The chance to restructure the party
College Republicans across the nation rally to recover after election losses
Betsy Woodruff
Issue date: 2/12/09 Section: Beyond
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She spent the evening with Tim Walberg and his staff in Jackson, Mich. He was running for Michigan's 7th District Seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and he lost.
Several members of his staff broke down and wept as the election results came in.
For Sonny, the worst part of the night was cleaning up. She helped Walberg and his wife carry their signs out to their car, completely defeated.
"Seeing the emotions on their faces, it was so tough," Gast said. "That was a bad night."
Despite the defeats, Gast has high goals for her group, which is following the Republican party's lead in re-grouping in the aftermath of a devastating election.
"We'd like to do more things, we'd like to include more people, and basically take back the country. It sounds pretty ambitious and intense, but we can do it," Gast said.
The group's leaders see November's defeats as a call to action.
"When things are going your way, you can become complacent and lackadaisical in your work ethic. This has given us a sense of urgency," said junior Matt Ketron, the vice chair (vice president) of the Hillsdale College Republicans and a finance and political economy major.
Freshman Kyle Forti, another member of the College Republicans leadership team, said the group's goals for this semester will be very different from those of last semester.
"The biggest change that's taking place is really getting people re-focused on where we should actually be, and having that clear vision. There's a lot of effort going into getting that focus back where it should be."
That isn't the only significant change. The group is also rewriting their constitution.
"We were looking it through, it was kind of a rough draft," sophomore Mitchel Roman said. "When it comes down to the nitty-gritty, we need something to fall back on."
One proposed change is to elect presidents for the calendar year rather than the school year.
The Hillsdale College Republicans are not taking much of a break from their involvement in the political process. They will be going to the Michigan Republicans State Convention on Feb. 20 to 21 in Lansing in support of Sen. Cameron Brown, who is running in the primaries for Secretary of State in 2010.
This is the first time the College Republicans have endorsed a candidate in the primaries, Ketron said, though they plan on volunteering in more primary elections in the future. They hope the change will help them develop better relations with the politicians they support.
Ashley Barbera, the press representative for the National Office of College Republicans, thinks this is a risky decision.
"It's definitely something that you really want to be careful about," she said. "I think that it's a risky thing if chapters as a whole try to endorse a particular candidate, just because when you get partisan organizations taking sides in primaries, you might alienate some of your members."
The Hillsdale College Republicans will also go to the Michigan Federation of College Republicans Convention in March at Lake Superior State University.
They are also hoping to put on a Republican Film Festival in April, though those plans are less concrete.
"It's been tough getting things done in College Republicans," Gast said.
Forti hopes the group will learn from mistakes it made during the last election cycle.
"I did get the feeling that there might not have been a very unified, clear goal or direction and because of that, I think we saw a half-hearted effort," Forti said. "Had there been more willing leadership, we could have been more effective."
He plans on doing more independent work during the next elections.
"I like to go off more on my own path," Forti said.
He will be working on a 2010 Congressional race and blogging about political issues. Last weekend, he went to D.C. to speak to members of Generation Joshua, a conservative political activism organization for home-schooled students.
Conservative groups on other campuses are making similar changes.
"After a loss for any party, there's a certain period of navel gazing and thought about what we can change for the future," said Colin Matloy, the president of the Harvard College Republicans.
His group will put a greater focus on local politics and social events now that the national elections are over.
"Even if we are out of power, it's still fun to be a Republican," Matloy said.
Though the election results disappointed him, he still feels encouraged by the impact his group was able to make.
"The role that college students play in this past election, just college students getting out there and being on the Republican side, is a pretty big role in the first place, with so many of our peers campaigning for Obama," he said.
Barbera sees many changes in College Republicans' role in this interim between races.
"If College Republicans were dejected about the results, the past is the past, it is what it is, we lost in 2008. But it's important not to stay in the past. We can sit around for the next 4 years and be depressed about losing, or we can go out and do proactive things and show people that the conservative movement isn't dead," she said.
Copy Editor Maria Schmitt contributed to this report.
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