State GOP needs strong leadership
Once again in these post-election days, New York State Republicans are retreating behind battle lines to lick their many wounds.
And this time, as they contemplate their crushing loss of the Senate and their virtual exclusion from state government, the once proud state GOP finds itself at low ebb.
Maybe that’s why the re-emergence of Rochester’s Dick Rosenbaum, the onetime state Republican chairman under Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller and a major figure in state and national politics, could not be more timely. As he tours the state promoting his new book — “No Room for Democracy: The Triumph of Ego Over Common Sense” — Rosenbaum not only reflects on a most interesting life, but is also being sought by Republicans asking how they can ever become relevant again.
“Rosie” remains ever the optimist.
“Somebody — some giant — is going to have to come out of the woodwork,” he said over coffee last week before a book signing event at Barnes and Noble on Transit Road in Clarence.
And he goes to the title of his new book to explain that real leadership — in fact, dictatorial leadership — might be what’s needed.
“I was the dictator,” he said. “We told people we would not let them raise their own money. And if they did, we’d primary them.”
Those are tough words in these times. Modern chairmen recoil from words like “boss,” and many argue that political chairmen are irrelevant anyway.
But this guy didn’t earn the title “Iron Chancellor” for nothing.
“While I’m all for democratic government, there’s no room for democracy within a political party,” he says in the book. “Discipline is the necessary ingredient to getting things accomplished, as any successful leader knows. There’s a fine line between respect and fear. Call me Machiavellian, but I believe that a good strong leader needs to inspire both.”
This is where Rosenbaum, who unsuccessfully
challenged George Pataki in the 1994 GOP primary for governor, offers relevant advice for the party’s troubled time. He calls state Republican Chairman Joe Mondello “a smart guy with talent,” but says he “wears too many hats.”
A forward-thinking and innovative party leader is needed, he said, but so is someone who will prove tough enough to lead — and lead successfully.
Rosenbaum at 77 has been around long enough to know all about the political pendulum. It swung about as Democratic as possible on Nov. 4, but he says every pendulum eventually swings back.
“When you control everything there is no one else to blame,” he said of the Democrats. “When things get screwed up — and things will get screwed up — they will have to answer.”
Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg are the latest two mayors of overwhelmingly Democratic New York City, he said, and they’ve shown that Republicans can do it. Locally, candidates like Joel Giambra and Chris Collins offered a message that overwhelmingly Democratic Erie County accepted, too.
“If the GOP takes advantage of the situation, recruits the best candidates, and takes advantage of party discipline,” he said, “good candidates will win.”
Rosenbaum’s new book, with a forward by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, recalls enduring anti-Semitism as a kid from Oswego, and emerging from a childhood disease that produced his trademark bald pate, to become a power on the state political and legal scene.
But Rosenbaum’s timing on this book may prove its most important attribute. If today’s GOP leaders are smart enough to learn from the past, they will find the former chairman’s newest effort required reading.
The way things are going for New York Republicans, anything is worth a try.
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