December 13, 2010 09:33 PM UTC

Should State Party Vet Candidates for Office?

• 17 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

A recent series of excellent interviews in The Colorado Statesman (which the paper calls “InnerViews”) revealed some stark differences between Democratic Party Chair Pat Waak and Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams, including their disagreement over the role of the State Party in “vetting” candidates for public office.

Waak believes that it is the Democratic Party’s responsibility to vet candidates for office (making sure they can run an effective campaign, checking for any public problems in their past, etc.). Wadhams, in contrast, does not think the Republican Party should be involved in vetting.

You can read what both Waak and Wadhams said to the Statesman about candidate vetting after the jump, but deciding whether a Party should “vet” candidates probably depends as much on your interpretation of “vetting” as anything else.

There’s a difference between looking at a candidate’s background, for instance, (which would have helped prevent so many legislative candidates with criminal records and actively trying to prevent a candidate from running. In our view, somebody from the State Party should be doing some sort of background check on candidates while having a conversation with them about what it takes to run a successful campaign (which can help prevent candidates who realize too late that they don’t actually want to run). There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that approach, and if a Party Chair ends up talking someone out of running with the facts in-hand, that’s probably for the best.

The difference, however, is in how far a Chair goes after that discussion. If someone decides that they are going to run for office, no matter what and despite the facts presented, then the Chair should step aside at that point. “Vetting” should be something of a strong advisory role, without delving into anything more complicated.

What do you think? Poll follows…

PAT WAAK ON VETTING

CS: In terms of your role as state chair, one of the things that your Republican counterpart talks about is, it’s not his job to vet candidates.

PW: I disagree with that.

CS: Can you talk a little bit about that? How does that work?

PW: I have a different focus on that and that doesn’t mean that you’re always successful (laughs). But I have, actually, a process. If a candidate comes, if someone comes to me and says, “I want to run for public office,” and they usually have picked their office, I am amazed – and I’ve said this repeatedly from the beginning – the number of people who wake up one morning and decide they want to be a U.S. senator or a member of Congress.

And so, to me, the process first starts with intention, which is, you sit down and say, “Why? Why do you want to run for office? What is the passion that gets you up out of bed every morning?” Because you need to be running for the right reasons – because authenticity is important and for people out there to know that you’re really a serious candidate, they need to know that you are fueled by something that you care about deeply and they care about. And it also is that energy, because it’s a grueling process. It’s not just about getting your picture taken with the governor or the president or something, it is the process of lawmaking. So there’s that intention process.

The second is, what is there in your background that could possibly embarrass you? I was told years and years and years ago, “Go do opposition research on yourself.” Is there anything out there? And we do now, in the state party, do oppositions research on all of our candidates, as of a few years ago, because we ran into a problem with a candidate that we didn’t do that on. So we really look into people’s backgrounds for the most part and counsel them on that.

And then, “What is your network?” Who are the people who are going to be out there to support you when you do this? This is before you even get into the party process and build your constituency. But, do you belong to the PTA or the Rotary Club or you’re a former Peace Corps volunteer or any of these things? What are those pieces that are going to be the support system for you to begin to raise money, to build a campaign organization? What’s your history with the party? Because if you’re going to walk into even a vacancy committee and think that you’re going to be the nominee when the woman sitting next to you has been a precinct worker and a party officer and has paid their dues. And, have you ever done fundraising? Do you have any concept of what it’s like to raise money and what’s involved? What are the issues and where you stand?

So it’s a whole process you go through. And then I think the responsibility of the chair person, if it’s the chair who’s doing this, which I feel it should be, is to say, “You know, you’re a really great person but here’s my recommendation: Why don’t you start by running for city council, because you’ve got this network out here. Or why don’t you start by getting yourself known in your party by being a precinct chair or working at the precinct level and building your way up? Or why don’t you, instead of running for U.S. Senate, run for this House district because there’s nobody out there running for it?” Can you always convince everyone not to get in? In one congressional district one year, I talked six people out of running.

DICK WADHAMS ON VETTING

Those who want us to vet candidates are asking for me or a small group of people to ultimately be the gatekeepers to who could get into the process and run. It’s nonsensical. A year ago I was having the hell beat out of me –

CS: – because they thought you were doing that –

DW: Because they thought I was playing kingmaker and recruiting Jane Norton to run or trying to – this conspiracy theory about Josh Penry – and the fact that neither one of those were true. But you know, “Back off, we don’t want -”

And so here I am a year later, “Well Wadhams, why didn’t you do something about this? Why weren’t you vetting candidates?” I mean, it’s nonsensical. You can’t have it both ways. It’s either one or the other. Either you have a totally open and fair process that anybody can compete in, or you have this vetting process where you screen candidates.

I had a very well intentioned gentleman walk in the other day – I won’t tell you who it was because I don’t want to embarrass him – but he came in, and he’s a very nice man, but he came and said, totally sincere, “Dick, we need to appoint a committee to vet candidates before they can run.” And so I said, “Okay,” I decided to play along. So I said, “Okay, who would be on this committee?”

“Well, I think we need somebody from the Arapahoe Men’s Club and then somebody from the North Jeffco Republican Club,” and he mentioned a couple of others.

And I said, “Okay, well that’s great.” I said, “Well let me ask you this: What about the Baca County Republican Central Committee? I mean those are very fine Republicans in the corner of southeastern Colorado. What about them? Should they not have a voice on this committee?”

“Okay, that would be fine, we can put one of them on.”

“Okay, good, good. Well how about the Moffat County Central Committee up in extreme northwestern Colorado?”

“Well yeah, that would be okay.”

“Well, since we’re going to have those two counties, why not the other 62 counties? Don’t they get somebody on that committee?”

“Well, the committee’s – That’s just getting too big.”

And I said, “That’s precisely the point I’m trying to make.” I said, “Who just…”

CS: Who decides?

DW: “Who decides? And then why should we pick some – Why is the Arapahoe Men’s Club more special than the Pueblo County Republican Central Committee?”

“Well, Dick, well… I don’t know, I guess I need to think about this more.”

And I said, “Okay, well think about that part more, but let me ask you this question: What will be the criteria for our vetting process? Will it be professional, will it be political, will it be moral?”

CS: Years of service to the party?

DW: Exactly. I said, “Just who – what guidelines, what rules are we going to follow?” I said, “And let me throw this at you. My friend Walker Stapleton who by that time had won,” I said, “You know, that DUI came out that he had 20 years ago – should a vetting committee, if they knew that, should they have said, ‘Walker, you cannot run with a DUI because that would be giving an issue to Cary Kennedy,’?” Which she tried to exploit, she failed, but he won.

“Oh no, that was 20 years ago.”

“Well, how about what if it was only 10 years ago? What if it was only five years ago? Do we allow one DUI but if you have two DUIs you can’t run?” [Ed. note: Stapleton was arrested and ultimately pleaded guilty on DUI charges in San Francisco in 1999.]

And his head was spinning. And I said, “I’m not trying to be confrontational with you, but this is the problem with a vetting committee. Who serves on it, what the criteria is.” I said, “You know what the vetting process should be? A rigorous, open and fair nomination process that over almost a year’s time candidates run around the state and they campaign hard and in front of Republican audiences and they are forced to talk about their issue positions, their backgrounds. And over the course of that rigorous nomination process, the vetting that you want occurs.” And I said, “And that is open to hundreds of thousands of Republicans and it is not by some small group of powerful people.” And the guy left. There really is no middle ground, you have one or the other. And I know one thing: If they want a vetting – if they want a state chairman to be the all-powerful vetter of candidates, it ain’t gonna be this one (laughs). They can elect somebody else.

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