Lunch With Alex, Tea With Kevin

Tuesday was one of those interesting karma days, when different worlds seem to bump up against one another. That's the nature of the business, whether it is media or politics but especially when it is both. After all, how many occasions do we get to spend the better part of four hours navigating the latest chapter of the Elephant Wars?

Update 8:46 p.m.: Ohio GOP Chairman Bob Bennett downplays any of State Senator Kevin Coughlin's hopes for a Columbus presence; additional coverage here at AkronNewsNow.com.

My sit-down chat with incumbent GOP Chairman Alex Arshinkoff was typical for conversations with him -- a couple hours, off-track at times but informative and entertaining. It is clear he still holds great passion for what has become his identity over the past 30 years, even to the point of still calling Ray Bliss "Mr. Bliss" when recounting stories of glory years before Reagan brought revolution to Republicanville.

Alex tells me there will absolutely be a secret ballot for central committee members and they will most likely meet on Friday, April 18th -- the day after Democrats meet to officially set up their respective party structures following the March primary. Unlike the Democrats, however, the GOP will probably see some wrangling back and forth ahead of time.

While the Dems will officially select a new full-time chair since Russ Pry left partisan behind for the executive's office (yeah, I know...inside joke and intended) the GOP won't be the rubber stamp it has been for decades with a significant challenge to Arshinkoff's tenure in the form of Carol Klinger and the New Summit Republicans.

While supporters say this campaign is now Klinger's to wage with personal communication to committee members it is clearly still a battle between Arshinkoff and State Senator Kevin Coughlin, who held his own chatfest Tuesday with a 47-minute conference call that also included Stephanie Warsmith of the Beacon Journal, Eric Mansfield of WKYC-TV, Ben Keeler of The Keeler Report and Ohio.com's politics page and yours truly.

Coughlin wants rules of order for the meeting, even to the extreme of approaching state GOP leaders about running the meeting themselves. There isn't much chance of that happening if Arshinkoff has a say about it, which as incumbent chairman he does but the opening salvo in the minutiae of the meeting wars has been fired. I don't expect state GOP leaders to come without a direct invitation but you have to figure they will have plenty of eyes in the room to track what is going on in this tussle between a proven major fundraiser (Alex) against a proven local vote getter (Kevin) and the future of the last bastion of anything approaching a competitive Republican presence before you drive into Lake Erie.

Arshinkoff argues expectations of a vibrant, winning local GOP can't be measured in the traditional sense of the world we see in all of Ohio's counties; indeed, he points out, the biggest city in Ohio with a Republican at the helm is now our very own Cuyahoga Falls, which explains the rousing reception Mayor Don Robart got at a McCain-event state GOP dinner in Columbus recently. Urban=democrat stronghold in today's Ohio, with Canton falling, Akron not even close, Toledo, Dayton and Cleveland not even a consideration and Columbus and Cincinnati reflecting the same burbs versus inner city schism that sets the true red v blue battle lines. Given the national climate, his perspective on keeping the local GOP alive also hearkens back to the later Bliss years when Republicans couldn't elect a cup of coffee.

Coughlin makes the argument the emphasis on getting what the GOP can should come at a more efficient prices without the overhead, that it should be more grass-roots based. He says the party under Arshinkoff's guidance focuses more on fundraising than party-building, and it is at the hyper-local where the best opportunity for growth exists. That doesn't, however, really take into account the "bankability" of the party presence and whether traditional big donors will pony up the cash for such an operation, or whether the new blood will stimulate new revenue sources to replace the old. Politics in the modern age is an exercise in professional marketing and campaigning despite the apparent grass roots success shown by an Obama campaign claiming the bulk of their financial support comes from small donors. In reality, it's the mix that matters.

This is all a good fight for the local Republican party: the opportunity to determine the broad direction from which specific strategy will grow. Companies and non-profit organizations go through this on a regular basis with strategic evaluations designed to respond to changing times and politics is no different.