Steele meeting resistance in bid for RNC post

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By Ralph Z. Hallow

Republicans, reeling from another election defeat, have taken to arguing over whether their national leader should come from the elected ranks of the Republican National Committee or be a political celebrity such as former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele.

"For this association of members to choose to outsource its leadership would, I believe, be an abdication of our responsibility," Curly Haugland, an RNC member from North Dakota and the former North Dakota Republican Party chairman, wrote in an e-mail to Mr. Steele.

Mr. Haugland called on Mr. Steele to quit the contest for Republican national chairman because he is not an RNC member.

"In my estimation, 168 committed members of the Republican National Committee are a powerful army of qualified advocates for Republican principles; certainly much more threatening to the Democrats than one celebrity spokesman," Mr. Haugland said.

Mr. Steele was elected lieutenant governor in Maryland, one of the nation's most Democratic blue states, and ran a nationally watched but unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate. He is now a Fox News Channel analyst.

"Your chosen path to leadership of the Republican National Committee exemplifies the problem we should immediately seek to resolve, that being the practice of allowing nonmembers to exert undue influence in the process of selecting our leaders" Mr. Haugland wrote Mr. Steele. "Getting the Republican Party back on the right 'track' is a job rightfully left to the Republicans who have been elected to run this railroad."

Meanwhile, Katon Dawson, the conservative South Carolina Republican Party chairman who is also running for national chairman, is increasingly coming under fire, though for a very different reason.

He was a member for 12 years at the all-white Forest Lake Country Club in Columbia, S.C., and only quit his membership in September after a local newspaper raised the issue. Mr. Dawson helped elect to the RNC its first black member from South Carolina, Glen McColl, and the first black Republican state legislator since Reconstruction, Tim Scott.

"I believe we are all God's children, and that it is a sin to discriminate against any person of color," Mr. Dawson said, adding that Mr. Steele, who is black, is a "friend of mine."

Mr. Haugland said his objection to nonmembers seeking the RNC chairmanship applied also to Chip Saltsman, former Tennessee Republican Party chairman and campaign manager for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's presidential bid.