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The Future of the Nevada Republican Party
By Robert Holloway
By Robert Holloway
February 7, 2009
I am sure that everyone has had experience with some business that does a top notch job and provides a product or service that is really outstanding. Probably you have also had experience with a business on the other side of the scale that cares little about serving its customers. Recently I received a customer satisfaction survey from a company that I do business with on a regular basis. This company really is outstanding and it is a pleasure to work with them. I have also noticed that the organizations that thrive and give good service are more likely than others to listen to their customers and to ask for feedback from their customers.
This got me to thinking of how the Republican Party of Nevada would rate if considered as a business. Let's consider that here. Who are the customers of the Nevada Republican Party? There are many potential customer categories, for instance the entire voting population can be considered customers. Another category of customer is the group that is more actively involved in party politics, for instance those who attend the county central committee meetings and those who attend the state convention.
In business, one important factor that is watched closely is market share. Pepsi and Coke are in a constant battle to increase their market share for instance. In politics, market share could be measured by the number of votes that a party is able to get in an election. In this respect, the Republican Party lost market share in the recent election in Nevada. The loss of two state senate seats was almost certainly due to the party leadership's willingness to abuse its own members in order to gain influence with a McCain administration. It turned out to be poor judgement because there is no McCain administration and they gained nothing while annoying thousands of disgruntled customers.
But it is far from clear whether the people who run the business are listening to their customers to find out why the party lost market share. Like most failing businesses, the party seems to be determined to run customers away even as the party continues its downward spiral.
In business, it is fairly well known that a company that cheats its customers does not thrive as well as a company that follows honest practices. Some typical forms of cheating in business include cooking the books to deceive stockholders, taking advantage of customers with false advertising etc. Another form of questionable conduct is where the managers give themselves huge compensation even while the company is in serious financial difficulty. Usually the above mentioned types of cheating are red flags and quite often one or more of these red flags are signs that the company is in real trouble. It is not uncommon for a business that cheats its customers to perish in the battle for survival because of the competitive nature of business. Enron is typical of a business that no longer exists because of cheating its customers and stockholders, among others. Of course there are dozens of other examples that could be cited.
Some of these red flags are present in the Nevada Republican Party also. For instance, some of the delegates to the National Convention were abused by the party leadership by being followed and required to sit in assigned seats while others in the delegation were not required to do that. Can you imagine a private company that hired security guards to follow its customers? Naturally, a company that did that would not expect to have a long life and would not be expected to thrive. How long would you be willing to be a customer of a company that routinely cheated and abused you?
I wonder who arranged for the surveillance of that small group of delegates who managed to become delegates against the opposition of the state party leadership? There are indications that this could not have happened without the cooperation of Sue Lowden and Bernie Zadrowski, the party chairman of Clark County.
One of the first indications that I noticed that the State Republican Party was willing to use deception with its own customers was when the party cooperated in two deceptive surveys of convention delegates just prior to the state convention. Those doing the survey gave deceptive and misleading reasons for the surveys. Their real objective was to measure the relative strength of the party factions.
In regard to executive compensation, those who are in a leadership position in the Nevada Republican Party are not paid, but there is something similar to the situations in business where the leadership extracts huge compensation at the expense of others in the company. When the party leadership decided to trash the convention election and improperly name all of the delegates, they were trying to personally benefit themselves by currying favor with the McCain camp. This is very similar to the way that some executives have given themselves huge compensation even if it meant damage to the health of their organization. It is a case where the incentives for personal gain outweigh the interests of the organization as a whole at least in the minds of the managers. And it is a very difficult situation to prevent, if the managers are willing to do most anything for personal gain.
Historically a company that does not listen to its customers tends to shrink. It tends to lose market share because there is something defective in the company that makes it impossible for them to adapt and to improve their methods. Quite often this leads to bankruptcy or at least to shrinkage in size to the extent that it is no longer a major player in the market place. In the cases of the recent election, there is ample evidence that the actions of the state party leadership led directly to the defeat of State Senators Joe Heck and Bob Beers. In both cases, the small margin of loss was less than the number of voters believed to have been annoyed by actions of the party leadership in obstructing the convention election. The graph at the top of this page shows that over the past decade, the number of registered voters in Nevada was approximately the same for each major party, except that in the last year, the Republican party has fallen behind the other major party in registrations. This may be due in part to some of the warning flags that I have mentioned in this discussion. In the competitive business of politics, it would seem to be suicide to irritate a substantial segment of the party as was done last year.
In the case of the Republican party of Nevada, comparing its behavior to a business makes quite clear that it has some major flaws. Whether or not the owners of the party are willing to make the necessary changes to once again become competitive remains to be seen. It may be that the Republican Party of Nevada is well on its way to oblivion. People do have choices and the political scene is a competitive environment. Haley Barbour, Republican Governor of Mississippi, recently noted that young voters voted for Obama by a two to one margin. He knows something needs to be done but what? Certainly in Nevada, the state party leadership can start by being honest and not deceptive with its own members. A much better model of ethical behavior was discussed by Abraham Lincoln in one of his first published speeches in 1838.
One of the more curious aspects of the 2008 state party convention was the widespread support for cheating among the party regulars. At the December meeting of the State Central Committee, several of us tried to pass a resolution condemning the party leadership for their handling of the April convention. It failed by a wide margin, even though the party leadership had been severely criticized at the national level. I believe that this is due to the fact that the party regulars were able to demonize the faction that wanted a genuine and fair election of national delegates at the state convention. By painting that faction as a group of barbarians, the party leadership was able to find support for cheating that would not otherwise have been present. The link below is to an account of some experiments that show something similar. The most relevant part of the video is at about 11 or 12 minutes into the video.
Link to a video about an experiment on cheating
John Dean on Conservatives Without Conscience
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