GOP losing grassroots support over pay raise fiasco
York County GOP Chairman John Thompson has been around for a while. The venerable party chief took the helm decades ago when York County was dominated by democrats. Today, it is a steadfast bastion of Republicanism.
Earlier this month, as he looked down from his seat on the rostrum at his annual fall fundraising dinner – and saw relatively few faces looking back at him, John Thompson’s years of political acumen quickly concluded why: the pay raise.
The Pennsylvania GOP is about to face it’s most difficult electoral challenge in decades. U.S. Senator Rick Santorum is the top target of national democrats, and he is running far behind challenger Robert P. Casey, Jr. in the polls. Governor Ed Rendell isn’t polling so well himself these days. And while a number of well qualified, appealing candidates are eager to take on Rendell, the buzz at the grassroots isn’t about them: it is about the pay raise.
Chairman Thompson, one of the last of the old time party bosses – and never one to mince words – called the pay raise “nonsense” and lamented the GOP “misgovernment” in Harrisburg.
Appearing at that same dinner was former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge. Ridge, who signed the last pay raise back in 1995, reminded folks that a cost of living escalator was put into effect at that time to end the pay raise issue once and for all. Ridge said the most recent vote was “disappointing.”
The comments by Ridge and Thompson, coupled with the lackluster attendance at the dinner, are just the latest signs that the Republican Party in Pennsylvania is coming unraveled because of the pay raise issue. Although legislators from both parties conspired to pass the pay raise, it will be Republicans who will pay the political price. That is because Republicans at the grassroots level have worked for years to elect a legislature that would put a stop to, not become complicit in – as Chairman Thompson would say – such nonsense.
Making matters worse, Republican leadership in the state House has developed a tin ear over the issue. After becoming the object of statewide ridicule for comparing legislative salaries to the pay of migrant farm workers in Lancaster, House Speaker John Perzel further outraged his party’s base by bottling up in a leadership-controlled committee a bill that would repeal the pay raise. The move was accepted by most other GOP lawmakers as passively as a cow being milked.
Is it any wonder the faithful are deserting the party? Mr. Thompson will likely not be the only county chairman with empty seats and an empty treasury. His party’s leadership has abandoned the principles that got them elected, the back benchers are too scared to take action, and its grassroots are mad as heck.
The timing could hardly be worse. Senator Santorum, already dealing with a conservative base dispirited by his support of Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey in last year’s U.S. Senate election, should view these developments with great alarm. He has much ground to make up, and so long as the pay raise stays in effect the focus is not – and will not be – on him. Legions of party activists, the people who knock on doors, stand at the polls and all those things, will be busy fighting the pay raise and not working to re-elect Rick Santorum.
Perzel & company tend to dismiss pay raise opponents as the conservative fringe – but John Thompson is no right wing firebrand. And neither is Tom Ridge. They are pragmatists. With their years of experience they correctly see what the problem is, and understand that the impact could be a GOP crack up of historic proportions.
Unless the Republican Party rights itself on the pay raise issue, and begins to make progress on the wide array of fiscally conservative proposals stagnating in the General Assembly, it can expect across the board losses in 2006 that might even threaten its currently strong numerical hold on the state House itself.
John Perzel may be politically tone deaf. But even he must be able to hear the fat lady tuning up just off stage.