Young Guns : A New Generation of Conservative Leaders (20 page)

For inspiration, I looked to one of my heroes from World War II. Lieutenant Colonel James “Jimmy” Doolittle planned and led the first strike on a Japanese home island in the aftermath of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. His mission became known as the Doolittle Raid. In his autobiography, Doolittle himself explained the raid’s significance this way:

The Japanese had been told they were invulnerable. An attack on the Japanese homeland would cause confusion in the minds of the Japanese people and sow doubt about the reliability of their leaders. There was a second, equally important, psychological reason for this attack.… Americans badly needed a morale boost.

Obviously comparing politics to war is a bit of a stretch, but in strategic terms I knew that to build new Republican confidence, we needed a Doolittle Raid of our own. We had just experienced a stunning loss and had seen the ground shift under our feet. We had to regain our morale and begin to go on the offensive; to chip away at the Democrats’ invulnerable mindset.

Sitting around with other Young Guns members, we came up with the idea of going after vulnerable Democrats in Republican-leaning districts. Quite frankly, it was time for us to stop dwelling on the past and begin working to regain the seats we had lost; earning and regaining the voters’ trust.

So Young Guns, through the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), rolled out the campaign. We went after Democrats with radio ads and phone calls alerting voters to the fact that their representatives talked a good game in their conservative-leaning district but when they got to Washington they marched in lock step with ultra-liberal Nancy Pelosi. We were trying to plant the seed in voters’ minds that the image they had of their elected officials was different than the reality of what was happening in Washington.

Now obviously this Young Guns campaign was not a magic bullet that would automatically lead to our defeating scores of freshman Democratic legislators or to reclaiming the majority. We had, and still have, a lot of work to do. But the campaign was a great success because it changed the focus from our losses in the past to going on the offensive and working hard to regain what we had lost—to
earning
the majority.

Young Guns was helping to go on offense. But even after demonstrating that Democrats in Republican-leaning districts promised one thing in their districts, and then voted for another thing in Washington, we needed to make sure that we were also fielding good, fresh-thinking candidates to provide voters in those districts with a credible Republican alternative for the 2010 elections.

Even though 2008 was a very tough year for Republicans, there was much to learn from some of the successes of the Young Guns program. The program worked well in concert and through the support and leadership of then-NRCC chairman Tom Cole. And after the election, under the leadership of NRCC chairman Pete Sessions, the NRCC adopted our program as the key candidate recruitment and training program for House Republicans
and named me to be the chief recruiter for the 2010 election.

My first goal was to help create a process that provides a system of clear and tailored benchmarks for candidates to meet so that we are helping the best possible and most committed candidates build successful campaigns. Working with Eric and Paul, and together with Chairman Sessions and his very capable NRCC staff, we created three levels of candidates, from “On the Radar” to “Contender” to “Young Gun.” Candidates are named to the program by meeting individualized benchmarks set by the committee. This process is designed to ensure that candidates earn support by creating and using the necessary tools and strategies for a successful modern political campaign. Benchmarks include setting and developing fundraising goals and a fundraising system; a volunteer database and recruitment goals; an e-mail list, press lists, and communications strategies; and media training, connecting with vendors and other measures. You can see some of our candidates by visiting the Young Guns website:
www.GOPYoungGuns.com
.

My second goal was to create a team of committed House Republicans to help me with recruiting. It was quiet and anonymous work that we did at daybreak every Thursday morning throughout 2009. We would familiarize ourselves with districts and compare notes on potential candidates we talked to and who needed a phone call or a district visit. Our success has been due to the persistence and energy of our recruitment team—Tom Price and Lynn
Westmoreland of Georgia, Judy Biggert of Illinois, Geoff Davis of Kentucky, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania, Pete Olson of Texas, Jason Chaffetz of Utah, Rob Wittman of Virginia, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington. Our goal was to initially field enough top-tier candidates in forty districts (the number we needed to win the majority). As the political climate changed with Speaker Pelosi’s overreaching on issues like cap and trade, government bailouts, and continued record deficit spending and debt, we hit our goal of forty districts ahead of schedule, and changed our target to eighty districts.

Then, in the summer of 2009, the Tea Party protests and the health-care town hall meetings happened. I remember watching many different town halls, and more than anything, it became apparent that something on the ground had changed. Americans were promised hope and change, but House Democratic leaders read that mandate with a heavier emphasis on government control, mandates, and taxes than Americans wanted.

Coincidentally, in the middle of August, I had planned to join one of the hardest workers (and genuinely down-to-earth guys) in our Republican conference, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, and the always-astute NRCC political director Brian Walsh on a road trip across America to visit districts and recruit candidates. We drove through Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin (inadvertently due to a wrong turn on the highway), and then flew to North Carolina and Tennessee. All told we met dozens of community leaders
and businessmen who previously had little interest in running for Congress, but felt compelled to consider it because of the extreme agenda the Democrats in Washington were forcing through. It wasn’t just the liberal policies they objected to, it was the fact that the economy was continuing to decline and the unemployment numbers were continuing to rise but the focus of Washington was on everything but job creation.

But there was one person who caught my eye when we were recruiting in Tennessee: Stephen Fincher. He walked into the room we were in and said: “Mr. Kevin, my name’s Stephen Fincher, and I’m from Frog Jump, Tennessee. I’m a farmer, and I’m concerned about where this country’s going.”

Stephen in many ways epitomizes the type of candidates Young Guns is trying to recruit. Stephen was working hard in life—growing cotton, corn, soybeans, and wheat on his family farm, and staying involved in the community through his other family “business”: the “Fincher Family” singing ministry songs at more than a hundred events annually. But like many Americans, just a few months ago, he was watching his country change in ways he never dreamed, and he told us: “How am I going to answer my children in the future when they ask me, ‘What did you do when the country changed? Did you stand up and fight?’”

Stephen Fincher ended up fighting. After we met, he decided to run for Congress in Tennessee’s 8th District against Rep. John Tanner, an entrenched incumbent who hadn’t faced serious opposition since 1994 and had more
than $1 million in his campaign fund. But through hard work and the trust of his family and friends, Stephen barnstormed the district and raised a spectacular $1 million. His momentum and the changing political environment had an impact: Tanner announced he would not seek reelection! Stephen epitomizes what Young Guns is all about—and his commitment to bringing fiscal sanity, accountability, and fresh ideas is sorely needed in Congress.

Meeting Fincher and engaging in conversations with other potential candidates and Americans from all over the country that August made clear to me that the ground was shifting. Americans wanted solutions, but not the Democratic solutions that were being offered in Washington. And truth be told, they were not looking for partisan solutions from Republicans. They wanted commonsense American solutions that addressed the priorities of the day.

Moving forward, Young Guns and all our hard work has to be about something bigger than who wins or who loses; it can’t be about politicians, it has to be about solutions. Everything we do has to be filtered through the recognition that the status quo is unacceptable—that Washington business as usual is what we are fighting against.

I remember a conversation I had with a potential candidate that illustrates this point. I sat down with the candidate and his wife to discuss the possibility of his running for Congress. Our conversation went something like this:

K
EVIN
M
C
C
ARTHY
: Are you going to run?

C
ANDIDATE:
Do you need me to run?

KM:
No, I don’t need you to run.

C
ANDIDATE:
Do you want me to run?

KM
: No,
I
don’t want you to run. I’ll help you if
you want
to run.

By the time the meeting had ended, I told him not to run: “This can’t be about you. This is about changing America.”

What I said may seem harsh, but it’s true. We aren’t looking just to fill slots. We are looking for the future leaders of the Republican Party. Of course, I want the Republican Party to do well. But more importantly, I want America to do well.

CHAPTER NINE
A Commitment to America
 
 

Two thousand and nine was a year of great contrasts for Eric, Paul, and me. On the one hand, it was the year we saw our country accelerate in a direction that, if unchanged, will destroy what is best about us.

On the other hand, 2009 was the year that those of us in Congress who believe there’s a better way to lead our country came together, created commonsense solutions to our challenges, and fought together for them as one.

When Eric became Republican whip in January of 2009, I was honored to be named his chief deputy whip. Together with Paul as the head Republican on the Budget Committee, we set out to be constructive partners with the Democratic majority in addressing the nation’s flagging economy. As Eric and Paul have already mentioned, there was no partisan advantage for us in obstructing progress on
getting Americans back to work, despite what the Democrats claim. If we were seen as simply obstacles to progress, the voters would punish us even more.

So we began a process of carefully crafting alternatives to the Democrats’ big spending, big government bills. On the stimulus, on cap and trade, housing and health care, we presented real alternatives; commonsense solutions at a time of record-breaking deficit spending that would fix America’s problems without destroying what America is all about. But despite the victories of commonsense conservatives in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts—and thanks to backroom deals and antidemocratic maneuvering on the part of the Democrats—our alternative solutions lost. And for all the talk of Republican obstructionism, our legislative alternatives oftentimes were the only ones to attract bipartisan support. We fought the good fight, we had the good ideas, but to change the direction of the country, we don’t yet have the votes.

That’s why strategy is important—why politics is important—because it is the vehicle we use to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves and for our country. You can’t implement policies that reflect this country’s ideals and values without strategic thinking and planning. You can’t avoid “politics” in a participatory democracy. It is part of the process we use to debate, deliberate, and evaluate ideas, policies, and elected officials.