Sen. Benton joins Roach in attacking GOP caucus leadership

The sides are starting to take shape in the much publicized and fiercely worded quarrel among members of the Republican Senate caucus. Today Sen. Don Benton (R-Vancouver) took sides with Sen. Pam Roach (R-Auburn). In a letter to his colleagues obtained by the TNT, Benton criticized the professionalism, leadership and fiscal responsibility of the Republican caucus leaders, notably Sen. Mike Hewitt (R-Walla Walla).

Read the letter below.

Dear Republican Colleague,

Now that the session is over and I have had a few days to think about it I wanted to write to you to express my deep disgust with the way the caucus campaign meeting was conducted last Friday. I also want to voice my serious concern with the inexcusable position our caucus finds itself concerning our ability to conduct campaigns this season. As one of only 17 people who can do anything about our situation, I wanted to share with you my assessment of the situation. 

First, the fact that our elected leader, Senator Hewitt screamed uncontrollably at both Senator Roach and myself during the meeting was degrading and embarrassing. I believe it made everyone in the room feel uncomfortable. No one wants to attend a meeting like that and perhaps that is his goal since we are in such dire straights. His immature and vulgar display of lifting his coat and showing his rear end to Senator Roach may be comical to some but was over the top and most certainly behavior unbecoming any senator let alone the leader of our caucus. I understand that we had all just finished a grueling week on the floor, however "our leader" must exemplify grace under fire at all times. If this same behavior is demonstrated toward lobbyists who disagree with him, it is no wonder we have trouble raising funds for our caucus. As I hope I made abundantly clear at the meeting, I have volunteere d my fundraising efforts to help Senator Hewitt and the caucus several times and have never been asked to go on a fundraising call.

I was shocked to discover at the meeting that $300,000 of the $400,000 raised in 2007 was also spent in 2007 even though we had no races that year at all. It appears that no attempt whatsoever was made to conserve funds for the crucial 2008 election cycle. This is greatly disturbing. A statewide mailing list composed of only 2600 donors is pathetic. And I hope you caught the fact that $100,000 was spent on direct mail to break even and only add 200 or so additional names to our list. If this wasn't so sad it would be laughable.

Further, to expect surplus funds to carry the day in a year when we have 17 seats to shoot at is utterly ridiculous especially when several of the senators expected to make those surplus funds transfers are actually up for election this cycle. There are few, if any, new major donors and no significant increases in the donation amounts of our regular major donors. Anyone that has raised large sums for any organization knows, or should know, major donors are where the greatest potential for growth lies. This needs to be the focus of our efforts.

The other serious concern after spending over $300,000 last year is the fact that we still have no candidates recruited for 14 of the 16 "D" seats that are up this cycle. The filing period is only 2 months away. In fact, we only have two candidates, one of which found us. This is a sad commentary on the effectiveness of our whole team in recruiting candidates. Think about it seriously, 16 Democrat seats up, 7 where we stand a good chance (1st, 2nd, 10th, 23rd, 25th, 40th, and 41st where we lost the house member to the Democrats!) and only 2 candidates. Holy cow does anyone see a problem here?

We must be willing to discuss this openly and quit pretending that everything is just fine and dandy because it clearly is not. What in the world are we actually getting for all the money spent? Senator Hewitt needs help but is unwilling to accept any even though it has been offered on numerous occasions. Instead of asking for help and utilizing the strengths of all of the members of the team to pull us out of our dire straights, his style is to tightly control all facets of the operation, avoid caucus meetings, disseminate little to no information and to punish anyone who attempts to criticize or disagree with him. I truly hope you can see we cannot continue in this fashion and have any hope being successful as a team and more especially as a majority.

I have also just discovered today that Senator Hewitt has launched a personal attack against Senator Roach using internal caucus resources and caucus staff to attack her and censure her in order to stop her criticism of him and his lack of leadership. This is not where our leadership should be spending their resources and time during a critical election year and I fear a public battle at this time will have a tremendous negative impact on all of us running this year. Rest assured Senator Roach will not sit back and be attacked by Senator Hewitt without a very public response. This needs to stop immediately. Perhaps I will be the target of his next attack for speaking out. I hope not.

I do not know what the solution to this mess is but I do know that we must collectively find the answer or we are destined to the minority for much, much longer than is necessary. Don't think it won't affect all of us because giving the D's a free ride even in the hopeless districts gives the D caucus more resources to use against us in our own races! We have some colleagues that are in trouble this year! Under Senator Hewitt we have lost several seats and with the current state of affairs are certainly destined to lose more. We elected Senator Parlette Caucus Chair in part to help fix things and she has unfortunately been shut out of every major decision. Even the lobbying community is openly criticizing our lack of decisive, effective leadership.

With Senator Hewitt's crude behavior demonstrated last Friday night, lobbyists in open criticism and not enough money in the bank to fund even one race let alone 16 and the defense of a couple of our own that we know are in trouble, I have found myself embarrassed to be a member of this dysfunctional caucus. Just what will the rest of you do? I have a serious race to run and I need your help as well as the caucus.

Only a fool continues to do the same thing over and over and expects a different outcome. I strongly suggest serious change if we are to be effective in the future. Please let me know your ideas on how we can fix this serious problem. If you do not view it as a serious problem then, in my opinion, we are doomed and unfortunately so are the people of Washington due to our lack of will to make the difficult changes necessary to save us all.

Don Benton