After last week’s general election put the presidency and many long-held congressional seats firmly in the hands of Democrats, many Republicans have started to question the future of their party.
COURTESY OF michael garvin
Michael Garvin, vice president of the College Republicans student group, would like to replace Allen Alley as the chair of Oregon’s Republican Party.
Michael Garvin, a Portland State biology major and vice president of the College Republicans student group, believes he may have the answer.
Garvin announced Tuesday that he will be running to replace Allen Alley as chairperson of the Oregon Republican Party in January. Alley announced his resignation on Oct. 21.
“Mr. Allen Alley has done an absolutely horrible job at getting out into the communities and talking about who the Republican Party really is,” Garvin said in an email.
Alley has helmed the Oregon GOP since January 2011, when he ran unopposed after losing the 2010 Republican primary for governor to Chris Dudley, a former NBA athlete.
Since then, Alley has faced criticism for his handling of Ron Paul’s delegates leading up to this year’s Republican National Convention, and eventually tendered his resignation after a controversial election mailer sent out by the Oregon Transportaion Project backed around 30 Democrats in Oregon elections.
But to Garvin, Alley’s problems are only a shadow of the bigger issues that now face
the party.
“The Republican Party is not the party of our parents, grandparents or even our great-grandparents any longer,” he said. “[It] has been hijacked by the elitist, older, white male population.”
Like Garvin, Republicans find themselves facing an increasingly complex electorate, one of the first to truly represent a minority-majority nation.
Julia Rabadi, president of the PSU College Republicans, believes this is one of the main reasons Republicans lost the race for the presidency.
“It’s like what Condi [Condoleezza Rice] said the other day. Republicans forgot about minorities, women and the youth vote, and seemed to only focus on white America,” Rabadi said. “She was calling for a bigger tent.”
Despite feelings of disappointment, the College Republicans are ready to put the election behind them.
“Now we will, obviously, have to focus on other things moving forward,” Rabadi said. “Primarily Israel and Iran.”
Other issues Rabadi said would become the focus of the College Republicans group centered on national issues like the growing movement to impeach President Barack Obama and the encouragement of citizen journalism—something Rabadi sees as one of the most viable solutions to combating bias in the media.
Rabadi and Garvin both stressed the importance of blocking what they feel is a growing tendency in the American public to look for “handouts.”
The push for personal fiscal responsibility is one of the major points of a press release Garvin issued announcing his candidacy for chairperson.
But aside from that, all bets are off. The battle between what Garvin calls the “old guard” and the “new blood” of the Republican Party is clearly one in which new lines are being drawn up daily.
Garvin has pledged to stand by the gay and lesbian community as they seek marriage rights, as well as affirming his support for women in their fight for authority over their voices and bodies.
Stances such as these might have stirred more controversy within the Republican Party a year ago, but to Garvin, it is the only logical step in moving forward and defeating what he sees as a discriminatory mind-set.
“Either they will conform to who the Republican Party now is or they can leave,” Garvin said. “But I am calling all of them out, be it Allen Alley, Rep. John Boehner, Sen. Mitch McConnell and Sen. Orrin Hatch.”
Perhaps an apt anaology for Garvin’s candidacy is found in the efforts of the College Republicans on a campus some see as overwhelmingly liberal.
Although Rabadi believes some student groups are hesitant to work with the College Republicans, she reiterated her desire to maintain an active role on the PSU campus and to continue to engage in civil dialogue with various student groups.
“There is such a lack of diversity of thought on this campus—if you don’t have diversity of thought, you have nothing.”