our GOP precinct organizers (nor the district organizers or the county organizers). They read our
campaign finance reports and they
don't see us raising serious money. They read
candidate filing reports and they know their party's candidates won't face many challengers (or much of a challenge) from ours. They conduct
polling and they know that voters haven't been given reason to blame Hawaii's many problems on the ruling party.
It's like we gave up long before the game even started.
Democrats don't see anything to be remotely worried about between now and November (or beyond). Yet while 2016 is already shaping up to be a repeat of 2014, you can expect Hawaii GOP party officers to continue offering up platitudes this weekend that 'everything is great' and that 'we're on the right track' and that 'we have lots of time' and how 'proud' they are of themselves.
So proud,
or so shameless, that they want you to extend their terms of office into 2018, two years from now. [
More about that below.]
Stalwart GOP cheerleader and KHVH morning talkradio personality
Rick Hamada recently told state party chairman
Fritz Rohlfing on the air that conservatives like Hamada were counting on the Hawaii GOP to
"get it together" to beat Democrats. Bad news, Rick. Fritz and his tribe of RINO's have not gotten it together . . .
and doing so was never the plan.
A crystal clear roadmap to electoral victory is laid out in our party's rules;
specific jobs, specific tasks, specific goals. But during Rohlfing's previous two year tenure as chairman of the Oahu County GOP and now after one year as chairman of the state party, he has given Democrats what they want after three years of his 'leadership':
an empty shell of organization which stays quiet and inactive while posing no political threat at all.
REJECTING REPUBLICANISM
This Saturday, while sitting in a meeting room in Waipahu, excited state GOP convention delegates
distracted by presidential politics and
pumped up on euphoria (from absorbing dose after dose of Fox News and Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh)
will find it hard to comprehend that the Republican wave will completely
pass by Hawaii in 2016.
They assume that the Hawaii GOP of
Fritz Rohlfing
,
Pat Saiki
,
Miriam Hellreich, Kymberly Pine
and
Beth Fukumoto
has been enthusiastically
replicating the blueprint of the national party
; having a
strong platform
, having a
strong message
, having a
strong organization
, raising
boatloads of money
, and making a
strong case
for R's while
demonizing the record of D's.
Sadly, NONE of that is happening. The liberal clique in charge of our local party has completely contrary goals to those of other state parties and the national GOP. Instead, Team Rohlfing wants Hawaii to have a
neutral platform, a
silent message, a
weak organization, and to basically
make no case at all to voters. Don't believe it? Prove it to yourself by randomly asking shoppers at your local supermarket what message or issue highlighted by the Hawaii Republican Party during the past two years (
or the last two weeks) has influenced them the most. Prepare to encounter facial expressions of confusion.
Prepare to be disappointed with party officers who promised to do a great job but did nothing instead.
COMPLETE ORGANIZATIONAL COLLAPSE
Team Rohlfing, a subsidiary of Team Hellreich, has
decimated the Hawaii GOP. The numbers don't lie.
And politics is all about the numbers. Across the state, the islands are divided into 246 precincts where people live and vote.
None of Rohlfing's 246 Republican precinct committees are operational; meaning that voters are
not receiving party literature from door-to-door precinct canvassers
nor are they receiving invitations to learn more about the benefits of voting Republican
nor are these precincts engaging in either voter registration or voter identification.
This collapse in structure and responsibility guarantees that 2016 will be a repeat of 2014. No voters' minds will have been changed by the party in the intervening two years. That's why you
always see the same old faces at party headquarters, district caucuses and at state conventions.
Like a fish, our state party is rotting from the head down. As state chair, Rohlfing is supposed to be supervising the activities of the four
county party organizations (
Oahu, Maui, Kauai, Big Island). But the county party organizations are either
dead or dysfunctional. The 51 state house
district party organizations, which are supposed to be supervised by the county party organizations, are
pure window dressing. And the above-referenced precinct organizations, which are supposed to be supervised by the house district organizations, are likewise dead.
The legacy of Team Hellreich and Team Rohlfing is deliberate neglect of the organization from top to bottom in election cycle after election cycle. There is no tracking of progress, no tracking of metrics, no sense of forward motion, let alone momentum.
Quite the opposite: This is a slow-motion trainwreck made more painful to watch (
and participate in) by the phony optimism and false assurances from party officers who know better because they only care about retaining control of the lifeless organization.
THROWING OUR CANDIDATES TO THE WOLVES
Paving the way for the success of GOP challenger candidates is the job of the party. It's the party's job to let voters statewide in each precinct know why Democrats must be thrown out and why Republicans would be better. With zero messaging, zero organizational support, zero voter outreach, and zero funding, Rohlfing and Hellreich have decided to throw the 2016 election months in advance by throwing the few brave Republican candidates we have to the wolves. Stay tuned for a newsletter from HIRA specifically about this issue. Candidates deserve to know exactly how
UNHELPFUL party officers plan to be in 2016. The reality is
SHOCKING.
THE JOB ABANDONMENT / ZOMBIE OFFICER APOCALYPSE
Hellreich and Rohlfing and Saiki have a history of recruiting 'do-nothings' for key party posts; folks who only stick around for a few months of their two year term in office.
Not only is state chairman Fritz Rohlfing supposed to be supervising the four county party committees, he is supposed to be overseeing the work of his paid staff, his vice chairs and other top party officers. However, none do their jobs well or at all. Many quit after a short time. Some stay on, but really should quit. The news for party members is all very bad. 2016 is doomed.
Let's start with money, the lifeblood of politics. Rohlfing's Finance Chairman
John Henry Felix
bailed, which means he has decided not to help the Hawaii GOP raise any more money. And Rohlfing's paid finance director
George Simon was laid off because
Rohlfing ran out of money to pay him. Wait, isn't the point of having a chief fundraiser that he (or she) raises enough money to pay himself and even MORE for the party? That's how bad things have gotten.
Let's move to communications, the crucial influence factor in politics. In reviewing vice chairman
Andy Mukk's communications effort, he has spent the past three years urging existing Republican voters to celebrate the holidays on our calendars. While Democrats push for tax increases, Mukk's communications priority is helping Republicans to observe Kuhio Day. While Democrats worry about getting blamed for rail cost overruns, Mukk talks about the importantce of enjoying Passover. While Democrats at the legislature push for millions in wasteful new spending and the Caldwell administration gets low ratings for terrible infrastructure, Mukk zeroes in on the observance of the
Lunar New Year.
Anybody wanting to dissect why Hawaii Republicans lost so badly in advance of this November's general election need only review Mukk's collection of press releases, Facebook posts, and e-mail messages from the past three years.
Our party's communications are so horrible that only Democrats have been helped.
After organizing ZERO
community service events or outreach at all, Rohlfing's vice chair for community service
Nancy Monahan reportedly bailed on her two-year post before even getting to the halfway mark. Perhaps you are a friend or fan or fellow churchgoer of "Fancy Nancy". But, ultimately, voters across the state are left unmoved by the Hawaii GOP's lack of regularly performing community service. And impressing enough voters with how much Republicans care about our community so that we win elections is the point of having that position on Rohlfing's executive committee of party officers, isn't it?
Next, let's take a look under the hood at how
political coalitions are forged. Attracting voter blocs from various demographic groups is the name of the game in adding up enough votes to win. Let's be blunt: Rohfing's vice chair for coalitions,
Karen Jensen (
who is at least the second person in that 2-year post in the past year),
hasn't forged any valuable coalitions to help win elections in 2016. Ethnic groups, civic groups, industry associations, youth groups, senior groups, and all other groups
feel the exact same way about the Hawaii GOP and its candidates as they did two years ago. The position of vice chair for coalitions exists for a reason. But Rohlfing and Hellreich don't care about any results except
keeping control.
How about
getting voters registered? Well, national committeewoman
Miriam Hellreich promised four years ago to lead a robust voter registration program. It never happened. She keeps getting reminded about it. Instead, she's chosen to work on her biennial "let's try harder next year" speech she gives at party headquarters after every losing election for the GOP. Miriam's primary focus has been on surrounding Rohlfing with party officers who will be loyal to her, even though they keep causing Republicans to lose. But, not surprisingly, her stalwart supporters at the Oahu League of RINO Women and liberal card-carrying Republicans over in Windward Oahu will surely show up with enough delegate votes this weekend to ensure that Hellreich's monotone bluster and empty rhetoric can endure for as long as Democrats want to hold the majority in Hawaii. You gotta hand it to her for chutzpah. Even though Hellreich has personally overseen the decline of the Hawaii GOP, she will shamelessly call (nearly) every delegate and ask for his or her vote for another four years and that they overlook the party's organizational collapse which she has shamelessly orchestrated.
What can you say about the vice chair of
candidate recruitment, the vice chair of
coordinated campaigns, and the party's secretary that isn't already widely known? Progressive
Barbara Marumoto is one of the architects of Hawaii's expensive and failed Obamacare Connector Exchange.
Bob Hickling has absolutely no idea what he's doing and no budget to do it with. And
Boyd Ready used to have Bob Hickling's job until he was demoted last year with the hope that Boyd wouldn't do as terrible a job typing up the party's minutes to meetings as he did coordinating the party's abysmal 2014 campaign. We simply do not have the best and brightest leading our party.
FAILED OFFICERS WANT TO REMAIN THRU THE 2018 ELECTION
Party members deserve to know what kind of a GOP organization we have in Hawaii. If HIRA didn't deliver the news regularly, you would be left in the dark by party leaders.
Now if there's one thing that Democrats want, it would be for Team Rohlfing and Team Hellreich
to be in charge of our party forever. They might get that wish.
These same failed party officers described above
want a one year job extension . . .
with your support. This weekend, these current GOP leaders will ask you to change our party's rules so they can cancel next year's state convention and cancel the election for party officers -- giving themselves a 12-month extension to their terms of office.
This way, the nightmare team running the Hawaii GOP in 2016 will still be running the show in 2017 and 2018. That is what they want.
When it's obvious that
our party desperately needs to be "under new management", the existing management refuses to go quietly into the night. This insider clique of RINO's is determined to hang onto power and keep the Hawaii GOP organization from actually fighting Democrats on the issues.
This weekend, you can expect some flowery justifications for the power grab: "We're too lazy to organize annual conventions." "Democrats only hold conventions every two years." "This move will save the party money." "We'll focus on county parties one year and the state party the next year."
But whether you believe their make-believe motives (good of the party) or their real ones (power), the bottom line is that we don't want these people to continue destroying the Republican Party of Hawaii.
WARNING
: Even at 'rock bottom', our party
can go lower.
Giving a 12-month extension in office to these RINO's would be giving them shovels to dig a deeper hole for our party.
