Sitting at the dining-room table at his house in midtown Kingston talking politics, chair of the Kingston Republican Committee Brian Woltman is looking for ideas to help energize the committee.
“I think our committee could use more camaraderie,” he says. “The Democrats — they get together pretty regularly and do a breakfast thing. A moveable feast.”
Though he doesn’t wish to fault predecessors, the absence of a social atmosphere within the committee is one reason Woltman has seen membership lagging.
“We have to fully and frankly acknowledge where we are,” says Woltman. “We didn’t get here overnight. And we’re not going to solve everything and get where we need to be all at once, either. As Kennedy would have said, It’s gonna be a long twilight struggle.”
A Republican chair quoting a Democratic president may sound dissonant to some. Many years ago, before he changed his stripes, Woltman was a Democratic Committee-member. “I’ve got a picture of FDR on my wall and Robert Kennedy behind you,” Woltman gestures, smiling. When his crisis of political identity came. Woltman recalled, he had to do some soul-searching.
“Particularly within the Democratic Committee at that time, I just couldn’t get a voice,” recalls Woltman. “I decided I’d rather think of myself as a liberal Republican than a conservative Democrat.”
It certainly wasn’t for political advantage that Woltman converted. In the City of Kingston, political rewards are few and far in between for Republicans. Not a single member of elected city government identifies as Republican. Voter registration across the city shows a two-to-one disadvantage to the GOP in all contests. The monotonously sensational antics of the party at the national level dissolves the sober message of local would-be politicians who say they are more concerned with day-to-day governance and fiscal responsibility.
“We’re going to speak to city issues,” says Woltman firmly. “On the other hand, it goes without saying that any individual member of the committee, including myself, is free to express any opinion they want on national issues.”
Shortly after last year’s November general elections, his party’s standard was set down by outgoing chair John Quigley. Woltman picked it up. In February he announced himself press-ready.
The first task, says Woltman, is to increase membership. Out of 54 members possible, six from each of Kingston’s nine wards, committee membership has sunk to an all-time low of 14 members.
“Hopefully we’re attracting new members and taking some new approaches,” says Woltman.“It’s a new day, we’re turning the page.”
What the Republican Committee in Kingston stands for remains a work in progress. This is by design. While committees can put together their beliefs in a plank-and-platform format, both Kingston major-party committees can be thought of as nothing more than useful apparatus to be wielded by individual candidates who wish to gain the advantage of resources, voter numbers, and a pre-existing organization ahead of an election contest.
Once endorsed, essentially within acceptable tolerances, whatever a candidate says is what the party supports in a given election cycle. Division begins once policies are articulated with specificity. As both parties endeavor to recruit the largest amount of voters, so do both parties endeavor to project the most accommodating reputation. “I just can’t get caught up in red and blue,” says Woltman. “I’m a liberal Republican who’s who happens to be pro-choice. I want to stress, though, on the committee there are avid pro-lifers and I respect their opinion. It’s a big tent, and that’s one of the goals I have for our committees, to create a big tent.”
Woltman did identify free speech, law and order, lower taxes and responsible government spending as motivating ideas behind the committee’s core values.
“The one ace in the hole, I think, with the committee where it’s not entirely bleak is I believe the non-enrolling people with no official party [‘Nones,” in the contemporary parlance], it’s one of the largest constituencies. I’ve lived in Kingston or the greater Kingston area all of my life, and I do have a feeling — it’s my sense of it — that there are significant amounts of people who would be friendly to a message that we could present, and would welcome that.”
The only race in Kingston this year will be for the Ward 7 aldermanic seat, currently occupied by Bryant Drew Andrews, who was appointed by the mayor upon the resignation of alder Michael Oliveri. “Andrews is the incumbent,” says Woltman. “Our immediate goal is to see if we can recruit a qualified candidate who will be interested in participating in that race and then make a good showing of it.”
Olivieri was a Democrat who, after failing to receive his own party’s endorsement, switched tacks and ran on the Republican Party line. Ward 7 and Ward 3 record the largest number of Republican voters in the city.
Woltman suggests a neighborly approach as advice to his party to pull focus from the national histrionics and to resist the broad-brush stereotypes propagated against Republicans.
“Particularly when we’re talking about our neighborhoods, the tack we need to take is common sense,” says Woltman. “If you make any candidate of any political persuasion — if they make a common-sense argument — they’re not necessarily going to get every vote that they’re seeking, but I think they’ll get a hearing. The nice thing about a city committee like this is we’re all dealing with a lot of ways with neighbors and friends. That’s the idea.”
Woltman wants his party to contest as many races as it can. “At the end of the day,” he asks, “what kinds of democracy do we have if there’s an election and no choice?”
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