Former Chairman Bennett elected to lead Ohio GOP

JULIE CARR SMYTH

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Repub­li­cans on Fri­day set­tled a long-running intra­party feud, elect­ing a vet­eran chair­man to lead the party through the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and nam­ing the man he’s replac­ing to a national com­mit­tee post.

Bob Ben­nett, the longest-serving chair­man in the his­tory of the Ohio GOP, won unan­i­mous approval by the state cen­tral com­mit­tee to replace Chair­man Kevin DeWine. DeWine stepped down last week under pres­sure from allies of Repub­li­can Gov. John Kasich.

Both Ben­nett and DeWine empha­sized that Repub­li­cans must put the party infight­ing behind them and focus on defeat­ing Demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­dent Barack Obama this fall.

“The peo­ple in this room are not your polit­i­cal ene­mies. The peo­ple in this room are not your polit­i­cal adver­saries. The peo­ple in this room are not your polit­i­cal oppo­nents,” DeWine said dur­ing part­ing remarks at a Colum­bus hotel. “Our polit­i­cal ene­mies, our adver­saries, our oppo­nents are the peo­ple who want to con­tinue the poli­cies of the pres­i­dent that you and I know deep down in our hearts are wrong for this country.”

Ben­nett touted the same message.

“Make no mis­take about it. We are united,” he told the room after being elected by a unan­i­mous voice vote. “Out­siders chat­ting about Repub­li­can unity in Ohio need not be con­cerned. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama unites us, believe me.”

It was a nec­es­sary mes­sage to drive home after the months of bit­ter feud­ing between DeWine, chair­man since 2009, and those back­ing his ouster. No Repub­li­can has ever won the White House with­out win­ning Ohio.

Ben­nett is return­ing to the posi­tion he held from 1988 to 2009, when he picked DeWine to groom as his successor.

Com­mit­tee­man Pat Flana­gan praised DeWine’s win­ning record as chair­man and nom­i­nated him to a national com­mit­tee seat. Two Kasich sup­port­ers — for­mer House Speaker JoAnn David­son and Franklin County GOP Chair­man Doug Preisse — rose in sup­port before near-unanimous approval by the committee.

David­son, Preisse and other Kasich allies helped recruit a slate of chal­lengers to the com­mit­tee that they believed would vote out DeWine.

Among new­com­ers to the panel were some unusu­ally high-profile fig­ures, includ­ing Betty Mont­gomery, a for­mer Ohio attor­ney gen­eral and state audi­tor; David Good­man, a for­mer state sen­a­tor and Kasich’s com­merce direc­tor; and Richard Finan, who spent years as pres­i­dent of the Ohio Senate.

Finan con­ceded he’s never even been to a cen­tral com­mit­tee meet­ing before, despite his decades in Ohio politics.

He said he ran to pre­vent a more con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­date from win­ning the seat. That was the oppo­site sen­ti­ment expressed by con­ser­v­a­tive Rebecca Heim­lich, who said she believed the new com­mit­tee lineup brought a larger con­ser­v­a­tive con­tin­gent to the party.

David­son, a long­time party offi­cial, said, “I think this is just a new com­mit­tee with a lot of new mem­bers com­ing together and being united on the sit­u­a­tion. It’s all of the above.”

Unspo­ken Fri­day was Kasich’s inter­est in con­trol­ling the party as the sit­ting gov­er­nor. Kasich was elected in 2010 and is serv­ing a four-year term. At least one cen­tral com­mit­tee mem­ber has com­plained that Kasich’s allies threat­ened him to try to get him out of the race, a charge the governor’s spokesman has denied.

Besides the national com­mit­tee slot, DeWine will remain on the state cen­tral com­mit­tee and plans to con­tinue rais­ing money for the GOP as a mem­ber of the national party’s finance committee.

Ben­nett has said he intends to stay in the lead­er­ship post through the fall elec­tion and run again for the posi­tion in Jan­u­ary. He said he would plan to pre­pare for the 2014 midterm elec­tions while the party works to iden­tify a per­ma­nent chairman.

Asso­ci­ated Press Writer Ann San­ner con­tributed to this report.

Posted by AP News on Apr 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.