Matt Robbins is the Political Director of the California Republican Party, the largest Republican state party in the United States.  He comes to California after most recently serving as a Coalitions Director on McCain-Palin 2008.  Prior to that, he was the Director of Training at the Leadership Institute, an educational nonprofit which has trained over 74,000 people since 1979.  Matt has personally trained thousands of political activists nationwide and in several foreign countries on campaign management, communications and party and candidate development.

Matt has a proven track record as a grassroots leader, legislative assistant and political consultant.  He has worked in university administration and education, served as a "friendly-fire" analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon, and been a successful campaign manager and staffer on both state-level and presidential races (Bush-Cheney/McCain-Palin).  Matt is also a founding partner in a grassroots advocacy firm, where he aided efforts to clear the Supreme Court nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito.

A former high-school teacher, Matt trains, lectures and debates worldwide with the American Legislative Exchange Council, the American Council of Young Political Leaders, the Close Up Foundation, the Educational Initiative for Central and Eastern Europe, GOPAC, the International Republican Institute, and the Leadership Institute.

Matt is an Arkansas native and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

 

 The recent elections of November 3rd, show us a few themes which may play to the advantage of our party in the November 2010 elections.

 

In New York Congressional District 23, we had an interesting situation that probably could only happen in New York.  Here we had 11 county chairpersons handpick a liberal Republican, who backed the TARP funding, the Obama Stimulus and Cap and Tax, rather than have a primary or even open primary as we do here in California.  So a Conservative Republican by the name of Doug Hoffman ran for the nomination of the Conservative Party.  Something about New York politics that needs to be appreciated is that there are at least 3 ideological parties where a candidate can become the candidate no matter their actual registration.  They have the Liberal Party, the Independent Party and the Conservative Party. When Rudy Guiliani won the office of Mayor of New York City he ran as the Republican, Independent, and Liberal Parties nominee at the same time. To gain access to the Congressional ballot Republicans and Democrats need only 1,250 valid signatures, for a 3rd Party candidate they need 3,500 valid signatures, and even there 3rd Party candidates who are not chosen by party bosses need to fight their cases in court just to stay on due to the hyper picky language of New York law.  Given this some candidates like Hoffman decide to run write-in campaigns, so as a write-in candidate Hoffman picked up 45% of the vote, when he was polling ahead, because only the Democrat and the liberal Republican were on the ballot.  Moral here is that in districts where a Republican has the electoral advantage the party needs to let their members choose their own nominee.

 

In Virginia, the Republican Party picked up 59 of the 100 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates and swept the offices of Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General.  The Independents picked up 2 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates.  The Democrats lost 7 seats which all became Republican seats in some cases by double digit margins versus 2 seats which the Republicans narrowly lost to Democrat candidates.  In the Governor's race the Republican Bob McDonnell concentrated on applying conservative ideas to solving real world problems, with innovative ideas on fixing roadways and education, without raising taxes.  Meanwhile the Democrats kept attacking him as a right wing extremist who thinks women should be kept home barefoot and pregnant, based on a paper he wrote in college.  The Democrats even sent Barack Obama and Joe Biden in to campaign for the Democrat Creigh Deeds and saw a state that Obama had won in 2008 go solidly red, except in the main cities of the state.

 

In California Congressional District 10, the Republican David Harmer slipped back to a 10.29 percentage point loss or 12, 870 votes, as Democrats fearful that John Garamendi might lose the race poor in lots of money to counter what state Republican groups where doing in sending wave after wave of busloads of volunteers up to Walnut Creek, including 33 from Los Angeles County.  The previous incumbent Ellen Tauscher had won this race by 34.1 percentage points or 100,349 votes in 2008.  The issue of the massive job losses in that district combined with it being a special election made this election much closer than it should have been.  If the California economy continues to get worse, this seat along with others may be in Republican hands before 2010 is over. 

 

Last in New Jersey, the Republican Party picked up one open seat in the General Assembly, with the big news coming from a pick up of the New Jersey Governor's seat by Republican Chris Christie, former US Attorney under President George W. Bush who was one of the US Attorneys fired near the end of the Bush Administration, yet his Democrat opponent incumbent Jon Corzine labeled him consistently as a Bush Republican.  So in a state where Democrats out number Republicans, Chris Christie a moderately conservative Republican won by 4 points, primarily due to the corruption oozing out of the New Jersey Democrat Party, which saw a number of high profile Democrats in the state perp walked regularly on their nightly news in the run-up to this year's election. 

 

So, what are the lessons learned?  The issues of jobs and corruption will be major themes going into the 2010 elections, and if Republican candidates can articulate and publicize to their communities solutions to the problems this nation and their states face that do not increase the burden towards creating new jobs there is a very good chance that they may see dramatic changes in voting patterns in their districts, particularly in districts labeled as swing or leans Democrat.  Last if a Republican challenges an incumbent Republican, they have a better chance of retaking that seat in the primary than as a write-in or Independent 3rd party candidate, where they could hand the seat over to a Regressive "Progressive" Democrat.

 
Yours truly,

Matt Kauble,

President of the Cerritos Republican Club

 

P.S.  If you are reading this and are not a member of the Cerritos Republican Club you can join by contacting Barbara Lockwood, our membership chair by email at barbie562@aol.com or calling her at 562-926-7069.  To join you must be a Registered Republican in good standing.

 

The Cerritos Republican Club Board has decided that we will have a canned food and dry non-perishable box food drive for the Family Help Center in Artesia at the November Meeting.  At the December Dinner we plan to collect new unwrapped toys for the children of the Marines of the 1st CEB. Both of these actions are not just for public relations, but are one way where we can put our policy of private charity and our smaller government values to work in our local community.

 

Last announcement the 56th AD Republican Central Committee is in the process of putting together our precinct operations.  If interested in taking charge of turning out the vote and registering new voters for your street, part of your street, your block, or precinct please contact either myself (email: mskauble@hotmail.com; phone 562-743-1855) or Roger Garrett (email: mrupac@aol.com; phone: 562-843-1251).