Posted by (Chuck Muth) – In response to my criticism yesterday of Nevada GOP Chairman Chris Comfort’s decidedly less-than-stellar performance in raising money, registering voters and recruiting candidates since his election last November, Comfort had his Communication Director send me a response which I find rather breathtaking….especially how he blames all his failures as chairman on other people.
Since I have a rather busy day today, the following is Comfort’s email in its entirety and unedited just as it was sent to me yesterday afternoon. I’ll let this simmer for a day and hold off on any further commentary in response to “Chairman Comfort’s response” until tomorrow. But after reading this flapdoodle, I’m pretty sure y’all will know where I’m going to go with this from here.
Fire in the hole!
Chairman Comfort’s response.
“The gloves are off and I am come out swinging… As Chairman I have been doing all sorts of stuff.”
“Chuck Muth is disrupting the mechanism…he is lying.”
1. With regards to candidate recruitment:
“Nobody wants to run for office. I asked and they said no. Julie Hereford was responsible for recruitment and she didn’t do it.”2. With regards to fundraising:
“I don’t have those number, Dave Buell, the Treasurer, does and I have been asking him for 2 weeks to give them to me.” Also, “The board just will not let the Chairman raise money, they want a line item for everything. I mean, it’s like… come on.” Lastly, Chairman Comfort has been cleaning up after Brent Husson who was, “supposed to do everything.”3. With regard to the Special Session:
“Jim DeGraffenreid was up there and it was my understanding that he met with these people.”“When I became Chairman, the board didn’t do any work. I did everything.”
Here is the list of things Chairman Comfort has accomplished since taking his seat:
- “Developed an IT platform committee which moves us into the 21st century”
- “Identified a person to do reporting of metrics or numbers and data which is disseminated among the masses including voters trends and statistical data.”
- “Received pledges of full resource including people, brainpower and money from John Ensign.”
- “We have face-to-face board meetings. Two full days in February.”
- “Made 30 to 40 press contacts as Chair.”
- “Developed strategies for grassroots and voter performance (registration)”
- “Identified people to assist in political roundtables.”
- “Developed a branding campaign.”
- “Dr. Comfort personally attends 3-5 meeting per week talking around the state with various townhall groups, etc., etc.”
- “Chatting with people on the phone with regards to all sorts of stuff”
- “Developed organizational structures and matrix for duties, so on and so forth.”
- “Has been giving speeches in the north.”
- “All along my strategy has been to stay underwater so the Democrats wouldn’t know what we were doing.”
- Chairman Comfort won with 90% because he “brought all these people together.”
Also, please note that “It is technically not true that I have been Chairman for four month. I started on January 15 because everything was shut down for Christmas and Thanksgiving.”
I the case of NV GOP recruitment, it seems like they have a policy of “Small Govt Conservatives need not apply”.
Sure hope he doesn’t turn out to be another Sue Lowden!!
The GOP needs to return to it’s conservative roots. No
more liberal leadership!!
This obviously wasn’t written by comfort himself,and whoever did write it should stick to either first person or second person format. It’s very confusing and possibly deceiving to ship back and forth this way. It looks to me like it was hammered out in a fit of rage….
“It’s very confusing and possibly deceiving to ship back and forth this way.” The word “ship” should be skip.
A very strange missive, indeed. Clearly, someone is out to lunch at NV GOP headquarters. He asked people to run and they said “no”? Who did he ask? All around the country Republicans are straining at the leash for a chance to run and our guy can’t convince anyone? That, in and of itself, disqualifies him.
Its additionally disturbing that he’s anywhere near the Ensign team – and that he considers this a good thing. The NV GOP should be working on ways to convince Ensign to resign – or, if not resign, at least not seek re-election in 2012. People do cheat – its an all too common sin among us…but, for pity’s sake, if you’re having an affair with your wife’s best friend, you should at least have the decency to resign when caught! if Ensign won’t quit and won’t refuse to run, then the NV GOP should be scouting primary opponents for him – and I don’t get the impression this is happening.
We’ve got a bit mess on our hands and we need to force change in the NV GOP before this golden opportunity in 2010 slips away.
I do not believe she needs my defense but I want every reader of this nonsense to know that Julie Hereford has done more for the state and local Republican party than anyone I know. There are many others like George Dugan who have tirelessly worked for the party and it is an absolute disgrace that anyone, especially the Chairman of the state party could say 1 negative things about this true patriot.
I will not add any of my personal thoughts to this destructive process but I did want all readers to know what an asset Julie has been to the Republicans in Nevada. Thank you Julie for all you do.
Julie Hereford for Chairwoman! She does more than “stuff:” and “things.”
Richard Disney, you’re a competent small government conservative. We need you to run! You’d be a great candidate. 26 is open.
Any one of these posters or recommended people by these posters, would be a new beginning for the NV GOP. Isn’t that what it was all about? Didn’t get it this year.
Now I feel much better that I am not an officer of the State or the County party.
Comfort is a bad Chairman no doubt. Julie Hereford did an extremely poor job as McCain’s Coalition Director. Not sticking up for McCain’s people, they weren’t any better.
She just put names on the lists and checked the boxes. She has held those lists close and refused to give them to the CCRP or the NV GOP. She threatened several coalition friends of mine who ended up not helping because she was so rude.
We speak of “Unifying the Party”; but unify around what theme? It appears many who comment are dissatisfied; perhaps because our Reepublican Unity Theme is ringing hollow and fails to provide a correct flag to rally around. I continue to advocate that the Republican Party must gather around the Constitutionally Conservative Flag. As others have commented, where we have gone astray in the past is attempting to be a part of Liberal/Progressive lite. As a party we have always succeed when we focused on Constitutional philosophy and smaller government; and failed when we have not.
Last year I believe it was Time Magazine that had the cover “We are All Socialist Now”; a year later we have a Party that advocates and says they are Constitutional Conservative; but will the State and National Party practice and live by it on June 9th, November 3rd, and July 4th 2011?
I for one will. It is important that those selected to office at the State and Federal levels have the strength of character to do the same.
Mr. Chris Comfort, I have known Mr. Chuck Muth over 16 years. He is a man of foresight and integrity. You you are smart, you would heed his very profound advice. I have been reelected twice to the Board of Regents. I am the longest serving member on the board currently. Mr. Muth has adviced me and I heeded his advice. Because of Chuck, the majority of the NSHE Board of Regents is GOP. Maybe if party leadership would listen to Mr. Muth, we would be the majority party in both the state senate and assembly. Chris, my best advice is go home. Sincerely Mark Alden, senior regent of NSHE
I volunteered and the silence was deafening. I would have been willing to run for NV GOP office if I had known the opportunity was there. Too late now.
Chuck Muth and I do not always agree, but in this case Dr. Comfort should have thought before acting.
We need party unity to Reject Reid, Obama and Pelosi. Lets quit the bickering and nitpicking and get on with the real business at hand.
R U guys stupid or something? A true PATRIOT needs not be pushed to run for public office. Be pro-active, people … TAKE THE PLUNG!!!
If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve. It has never been more obvious to me what is wrong with the GOP. Our best and brightest, with a few exceptions, want nothing to do with this back biting and infighting. This would never fly in the business world and should not be tolerated in this organization. It is no wonder that the majority of normal working people consider politics to be a filthy business.
There will be a huge celebration and much patting of backs in November when Republicans win big, but little credit will be due the Nevada GOP. The real heroes will be the people who knock on the doors, make the calls, volunteer their time and donate what little money they can in these hard times. Credit will be due the candidates who put up with the circus for the opportunity to serve their Country. Most of the credit should go to the voters who have had enough of the socialist experiment they have endured over the last year.
To the leaders who have worked tirelessly to hold the party together and transform it into something we will be proud of one day, you have my gratitude. To the leaders who have failed us, I would suggest they resign at the earliest opportunity and save us the trouble of voting them out.
I gave many years to the Republican party,..as a volunteer, a candidate, an elected offical, committee member and on the executive committee for Clark County. I stepped back from my involvement after I ran for Clark County Chair because I felt it was appropriate to allow the newly elected Chairman to lead without feeling hindered by my involvement,…but the in house fighting was ultimately the reason I did not return. It saddens me greatly to see the lack of leadership and total disarray of the party. Al ot of very good and dedicated people gave many years to the party,…it would seem all their hard work has been in vain. Someone needs to step up and take the reigns. This has gone on long enough.
“There will be a huge celebration and much patting of backs in November when Republicans win big, but little credit will be due the Nevada GOP. The real heroes will be the people who knock on the doors, make the calls, volunteer their time and donate what little money they can in these hard times.”
I agree. Many who worked their butts off for many years for both the County and State GOP walked away and are now working for individual campaigns because they’re so tired of the dysfunction. The voters are tired of reading about their Party Leaders in the papers, on the blogs, and this is exactly what Harry Reid and Company want. The GOP on the front pages. Stop fighting and start getting something done.
I’m with Swadeep.
Chris Comfort has 2 modes: “Smarmy” and “Attack.” I have personal experience with this behind the scenes, as do several other candidates who, like me, told him to shove it. He was called on this in a recent interview on KXNT when a caller pointed out that with Chris, EVERYTHING was, “I want to thank you for asking that excellent question!” There are people with a lot of money who have been calling the shots in this state for years without being elected to anything. Chris should have had the integrity to tell THEM to shove it as several of us candidates told him.
By the way, he tried to get both Craig Lake AND me to drop out of the CD1 race when we were the only two active candidates and this was well BEFORE he started talking to Michelle Fiore. What does that tell you? This party has never supported a candidate against Berkley. What does she have over who that keeps the Republicans from actually trying to beat her? Hmmmmm.
The state party is way out of line trying shove a particular candidate down our throats in the GOP primary for CD 1.
We the voters need the opportunity to make up our own minds, without chasing Mr. Wynn’s checkbook.
Steve Wynn should be chasing any principled conservative candidate, male or female, green yellow black orange yellow red or purple, with his checkbook.
I happen to be supporting Craig Lake in this race, but I would hope that Mr. Tatner and others offended by this blatant politics-as-usual power grab can unite in protest against the state party decision to back one candidate over the rest, for no reason other than gender and checkbook politics.
Bill Parson could help this process by dropping out of the U S Senate contest because he has no name recognition and no money with which to wage a successful campaign against he big 3 (Angle, Lowden & Tarkanian). The conservatives have Angle, the monied have Lowden, and the rest have Tark. What do candidates like Parson and the other half-dozen unknowns add to the mix other than giving Republican voters an opportunity to waste their vote?