Iowa Republicans to vote for a new party chair
The new board members who took power over the Republican Party of Iowa on Saturday night intend to elect a new chair and a new co-chair.
This shift stems from residual turmoil from the transition away from liberty-movement control of party headquarters to management by the coalition of establishment Republicans and evangelical conservatives who made a big play for control in early March.
A vote to replace Chairman Danny Carroll and Co-Chairman Gopal Krishna will take place at noon on June 28.
The new board members, citing a desire for a fresh start, on Saturday night gave Carroll and Krishna the opportunity to resign before they announced the upcoming vote.
"Danny is a good person. It's nothing against Danny," said new state central committee member Trudy Caviness, who has in the past helped campaign for Carroll, a former state legislator.
"It's the fact that our job is to set the tone for Republicans in the state of Iowa and elect Republicans and those goals need to be of the utmost importance in all our decisions," Caviness told The Des Moines Register today. "To do that, we need to consider a new chair and co-chair."
The change in leadership will send a message to Republicans in Iowa and elsewhere, including donors who closed their wallets and activists who grew dismayed by what they considered to the liberty conservatives' incompetence in running the party Donations have not ramped back up since Carroll took over.
Top GOP activists also want a strong leader in place during the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. The chairmanship of the state party attracts a great deal of national attention in the months ahead of the first-in-the-nation presidential vote, which next will take place in February 2016.
One name that has been tossed around as a promising choice as the new chairman is former state Rep. Jeff Kaufmann of Cedar County.
Asked Saturday afternoon at the state convention about the possibility that he could become the next party chairman, Kaufmann told the Register: "That rumor mill is something else. Today I'm basking in the glory of a united party."
The previous governing board on March 29 elected Carroll and Krishna despite objections from seven of the 18 voting members who warned that both men would likely end up as interim placeholders. The seven dissenters argued that leadership decisions should reflect the will of the new set of party activists who had risen into power at the March 8 county conventions.
The new state central committee members are part of a slate backed by Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, an establishment Republican who has had a consistently high job approval rating in the last three years and is seeking re-election this fall. (All seven dissenters remain on the new board.)
Although Branstad and Carroll have maintained a good working relationship in the last couple of months, GOP activists recall a time when that wasn't the case. In the 2010 governor's race, Carroll chose to "withhold support" for Branstad, even after Branstad had defeated Christian conservative Bob Vander Plaats in the GOP primary.
Since Carroll became chairman this year, he pledged total commitment to helping re-elect Branstad. But some party activists predicted Democrats would try to take advantage of the old conflict with a message such as, "The chairman of Branstad's own party refused to support him, why would you?"
Control over the state party headquarters is a slow, grass-roots-led effort that comes together over several months. Here's a timeline of what happened:
JANUARY 2012: Activists dedicated to the Ron Paul-led liberty movement stayed late after the presidential voting took place at the Iowa caucuses. They got themselves elected to the pool of delegates who became the decision-makers who control party business. Liberty conservatives, who would like to see sweeping changes made to limit government, were named as chairman (A.J. Spiker), co-chairman (David Fischer), executive director (Steve Bierfeldt), organization director (John Ferland) and as members of the state central committee that governs the Iowa GOP infrastructure.
2012-2014: Republicans expressed displeasure with how the liberty movement ran the party, citing lackluster fundraising, clashes with Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a focus on pet issues instead of electing GOP candidates, a controversy over state convention scheduling that some critics thought gave Democratic candidates an advantage, and other problems.
JANUARY 2014: A wide coalition of Republicans who wanted to diminish the influence of the liberty movement swarmed to the Iowa caucuses to get themselves elected to the pool of delegates who became the party decision-makers.
MARCH 8: Mainstream Republicans and other factions turned out in force at the party's county conventions to reclaim dominance. On the same day, the news broke that Spiker had announced that he'd step down as chairman "effective upon election of a new state chairman" on March 29. Spiker took a new job as political adviser to RAND PAC, the political action committee for U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a likely 2016 presidential candidate and a favorite of liberty movement conservatives.
MARCH 29: Carroll and Krishna, both Christian conservatives, were voted in as chair and co-chair, over the objections of seven board members. (All seven remain voting members of the new Iowa GOP board seated last night.)
APRIL 26: At the district conventions, Republicans voted for 16 members of the new state central committee. Branstad's entire slate of 16 won seats. His slate included a mix of establishment Republicans and evangelical conservatives.
Re-elected were David Chung, Ryan Frederick, Bob Anderson, Loras Schulte, Cody Hoefert and Jamie Johnson. (Steve Scheffler was the seventh voting member to object to the March 29 hiring but he wasn't up for re-election yet.) The new members are: Chelle Adkins, Ron Herrig, Judy Davidson, Jeff Kaufmann, Trudy Caviness, Sherill Whisenand, Brenna Findley, Bill Gustoff, Gabe Haugland and Gary Nystrom. (Tamara Scott, who also wasn't up for re-election this year, is the 18th voting member.)
The liberty conservatives' ouster from leadership changes who's in charge of the state party apparatus during the run-up to the 2016 presidential caucuses and affects national perceptions of the Iowa Republican landscape.
SATURDAY, JUNE 14: The new board officially took power. Carroll's term as chairman will have lasted less than three months.
Some Christian conservatives immediately bashed Branstad and the establishment. Tom Nichols of Klemme posted on Facebook: "I don't know if the Constitution Party has anything going in Iowa, but I for one am done with the Repukes. Danny Carroll is a good man. A man who fears God and a man of integrity. If he's out, I'm out too. Out of the party completely. And the establishment Repukes can kiss my fat posterior."
- Register staff writer Jason Noble contributed to this report.