Everyone knows that Kevin McCarthy’s political machine includes the Abernathy’s and Western Political Research. What most people have forgotten is that ten years ago these very same people helped Willie Brown keep power by helping Republican puppets, Doris Allen and Brian Setenich. These consultants should be banned from party services not raking in money because they are connected to the GOP Miniority leader. See the whole post here.
Not that McCarthy is trying that hard to recruit candidates for a GOP Majority now. See my previous post here.
January 24th, 2006 at 12:00 am
As a registered Democrat, I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I have to say that I think it is off base on a few points. First, many Republicans did work for the candidates you mentioned and they were at different times encouraged to do so by Republican leadership in the Assembly in the hopes of getting those people back on the reservation.
Prominent Republicans like Allan Hoffenblum, Alan Heslop, Bob Gouty, Pete Schabarum and several other elected officials, all gave help at different times to either Setencich or Allen without believing they were compromising their Republican values.
They all felt like they had made a mistake when it was over, but at different times and in different ways, many prominent Republicans helped both of them in part because no one was sure that they were really selling out.
Unless you can get more specific about help that was out of place, I don’t think you can really put down Mark Abernathy for anything he might have done because there were so many other people who made the same types of decisions, but that’s just my opinion.
What I think needs to me remembered in discussing this particular political fight is the different political culture in Sacramento at the time.
In those days campaigns for leadership were run across party lines. The registration mattered, but it wasn’t critical up until that split. In fact, in those days legislators from opposing parties often roomed together sometimes as many as four legislators sharing a large apartment with sometimes a 2/2 split on party registration and more than that, their families would take vacations together. The common view on leadership fights was that they had to do with how each house was run, not governing philosophy. It was a much more low key time and a lot of Republicans considered that history in deciding how to deal with Allan and Setencich.
Of course the split all started with the Paul Horcher recall which most people forget nearly didn’t happen, until Pete Wilson stepped forward to provide the money and insist that it get done. Of course Wilson never gets credit for that from Conservatives.
August 18th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Tom, Mark Abernathy was by far the most involved so called GOP consultant in supporting Doris Allen and Brian Setencich. I call it being a RINO.
August 19th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Actually, Allan Hoffenblum was by far the most involved GOP Consultant supporting Doris Allen and both Setencich and Allen received some support in varying degrees from caucus members after their election.