The Republican National Committee on Friday elected Reince Priebus as its chairman after four hours and seven secret ballots. Priebus held the lead from the very first vote, but how he managed to more than double his vote total from 45 to 97 votes had a lot to do with what was going on around him. There are conflicting reports as to what happened.
Priebus went into the race in a stronger position than any other candidate. He had 44 public commitments from members, more than double that of any other candidate. Current chairman Michael Steele had the second most supporters, and many of his were expected to go to other candidates after the first ballot.
As Chad Kolton of HDMK, who worked on Maria Cino’s campaign, put it: “You can cover a lot more ground with 44 than you can 12,” the number of Cino’s public endorsements.
Trying to round up votes from the 168 committee members has been equated to “herding cats.” As Chris Healy, chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party, said in the aftermath, “These votes are all based on a variety of factors: some are emotional, some are based on a variety of factors, some are deals.” All day rumors were flying — a deal between Saul Anuzis and Ann Wagner, a deal between Steele and Anuzis, an anti-Priebus coalition forming — all of which turned out to be just that: rumors.
At the end of the day there were two items of particular note: Anuzis’s refusal to cut a deal and drop out, and Cino’s vote ceiling as a non-member.
According to someone involved with a rival candidate’s campaign, Steele’s endorsement of Cino was a display of the influence House Speaker John Boehner could exert on the committee. Boehner had made phone calls on Cino’s behalf, and on Wednesday night he attended a fundraiser for her. Steele, it was suggested was looking out for himself, and is likely to a job at some firm in the near future.
The 168 are an insular crowd, and prefer to elect from among their own ranks. They are also wary when the establishment attempts to exert influence in their proceedings. Though the endorsement likely didn’t work against Cino, her numbers in the next ballot made clear that many of the members would not vote for someone who was not a committee member, not one of their own. She gained fewer than half of Steele’s supporters.
“If you were to look back and note a point at which it broke for good,” that was it, said Chad Kolton of HDMK who was running communications for Cino’s campaign.
“I was very optimistic that we were going to turn a good number,” he said. “That really hit hard.”
Kolton speculated that “maybe some of the members were turned off by deal-making.” Alternatively, he mused, that since “up until recently, Reince and Steele were on the same team, so there may be some committee loyalty.”
The other contributing factor was that Anuzis, despite rumors to the contrary, dug his heels in and refused to cut a deal with anybody. The Cino endorsement was seen as destroying any chance of any candidate edging out Priebus, in part, because the 168 committee members tend to elect one of their number when given their option. That meant Anuzis was almost guaranteed to split votes with Cino.
Anuzis’s supporters admitted that he probably couldn’t have won unless Priebus’s momentum had slowed. Had Anuzis had to go up against the two women, the fact that he was a member of the committee would have helped him, “and I think some of the votes pledged for the co-chairs … would have come our way,” said Healy, who had pledged to support Anuzis until released, referring to the rule that requires the chair and co-chair to be of different genders. But with Priebus in, Anuzis couldn’t pull it off.
Wagner did not seem to be a huge factor in the race, and she left quietly, dropping out without endorsing another candidate. Had she done so, endorsing Cino or Anuzis, it’s possible she could have tipped the race. But instead, said a person familiar with the situation, Wagner apparently opted to “take the more graceful approach.”
Priebus’s message after his election was one of party unity.
“Now is the time for the committee to unite,” he said. “We must come together for the common interest.”
“With that in mind,” he continued, “I want you to know, that I am here to earn the trust and support for each and every one of you.” He added, “And I’m going to start working right now as your chairman.”
“We all recognize that there’s a steep hill here ahead of us. The only way we’ll be able to move forward is if we’re all together.”
“As Reagan said, our nation is that shining city upon a hill and we must work to keep it that way,” Priebus continued, saying that he would do everything possible, with the help of the committee “to be sure that our Republican presidential nominee has the organization in place to beat Barack Obama.”
The committee seemed to coalesce around him quickly. A motion was made to show in the record that Priebus had been elected by unanimous vote. Even Healy, who wrote a scathing blog post about Priebus following the closed-door sessions on Thursday in which candidates spoke to the committee, seemed to accept him. Though he seemed somewhat down and frustrated, appeared resigned and heeded Priebus’ message of unity.
“Reince says it’s a clean slate,” he told TheDC, “and now we can move on, as they say. We can move on.”