TO: RNC Members
FROM: Saul Anuzis, MI-NCM
RE: Announcement for RNC Chairman
DATE: November 12, 2010
Congratulations on your success, nationwide and state-by-state. Without the leadership you and our fellow members of the National Committee provide, we as a party, a conservative movement, would not have been able to rally America for the historic victory we achieved on Election Day.
This is an exciting time to be a Republican and, as leaders, we have an awesome task ahead of us. The American people have given us a ‘second chance’ and that opportunity brings with it huge responsibility and challenge.
Now we turn our attention to 2012. America must elect a new President. It is that hope, that necessity, that challenge, that draws me to announce my candidacy for the Chairmanship of the Republican National Committee.
I don’t take lightly the fact that I am challenging a friend and colleague for the Chairmanship. When Michael was elected Chairman, I was the only candidate who stepped forward to attend the next morning’s RNC breakfast meeting, agreed to join the transition team, and later took on several roles as a team player on the RNC…and have attended every meeting since.
Given my involvement and efforts to help over the past two years, it was not an easy decision for me to seek the post. As someone who believes in loyalty, my natural instinct would be to sit this out. But the simple fact is that the overriding challenge we face is winning back the Presidency in 2012 and we will not accomplish that objective unless there is dramatic change in the way the RNC does business.
We cannot be misled by our victories this year. In 1994 we won the House and Senate yet just two years later Bill Clinton cruised to re-election. As we’ve seen in the past two years public opinion can change with breathtaking speed.
We can’t rely on our wins in 2010 to carry us to success in 2012. We also can’t win in 2012 unless the RNC re-establishes itself as the powerful force that put us over the top in 2000 and 2004.
But to be a force, the RNC must change and that requires new leadership at the top. I am offering you an alternative, a choice, a different approach to the leadership and stewardship of our party.
Chairman Steele’s record speaks for itself. He has his way of doing things. I have mine.
We will not win in 2012 if the RNC is not able to provide the financial resources we need to support the organizational efforts and ground games of our state parties. Without a fully funded Victory program we will be overwhelmed by the efforts of the unions, the Obama campaign and all their allies.
Even though we won an overall victory in 2010 we lost some heartbreaking statewide races in places like Illinois, Colorado, West Virginia, Washington and Nevada, and countless congressional and legislative districts because the other side had a better turnout effort.
Think about your own state. Did some terrific Republican candidate work their hearts out, yet fall short by a handful of votes on Election Day? Now ask yourself: if the RNC had properly funded the Victory program in your state, would that candidate have been a winner? Would that candidate have benefited from a robust 72-hour program with ground troops sweeping in for the final weekend?
These are the stakes:
ü We will only win in 2012 if the RNC has the maximum level of resources it is allowed to spend on the GOP Presidential ticket.
ü We will only win in 2012 if the Chairman of the RNC steps out of the limelight and allows our elected officials and presidential candidates to be the face, voice, and agenda setter for Republicans.
ü And, we will only hold on to our gains–and expand them– if the RNC is able to provide the funding and leadership on reapportionment that is so critical.
Thankfully, in 2010 a group of alternative organizations emerged to help fill the void created by the RNC’s shortage of resources. They found support from many RNC major donors who had lost faith in the RNC. We need these groups and their support, but they can’t be expected to replace the RNC in a presidential year. We must rebuild the trust with our party’s major donors and bring them back to the table.
My philosophy of how the National Committee should be run is simple: to use a football analogy, I believe we should do the “blocking and tackling” for the candidates.
Today, we have many great potential candidates emerging as leaders of our country and our party. Member of Congress, Senators and Governors now present the ‘face’ of the Republican Party. As our elected representatives, it is their job to set the public policy agenda.
As party leaders and grassroots activists, it is our job to make the calls, knock on the doors, organize our states and precincts and, most importantly, raise the money to help elect Republicans.
With those thoughts in mind let me outline what I will do if you choose to elect me as Chairman.
ü I will be a tenacious fundraiser who will make fundraising my number 1 priority as Chairman. As the Michigan Republican Chairman during some of our party’s toughest times, I raised record amounts of money to make sure our efforts were funded. I will commit a majority of my time to funding our efforts for this upcoming cycle.
ü I will NOT strive to be the voice or the face of our party. Of course I will be happy to discuss politics and elections with the media, but I won’t be competing with valuable airtime from the men and women on our ticket. Instead, I will work with our elected leaders around the country to give them maximum exposure and guarantee a consistent message that leads us to victory.
ü I will be a nuts & bolts type of Chairman, one who will concentrate on the fundamentals and ensure we properly develop and execute our ground game. It will be my goal to create an unprecedented organizational base, fully funded, to make more phone calls, knock on more doors, mail more material and compete on the airwaves to get our message across.
ü I will work with our National Convention committee and ultimately our nominee for President to ensure an effective, efficient Convention that will showcase our party and launch our nominee into the general election campaign with momentum. I will work diligently to ensure that we spend every dollar towards running the most efficient and exciting convention possible.
ü I will raise the funds needed to make sure we have a state of the art reapportionment program nationwide. To take advantage of our 2010 state election victories we will need to buttress the efforts of our state parties and legislative caucuses to make sure they have the information technology, legal support, and data needed to win the redistricting war.
ü I will run a tight ship and be a conscientious steward of our donor’s money. I will engage both our donor community and the Budget Committee in a detailed review and supervision of how we allocate our resources. I will be accountable for every penny spent. I will always be mindful that the RNC’s resources come from hard-working Americans who love their country and were willing to sacrifice to make it a better place.
ü I will be a team player and work cooperatively with the NRSC, NRCC and RGA to elect more Republicans across our country. I will not take sides in the Presidential primary contest but will be a reliable player that the eventual presidential nominee will be able to depend on, and work with closely and cooperatively through the presidential campaign.
ü I will be available to you and the other Committee members and use your input and advice as we develop election targets and support programs.
ü I will be directly in charge of our Election Day programs and support efforts. During the final days of the 2012 campaign I will be at headquarters 24/7, overseeing our national campaign and making sure that every call is made, every email sent, every piece of literature delivered and every Republican voter we can identify gets to the polls in order to achieve success.
ü Finally, I will ONLY run for ONE term, help elect our president and support his/her recommendation for our next Chairman.
We saw this plan work in Michigan this year. By raising the necessary funds and giving local parties the tools they needed, the Michigan Republican Party created an environment where our slate of great candidates cruised to victory, winning every statewide office, taking back the state house and Supreme Court, increasing majority in the state senate and increasing our GOP Congressional delegation by two seats.
My agenda is very straightforward. I have no interest in running for office. I won’t be writing a book. It is not my goal to be famous. However, you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who will work harder, more diligently and be more committed to electing Republicans from the top to every township and city across this great country of ours.
Our Republican Party has a proud history as the Grand Old Party but we have an even brighter future as the Grand Opportunity Party that leads us into the 21st century with innovative solutions based upon our proven principles.
In 2012 one of two things will happen. We will either win back the Senate and White House and set America on the right pathway forward, or we will squander this opportunity and allow President Obama to continue moving our nation to the left, to an era of unprecedented government growth and intrusion into our lives.
As an RNC member, the choice is yours as the outcome will be determined, in large part, by which party has the resources and the organizational program to prevail.
If you believe that what we have seen at the RNC the past two years is good enough to provide us a victory in 2012 then by all means you should stick with our current leadership and direction.
But if you agree with me that victory in 2012 requires a new set of priorities and new leadership I hope you will consider supporting my candidacy for RNC Chairman.
[...] noted in a statement that the decision for him was not easy, since he regards Steele as a “friend and [...]
Outstanding. Mr. Steele has had some successes, most notably in inserting his foot in his mouth. We need STRONG leadership that will take the battle to the Democrats and NOT LET THEM set the agenda.
We need to also remember the 11th Commandment promulgated by Ronald Reagan. “Thou Shalt not speak ill of another Republican.”
Good luck, and you will have a bunch of folk behind you.
[...] Republican Party chairman of Michigan, will challenge Michael Steele for the RNC chairmanship. In a blog post at his web site, Anuzis writes that Steele “has his way of doing things. I have [...]
Mr. Anuzis,
I am in Michigan and I know that you have been in touch with “We the People” – you have been to some Tea Parties and you know that we want a Constitutionally conservative government that is fiscally responsible and that we want responsible, but less, government at a federal level with the states and local governments picking up, at least, some of what the federal government is now doing. I think that you understand that, most of all, we want honest candidates who will not “sell-out” to special interest groups.
I am encouraged by this and wish you well.
Darlene Littlejohn
Charlotte, MI
Great letter Saul, you’ve outlined exactly what the RNC needs in order to compete in 2012. Best wishes on your run, you’ve got support down here in the Keystone State.
[...] In his announcement, Anuzis channels the 2008 McCain campaign (which poked at then-candidate Obama’s quasi-celebrity status): My agenda is very straightforward. I have no interest in running for office. I won’t be writing a book. It is not my goal to be famous. However, you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who will work harder, more diligently and be more committed to electing Republicans from the top to every township and city across this great country of ours. [...]
Id like to help. I hope to see the elephant soar. What is your vision. Mine is to beat Ms. Stabenow and see her out.
[...] Anuzis, who finished third in the balloting for the post in 2009, outlined a number of reasons he was taking on the incumbent, with the key being a “dramatic change in the way the RNC [...]
[...] Party chairman Saul Anuzis is gunning for Michael Steele’s job. In a delicately-worded blog post, Anuzis announced his bid to replace Steele, his “friend and colleague,” as chairman of [...]
Saul: I saupport your bid for the top spot at RNC. I’ve written against the actions and mostly comatose leadership of Steele in my columns for Project Shining City Front Page. We believe at that site in strong leadership from the top down, and a
Tea Party RNC thinker, which Steele flunks the ‘course’ on all grounds, being no more than a plastic template for the liberal left-center Bush republicans, and an abysmal failure. Here’s the 2nd of 2 columns I wrote about him. Good Luck!
**************
The Mouse Who Roared In A Vacuum
- Michael Steele
By Paul Szemanczky
Michael Steele, RNC Chairman, remains the ‘mouse’ of ironic penetration who can’t break out of the RNC containment and security cheese tent. Call it weird, traditional Republican, last best hope on earth guardedness, but if Mr. Steele were trapped in a diamond mine of options to attack the humming-along Democratic Party in these last days before the Nov. 2 midterm elections, he would opt to eat cheese scraps off the copy floor of the NY Times and Daily News rather than pick up a football-shaped ‘diamond gem’ and run for a touchdown. He hasn’t exactly been glorified in the past, but in the midst of a Tea Party Republican revolution he stammers and caws and appears ‘dreaded’ by none of his enemies in the DNC, and insofar as possible, seems destroyed in the present. The entire media in all dimensions largely ignores him, and that may be what he wants. A passive McClellanish ‘retreat’ into SILENCE, while, perhaps, groping the necessity of mastering a ‘foreign language’ that ATTACKS OBAMA and his legion of liars….is all we seem to be getting from Mr. Steele for months now. A strange reticence remains quietly invisible like a doppelganger as he makes his passage through the world of election politics. It would be impossible to detect either ‘creation’s shadow’ at this point.
Let’s examine the biology of his blood to see where he keeps missing his voice.
With growth slowing to 1.7% in the 2nd quarter of 2010 and unemployment according to (10/8/10) a Gallup poll of 10.1% unemployed and underemployment reaching 18.8%, the long-awaited recovery of the Left has become an article of blind faith. Every campaigning Democrat asserts that catastrophe was “sincerely-avoided” by the Obama measures taken to save the Union, but the dead-drum silence of Michael Steele echoes a mind and heart which refuses and resists the knowledge of those quite accurate out-of-work statistics. At least show, Mr. Steele, some shock and unbelieving wonder on the stage, and maybe if you spoke about the $15 billion deficit the state of Illinois faces in 2011-2012 (as Dan Hynes, state comptroller, acknowledges a 36% surge in its fiscal 2010 bills) as it relates to future Obamacare costs, then we might IMMEDIATELY show a rising tsunami shock and helpless rage. Other states in deficits next year include: New York’s – $8.8 billion; California’s current shortfall of $19 billion and projected $28 billion in 2011; New Jersey’s – $11 billion….over 40 states with projections of major shortfalls in 2011….these should contrive in your lucid conscience of deliberation with your colleagues in the RNC an ATTACK PLAN NECESSARY presently….but your imagination here in this field lies in a ’swimming pool size complacency’. We of the Tea Party will never understand what motivates “the ants of your thoughts” to build a soothing bridge of self-dismissal across the width of that ‘pool’. Why even ask?
Now we’re faced with $14 trillion in National Debt. The Democrats Plan is to spend more money and increase borrowing; meanwhile Obama has shot his 57th round of golf last Sunday (10/10/10). The Obama 2011 budget reflects 10 more years of deficits and debt growing to over $25 trillion by 2020. Democratic pollster and commentator Douglas Schoen sees the Democrat Party getting bashed at the midterms: “We’re moving in the direction of the Republicans potentially picking up 11 Senate seats; we’re looking at gains that are comparable to, and possibly in excess of, what we saw in 1994,” he said to David Patten of Newsmax.com (10/8/10).
The voters in 1994 beheld a $4.8 trillion debt and acted faithfully to remove and replace Congress. Similar natural laws are at work in 2010 as voters cry out for more austerity.
But when asked recently what the minimum wage was (10/6/10) Michael Steele said he didn’t know what it was ($7.25) and didn’t think it was “relevant”. He had so many other bigger issues on his mind in a tightly packed race year that I wonder now -looking back a week or so since his comment – if he thinks he ‘won voter loyalty’ with that stupid error. Those are stupid errors the media just loves, Michael. When 1 out of 4 Democrats want the Obama Healthcare removed, why haven’t you stated points of your current Healthcare-alternative plan before the Nov. 2 elections to win over some hearts? It looks like rich territory to plow for votes, don’t you think? When 114 Healthcare (minimum one-year) waiver-requests by companies like McDonald’s are pending in the Health and Human Services Department under a threat to drop all coverage for hundreds of thousands of employees due to the exorbitant costs in their Obamacare obligations, why isn’t Mr. Steele attacking openly the unforeseen long-range consequences of Obama’s government regulations? At least have a meeting with the CEOs of some of these companies to fathom their experiences and confront the ‘additional socialism’ they know means: RATIONING. Look at the other countries that tried this experiment, and see -as the CEOs have done- how much miserable rationing results.
The projected federal annual spending in 2020 will be $5.7 trillion; current projection for 2010 is $3.7 trillion. Congressman Ron Paul sees our constitutional principles and freedoms being assaulted: more bailouts, a growing failure in stimulus plans, huge debt burdens on all our children, the Federal Reserve simply printing ($5.6 trillion this year) more money to cover 20 months of failed Obama policies. Renegade radicalism, and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, business editor of the Daily Telegraph newspaper, warning that western economies are stuck in a “near depression”. John Tate of Campaign for Liberty writes: (10/10/10) “You and I are seeing the worst plundering of a country’s wealth in the history of civilization, led by an out of control Federal Reserve.” He, Ron Paul and Senator Jim DeMint, and 300 cosponsors have placed a bill before Congress known as the “Audit the Fed” bill (HR 1207 and S 604) to end 15 years of the slow destruction of the middle class, the constant re-looming economic (i.e. housing mortgages and Fannies) crisis, and the impending currency destruction. These men are asking: When will it all end? Without extending the Bush tax cuts they know how badly the crash coming will be, and some economists are getting bolder, noting how several European nations are embarking on “serious cost-cutting budgets right now”. Yet our Congress dismissed early to campaign, and Mr. Steele remains passively silent, as our nation teeters on the edge of a double-dip recession.
Many people I know shade their eyes from the black sun, this black hole of a double-dip recession, and rightfully they are scared. The ostrich principle -head in the sand- takes over them. I’ve watched it in speaking to people in all 3 parties (Tea Party too) this year. When an $816 billion “stimulus” fails after a full year of desperation, and youth unemployment rises to 26%, and bankrupt states like California and New York have been bailed out repeatedly getting over $145 billion from the Obama stimulus, then even the most loyal of Independents for Obama shrink stone-faced, feel an Obama-type encephalitis lethargica, and they quickly retire. Yes, Michael Steele, you have in the glare of imminent tax increases expected in 2011 and a totally failed job picture alone, fertile pastures to raise your voice like a shepherd to his unfolding flock. But you haven’t even quipped a little! In such a voice as yours lies our inquietude.
In February during a debate with Senate candidate Democrat Harold Ford Jr. Mr. Steele said: “….after taxes, a million dollars is not a lot of money.” Maybe Vice President Biden would agree with you, as it sounds like his kind of idiocy in an election year, but I and many others paying our fair share of taxes seriously agree you ‘burped’ here.
The last guffaw happened on July 2, 2010, when you didn’t fight back much when you were attacked by the Obama media for saying: “There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan without joining the other nations, whom over 1,000 years, tried to win there and failed.” I wanted to tell you for some time now that this part of your remarks was more absent of American pride, wisdom, and thought than the other fact the media highlighted when you said: ‘Afghanistan was Obama’s war….’ When 74% of Independents and 88% of Republicans-Conservatives-Elderly say they are “extremely patriotic or very patriotic”, I believe they mean Americans never retreat from a conflict on a “fixed timetable” as Obama has set in place for July 2011 in Afghanistan. The fact that he stupidly announced it to the world was deceitful to American patriotism, tragic for our ground troops there, and you Mr. Steele should have seized and ran with that ‘diamond gem football’ to score one for the Gipper, Ronald Reagan. It was a classic Obama fumble, and you passed on it, and so did a lot of other Republicans, but not John McCain, I’m pleased to report. It’s true 58% of the Democrats support Obama’s Afghan-timetable, but you weren’t placed on this earth to sew seed in those fallow swamps. I reckon you should know that by now.
But later you called the firing of General Stanley McChrystal as the ground commander in Afghanistan a “comical event”. I suppose it was humorous, but many in the Tea Party thought that was a tragic mistake, a poor decision, an unjust act, a part and parcel of the perpetual paranoia in the White House, a gratuitous destruction of a good and loyal General. We would have phrased your statement differently to emphasize the enormity of the mission served by McChrystal and the dishonorable manhandling done by Obama to end a fine career. We think of our soldiers as ‘men and women serving just causes nobly,” and we hate when politicians of any design pretend to measure their loyalty and our loyalty and patriotism for those who serve in a foreign war light-heartedly. McChrystal deserved better and you being the leader of a Party should have defended his war-effort and his record. This is not to take away or add to General David Petreaus, who we all know will have to deal with Obama’s wrath somewhere down the line.
The RNC needs a new chairman and image. Steele’s disgraceful “book tours” while charging the RNC for his personal advantage has resulted in Republicans, like myself, to withhold any contributions until he is replaced! I know I am now alone in this reaction to the worst, self-promoting chairman in recent history.
[...] Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele, who’s been cast as Wade Phillips despite his party’s big gains two weeks ago, has an officially announced opponent in the person of the former head of the Michigan Republican Party, Saul Anuzis (check out the name of of his blog). [...]
Your agenda as RNC chairman is exactly what the party needs. I wholly support your candidacy, and wish you success in the election for the next RNC Chairman.
[...] made the formal announcement on his blog “That’s Saul, Folks!” in a post titled “Why I’m Running for RNC Chairman,” outlining both his reasoning for the bid and his agenda if he we’re elected Chair. Writes [...]
[...] media. True to form, he announced his campaign to unseat Steele using Twitter and an extended blog post where he outlined his strategy for helping the GOP to greater gains in the 2012 [...]
[...] done that is former Michigan RNC Chairman Saul Anuzis. Read his campaign announcement on his blog here. Like Collins, Anuzis questions the financial decisions of the RNC under Steele, though with much [...]
I realise this isn’t a very good comment but it made me smile!
Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.
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