Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: California Republican Party and Governor Call a Truce
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, right, speaks with reporters after leaving a meeting with state Republican party chair Duf Sundheim, left, and other state GOP leaders held in Sacramento, Calif., Thursday, Dec. 15, 2005. The meeting was held to discuss the concern party leaders had over Schwarzenegger’s appointment of Democrat Susan Kennedy as his new chief of staff.
The Sacramento Bee has Truce is called on staff pick
Governor, state GOP say they’ve worked it out.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and California Republican Party Chairman Duf Sundheim emerged from a meeting Thursday to declare that as far as they’re concerned, the controversy over the governor’s appointment of Democrat Susan Kennedy as chief of staff is over.
“I think that issue has been put to rest,” Sundheim said of the Kennedy matter, after the governor’s session with the state GOP board in a conference room at the Hyatt Regency that lasted about an hour. “He made it clear she is there to implement his policies. She’s totally committed to that, and we support his decision.”
Sundheim last week expressed disappointment with Schwarzenegger’s appointment of Kennedy, a longtime Democratic Party stalwart, to run the day-to-day operations of his administration. The conservative California Republican Assembly also has called on the state party to withdraw its endorsement of Schwarzenegger’s 2006 re-election bid, and Republican members of the state Assembly have grumbled loudly about the governor’s naming of Kennedy.
They might as well call a TRUCE since both the California Republican Party and the Governor are joined together at the hip – at least for this 2006 election cycle.
The conservative wing of the party continues to be disgruntled.
“‘It’s not over,’ said Mike Spence, the president of the California Republican Assembly. ‘We still have the February convention. The governor, if he proposes his big general obligation bond, there’s going to be another big fight over that, and I think the dissatisfaction is going to continue.'”
The FLAP will continue with conservatives refusing to work for the Governor and Republican voters looking for an alternative – perhaps Steve Westly.
Or……
California Republican voters will simply stay home, allowing the Democrats to again run the legislature and the executive branch of California government.
Stay tuned…….
Blogger extraordinaire, Ken Masugi, of the Claremont Institute has Republicans Come to Terms Over Susan Kennedy
I think the whole dispute–and Matt Peterson, please correct me (my earlier posts here)–has been overblown and a good example of how conservatives in California fail to grasp politics and how they can succeed, in the face of hostility. The loudest voices objecting to the pick of Susan Kennedy were those who likely never voted for Schwarzenegger in the first place. (I didn’t vote for him either.) Does he owe us anything? Whether Republicans or conservatives vote for him in 2006 depends solely on the quality of his policies, not this inner-circle gossip. That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.
Indeed!
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Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: Relationship with California GOP
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One Comment
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it is a disgrace that this bully, who calls all democrats, girlie men, and who is a rythless bully, who like the devil in teh akl pacino, keanu reeves film, as no matter if he is a rapist, or a bully or a son of a nazi, nobody cares how bad ihe is, even if california, was reduced to famine, he would still be loved by the dumb nazi morons who support his immigrant shooting watys