The Other Al

Can Al Schmidt revitalize the local GOP?

by Mary F. Patel

Being the underdog for decades can wear on even the most resilient of souls, so local Republicans have organized with the hope of emerging from their political-minority status.

Enter Al Schmidt, the new deputy director for the Republican City Committee. Schmidt was recently appointed to the newly created position to help revitalize a local GOP party that has not been in power since 1973. Schmidt's fairly new on the local GOP scene, having worked for more than six years in Washington, D.C., in the Government Accountability Office. He recently decided he had enough of the Beltway climate after being assigned to audit the Homeland Security Department.

Instead, he chose to return to Pennsylvania and politics where the current GOP leadership includes GOP City Committee chairman Vito Canuso, general counsel Michael Meehan and executive director Joe Duda, who also serves as a Philadelphia city commissioner.

Schmidt asks one primary question: What good have the Democrats done in power? Crime, urban blight and the loss of jobs have all metastasized under the Democrats' watch, he says.

Schmidt says his first order of business is to entice the 5,000 Republicans who turned Democrat to vote in the mayoral primary to change back to Republican before the general election.

Schmidt said several unions were involved in that spring effort, particularly in the Northeast, going door to door asking registered Republicans to switch over.

"It is my understanding that they were switching people to support Bob Brady or Tom Knox," says Schmidt. "They got them fair and square. One thing is for sure: Whomever the unions switched voters to support lost, and the switch-overs are not invested in Michael Nutter."

It's no secret that Local 98 wanted Knox to win and Brady to lose. Another theory is that Meehan and Brady, who is also chairman of the Democratic City Committee, enjoy a friendly relationship, which irks some progressive R's who bristle at the notion that Brady would have crossover appeal.

"The ones switching people for Brady would not have been from 98," says Schmidt. "It seems to have been competing unions supporting different unsuccessful candidates."

Schmidt views his mission as a long-term endeavor because Republicans need to engage exciting and worthy candidates for office, like in 1992, when Ron Castille, Frank Rizzo and Sam Katz were all running for mayor. That was an exciting GOP primary.

But the current GOP mayoral candidate, Al Taubenberger, had no primary opposition.

Former House Speaker John Perzel and U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, who will receive the Gold Medal of Distinguished Service Award at the Pennsylvania Society this December, are co-chairing the GOP resurgence initiative.

Could this support the contention that Perzel wants more control of the party at the expense of current Speaker Dennis O'Brien? Schmidt dismisses the notion, saying that Perzel was approached by party leadership, not the other way around.

Still, the resurgance plan has its critics. Kevin Kelly, an Air Force fighter pilot and former chairman of the Philadelphia Federation of Young Republicans, called it "political masturbation."

"There is no strategy here," says Kelly, who has penned a 33-page treatise titled Rebuilding a Majority � Painting a Successful Future Picture for the Philadelphia GOP. "Everybody should be in a canoe going in the same direction, but they're not."

Kelly retired as chair of the Young R's last month after hitting the ripe old age of 40, which is too old to lead that group.

"What is needed is an overall plan to get out the message. We need a spokesperson and TV ads that say, 'Give us a chance,'" he says. "You can't send kids out door to door asking voters to change their registration back to Republican, or register them at all with the negatives with George Bush right now. It just won't work."

Kelly has been at odds with Meehan for some time and has criticized him for not energizing the party enough. Meehan has dismissed Kelly as someone who hosted wine-and-cheese parties without much substance.

Kelly's plan includes visualizing a future GOP party, working on an overall goal, identifying five initiatives (including a director of political operations), re-establishing a functioning policy committee, appointing an official GOP spokesperson and regionalizing the ward structure.

However, all these things take time and funding and may not offer immediate solution to a decades-old problem.

(rcpatel@aol.com)