Grand New Party still looking backward in Greenwich
Ahh, to be a fly on the wall of the Greenwich Republican Town Committee.
Actually, let’s get buzzing.
It’s Jan. 25 and the RTC is documenting recent wins and losses. It’s been 11 weeks since Greenwich Republicans endured their worst Election Day in more than a century. This is a town that wears a “GOP4Ever” tattoo on its hide as far as the rest of the nation is concerned. Yet the GOP lost three of the four General Assembly seats on Election Day to Democrats, while town resident Leora Levy finished 15 points behind U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal. If this was a Super Bowl score, most Republicans would have muted the remote after Rihanna’s halftime show.
At the afterparty that night, some Republicans were muttering about the absence of its two remaining flag-bearers, First Selectman Fred Camillo and state Sen. Ryan Fazio, who held onto his seat.
“Where is he?”
Fast forward to Jan. 25 and Camillo and Fazio are back in the huddle in the Greenwich Town Hall Meeting Room. The Grand Old Party has not transformed into a Grand New Party. But the newcomers are working harder to execute their same playbook. Their most recent cause was to try to sway the town’s Representative Town Meeting to reject two grants for the Registrars of Voters. After a surreal vote that approved the first grant (for $500,000), Camillo declined to sign it because it could still be challenged by RTM members.
During the RTC meeting, there’s a pause to “thank you Fred, very, very much, for not signing the grant.”
Members respond with applause and utterances of “hear, hear,” like this is an 18th Century Parliamentary procedure or a Monty Python sketch.
There’s an irony here. The grants are designed to address popular GOP talking points about fair elections. But the money can be invested in boosting voter turnout, which tends not to go well for Republican candidates. Hence, opposition from the right.
It’s not easy to be Fred Camillo in this Greenwich RTC. It should be. He won his last election in 2021 with 70 percent of the vote. A few days later, then-RTC Chair Dan Quigley wrote an op-ed suggesting it was time for the party to move on from President Donald Trump. This contributed to an outrage that resulted in traditional Republican leaders being tossed out during winter caucuses. The Coup demonstrated how easy it is to claim power when the general electorate isn’t involved. That’s the lesson for other towns: The membership matters, as these are the people who select the fall candidates.
After The Coup, former Donald Trump advisor Carl Higbie wrote a letter to the editor that included the words “As a Republican, (which Fred claims to be) … ” Camillo also turned off some RTC members in the early days of the pandemic with cautious COVID-19 protocols, which brought a lot of Democrats onto his team.
And yet the loudest gossip I keep hearing has been about the RTC trying to draft others to replace Camillo in the coming election cycle. Sure, it’s fun to play Hot Stove Politics in the winter months, but does it really make sense to try to coax back someone such as Peter Tesei, who held the position for six terms and whose name just keeps coming up?
Tesei has raised his voice politically a few times of late, supporting Levy’s campaign and, yes, opposing the grants for the registrars, aligning himself with the New RTC. But that doesn’t mean he’s ready to abandon the noble work he’s doing as executive director of Pathways, a nonprofit with the mission of serving adults suffering from mental illness.
Aside from Tesei, there really aren’t any other Republicans who would be a viable threat to Camillo. Still, Camillo is in the awkward position of trying not to incur the wrath of his own party.
Unlike a struggling NFL team, the party hasn’t shuffled the leadership after a losing season. In recent weeks, we’ve published letters from Levy, Peter Sherr, Kimberly Fiorello and Beth MacGillivray. Sherr lost the race for a House seat, giving it to the Democrats for the first time ever (yes, “first time ever” is redundant, but it bears emphasis). Fiorello surrendered her House seat after a single term and MacGillivray is the current RTC chair. Collectively, they are the Fab Four of the new RTC.
The letters offer signs of collective resolve.
MacGillivray writes “Please, let’s do away with strongarm tactics such as censorship, quashing debates and canceling others.” She’s talking about discourse over issues, but it’s a little soon after the party declined to participate in League of Women Voters debates last fall.
Fiorello expresses admiration for the political chess moves by Democrats, and suggests they “apply their admirable organizing operations toward wealth-creating entrepreneurism for everyone, affirming earned success instead of political activism which creates a trap of dependence on government benefits.”
“Wealth-creating entrepreneurship for everyone” is a helluva phrase. Most people don’t really expect wealth. They just want to be able to cover their heating bill.
Levy responded to columnist Alma Rutgers’ criticisms by writing “it really felt like someone was shouting ‘MAGA, MAGA, MAGA!’ At some point, it becomes just noise.” The problem with the red hat branding, of course, is that it still fits.
And Sherr targets RTM member James Waters for deeming those who question the registrars grants as “conspiracy theorists.”
While the Greenwich RTC leaders stand foursquare in their beliefs, there is one matter they still dodge. They sought counsel from the Republican National Committee in declaring war on the registrars grants. The RNC replied with some crafty talking points (“Accepting grant money from organizations who refuse to disclose the source of their funding runs squarely against the principle of transparency in our elections system.” Funny, they don’t seem to apply that same reasoning to PACs).
But the subtext is never really brought to the surface. It reveals itself in whispers during the RTC meeting. As the fly on the wall, I never hear “Trump,” but there are grumblings about the 2020 election being stolen.
Say it with me: The 2020 election was not stolen. Or at least say what you really think.
This all can sound like small town politics. But it’s not. This is Greenwich, so the Republican evolution became front page news in The New York Times on the eve of the last elections. And Evan Osnos turned his New Yorker article on the path of Greenwich Republicans into fodder for his book, “Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury.”
About all that’s left is for it to be turned into an opera.
Right now, it’s just a winter buzz. That might just turn into static. Or it could be a warning.