Monday, March 19, 2007

GOP Needs to Capitalize on Opportunities

Arizona Republicans are trying to recover from last years losses by aggressively pursuing new voter registrations.



This picture was taken at a Marana event at lunch time. The GOP voter registration booth remained empty throughout the remainder of the day.
It looks like the party still has some work to do to be ready for '08.

UPDATE:
The rest of the story...
A party source informs us that the registration activity was well planned. The individual in charge had a family emergency the night before, but four people were at the event in the morning beginning at 7:15 mostly walking the area away from the booth. They left around 12:45 but inadvertently left the signs up. The Democrats had no presence whatsoever.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kral,

I can assure you that the Republican base is still quite motivated. You may want to talk to the party leadership find out what is going on.

Touchdown said...

I manned the Kyl event for Founders Day last year and it was a huge success. I wasn't contacted to help last weekend. It looks to me that if you want to keep a "small tent" with only a few opinions, then it will quickly turn into an "empty tent"...

Anonymous said...

Don’t pin this on the conservatives.

The event was completely organized and set up by elected party officials. The few people who knew the details of the event did their best show up and help. The empty booth had nothing to do with the “big tent” or “platform loyalists” factions. I wonder that if a Marana resident and party activist like thinkright did not even know about it that there was a slight lack of communication.

Anonymous said...

As to "Think Right Arizona's" comment about working it last year for Kyl and having a great outcome Kudos to him...Lots of people want to come out and help during election season..Then, like many of the candidates who win they - "make like an egg and beat it" until the next big cycle comes around. However,not before they sling their arrows at the party or the members of the party they do not think voted for them or for their candidate. If you look closely at the picture the entire event looks devoid of attendance. Maybe the volunteer needed to use the porta potty...or they went home to sit it out until next season when they can get their picture next to an elected official...Gee maybe you should ask the people who ran and got help from all the work last season to man the booth on the "off years" Betcha they will not show up.
Politics is cyclical and people are fickle

Anonymous said...

If you look closely at the picture you will notice that the Republican Party sign was left up there after the booth was abandoned. Great publicity for the party; We reserved this booth but could not be bothered to staff it.

If the volunteer was using the porta potty it did not go well because he/she was in there from about 1:00 pm until after 5:00 pm.

In defense of thinkright I believe him when he said that he did not know about the event because it did not seem to be well publicized within the party.

Anonymous said...

Its an absolute waste of time to spend so much effort and complaining over registering people to vote. People who vote, vote. People who don't, don't. If you really want to be doing something good for the party, make sure that the leadership is co-opting all of the people within the party and getting them engaged and motivated. They should also be looking for ways to unite the groups and stop all of the in-fighting. We are too busy shooting eachother that we can barely focus on anyone else.

Anonymous said...

Good point.

So we should look at the leadership. Would that include the county party chair, Judi? My only question is what leadership?