WASHINGTON — Candidates for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee criticized Michael Steele and reached out to the tea party at a panel discussion hosted by the RNC Conservative Caucus on Wednesday.
Steele, who has yet to announce if he will run for another term, did not attend the event, which was moderated by two representatives of FreedomWorks, a leading tea party organization.
The four participants in the forum agreed on almost all issues brought before them. Despite a clear hesitancy to mention Steele by name, the candidates universally cited a need to improve the RNC’s current fundraising efforts.
Gentry Collins, the former RNC political director who criticized Steele in his resignation letter in November, said the GOP could have made greater gains in the midterm elections with proper funding from the RNC.
“The only way to fix it is to have a chairman who is laser-focused on raising the funds we need,” Collins said. “The problem in 2010 is that we did not have the resources to deploy that ground game to all the places in the country where it should have been deployed.”
The RNC chairman’s role as chief fundraiser for the party was a theme throughout the panel discussion. The four participants touted their fundraising backgrounds and desire to target major donors.
“Money is the mother’s milk of politics,” said former RNC chairman Mike Duncan. “There is not too much money in politics. There is not enough money.”
Duncan, who lost his re-election bid to Steele in 2009, said he is considering running for the position again. Ann Wagner, former chair of the Missouri Republican Party, and Saul Anuzis, former chair of the Michigan Republican Party, also participated in the discussion.
With questions coming from FreedomWorks and tea party activists in the audience, the four hopefuls emphasized the need for the Republican Party to reach out to tea party groups.
“We have to recognize and respect the true, authentic nature of these tea party and patriot groups that are out there,” Wagner said. “I think it’s important that we listen to what they have to say and that we do bring them together.”
In response to a question about Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s successful re-election victory as an independent after losing the Alaska Republican primary, all four candidates said the RNC should not get involved in primaries and should discourage independent challenges.
“It is incumbent upon us as a party to support the nominee whoever he or she might be,” Anuzis said.
The participants called for greater outreach to Hispanics, a strict adherence to conservative principles and continued congressional gains in the 2012 election cycle. The candidates also said improved fundraising is necessary to defeat President Barack Obama’s re-election bid.
“We’ve got to beat his ideology,” Collins said. “We’ve got to beat his policies.”
The election for RNC chairman will take place in Washington in early January.