Sally Bell

[Ed W]

I just read that Sally Bell now chairs the Republican Party in Tulsa County.  Should we expect to see the party take a hard right turn under her leadership?

[rwarn17588]

I heard that she got elected with a big help from Ron Paul and Chris Medlock supporters. Talk about a weird alliance ...

Color me skeptical, to say the least.

[RecycleMichael]

The chair of any local political party only has two jobs...find new candidates and find new money for those new candidates.

Everything else happens on its own.

[MichaelBates]

quote:Originally posted by RecycleMichael

The chair of any local political party only has two jobs...find new candidates and find new money for those new candidates.

Everything else happens on its own.

That's the gist of it, although there's a bit more to it than that. She also has to raise money and find volunteers to keep the headquarters open. There's a convention three out of every four years that has to be organized. The chairman often winds up playing peacemaker after a tough primary battle.

It is a thankless job, and it pays nothing, which is why you don't have people tripping over each other to run for chairman and why officers don't tend to serve more than a term or two.

Yesterday, there were two candidates for chairman, two candidates for vice chairman, and two candidates for state committeeman. Because of the Oklahoma Republican Party's rule that the chairman and vice chairman can't be of the same sex, the vice chairman's race was determined as soon as the chairman's race was decided. The other three county party officers were elected without opposition. None of the sitting officials ran for re-election.

I may be forgetting something, but I think this is the first time in 10 years that Tulsa County Republicans have had a contested election for chairman.

A chairman is not a "party boss." A chairman doesn't pick nominees and doesn't write the platform. A chairman has no real leverage over elected officials; every candidate builds his or her own network of volunteers and donors. Maybe three or four times a year, the media will want a quote from the chairmen of both major parties. If a chairman is in the news more often than that, it probably means something really bad has happened.