News - Columnists - Geoff Pender

Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009

Last week’s big GOP winner wasn’t even on the ballot

There’s been a ton of Beltway speculation on the meaning of last week’s gubernatorial and mid-term congressional elections. Some say gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey show the wounded Republican Party is making a comeback and may retake Congress next year. Others say Republicans suffering a loss in a key New York race despite some of the GOP’s celebrities weighing in shows the party has a leadership vacuum.

I believe there was one clear winner in last week’s elections: Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.

As he winds down his final term as governor, I believe he may be the guy who steps in and fills the Republican leadership void in Washington. Again.

As the new head of the Republican Governors Association, Haley was pretty much in charge of the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey. The GOP swept the races, ending Democratic rule in both. Haley helped raise and direct spending of $13 million for the races, and the GOP won by shocking margins of 60 percent or better in both.

In the New York congressional race, where Republican stars such as Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich and conservative talking heads such as Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity weighed in, they made a muddle. Voters backed a third-party conservative and handed Democrats a seat they haven’t held since 1872. The Republican National Committee didn’t even appear to be much of a player in any of these races. Some analysts have said this shows the GOP is still having its own civil war.

Barbour has reunited and revamped the national Republican Party before, as head of the RNC during the 1990s and as a founding father of “Big Tent” Republicanism, which drew independents and even conservative Democrats to the GOP.

He’s likely to be the go-to guy next year, as all 435 House seats and 38 of 100 Senate seats are up for grabs in Washington.

And what about his own future political ambition?

Barbour has said that any Republican leader who’s looking beyond the 2010 races needs his or her head examined.

He’s sort of pooh-poohed the idea of running for president or vice president, which I have sort of reported in this column many times.

But if Barbour could step in and help fix a broken Republican Party for the second time in his career ... well, those notions might not be so far-fetched.

A statement by Barbour after last week’s GOP gubernatorial victories might, in a way, speak to this:

“When I was Republican Party chairman in the 1990s, it was the governors who led our party’s comeback, and I believe we jump-started that once again today,” Barbour said.

“Republican victories in the 1993 New Jersey and Virginia governors’ races were the springboard for the 1994 Republican revolution. (Last week’s) victories will have a similar impact. ... Republicans can win anywhere in 2010.”

Geoff Pender, Sun Herald political editor, can be reached at 896-2329 or at glpender@sunherald.com.