My very first job in politics was for Bruce Herschensohn’s 1992 campaign for U. S. Senate. He
embodied everything I believed in. He was also a good and kind and gentle man who to this day can articulate the conservative-small government principled position on any issue better than anyone I have ever heard or read.
Others have already written about how much Bruce has meant to them, but I feel compelled to write my own story and make sure we all remember that it is the dirty-work of Susan Kennedy that tanked Bruce’s chances in that pivotal election.
I won’t rehash the details, Jon Fleischman explains them well.
And I won’t even suggest that the dirty-tricks that Susan Kennedy (then executive director of the California Democratic Party) pulled were any worse than some tactics we see today.
But I keep coming back to why? Why the Governor would take this woman who has clearly done grave damage to his Republican Party and the future of our cause and put her in charge of his administration.
And why do I feel so passionately that the Governor made a mistake?
I guess it is my personal frustration, my personal connection to Bruce Herschensohn that makes the Kennedy appointment so hard to accept. Call me soft, but I am emotional about this issue. And that is something that Governor Schwarzenegger and his defenders and some in the GOP leadership today don’t understand. There are thousand more like me, volunteers, many of them are among the 1400 members of the California Republican Party.
A piece of our collective conservative political history has been disgraced by Schwarzenegger’s Kennedy appointment, and it hurts.