CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
June 23, 2009 – 4:42 p.m.
Barbour Makes Dry Run Into 2012 Proving Grounds
By Jonathan Allen, CQ Staff
If anyone knows how to win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, it’s Haley Barbour.
Whether the 61-year-old Mississippi governor can successfully apply that know-how in 2012 — and whether he wants to — are questions that will begin to be answered this week as he launches what many political observers see as an exploratory venture into presidential primary proving grounds.
Barbour helped Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Bob McDonnell raise money on Monday. On Tuesday, he appeared in the Capitol for a health care press conference with House Republican leaders John Boehner of Ohio and Mike Pence of Indiana.
But it is the Wednesday and Thursday legs of his trip — to state fundraising dinners in New Hampshire and Iowa — that have attracted the attention of party players.
When will he decide whether to run? “Probably never,” he said Tuesday, adding that he told New Hampshire GOP Chairman John H. Sununu “I’m your man,” when Sununu said he was seeking a dinner speaker who wasn’t running for president.
Asked later to clarify whether he meant that he wouldn’t run in 2012, Barbour shot back, “I don’t think I said that.”
It was not the first time that Barbour has left open the door to a run.
“He’s a potential candidate. It is as wide open as its been in many, many years for the 2012 nomination,” said Craig Shirley, a Republican consultant who has worked in party politics and advised GOP presidential contenders. “There is no front-runner.”
That opens an opportunity for a dark horse to make a run, said Shirley, who ticked off a list of Barbour’s attributes: “His record as governor, his conservatism, his ability to articulate a Reaganesque vision. . . . He got high marks for Katrina. He’s not tarred with the Bush brush at all.”
Of course, Barbour has a lot of hurdles, not the least of which is a resume — lobbyist, politician, party official — that invites campaign attacks.
Perhaps more important, many Republicans worry about nominating a conservative Southern governor at a time when the party’s appeal is limited with moderates and outside the South.
For now, Barbour and his allies insist, those questions are premature.
“Any Republican who’s not focused on the 2009 and 2010 doesn’t have his eye on the ball,” Barbour said in May. “I’m going to keep my eye on the ball.”
That’s where the fundraising efforts in Virginia, New Hampshire and Iowa come in.
“He’s thinking about the party and how we rebuild,” said a source close to Barbour. “If the party takes care of those things, then you move on to the next things.
Brad Blakeman, a senior White House aide during George W. Bush ’s first term, said Barbour’s interest in helping Republican candidates is genuine, even if it also may pay dividends down the road.
“Can he be seen as a potential candidate? The answer is yes. But that is a natural product of what he is doing for the party,” Blakeman said. “This is a guy who is a rare breed. He puts party above self,”
Republicans are remarkably quick to offer praise for Barbour, who was chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1994, the year the GOP won both chambers of Congress for the first time in 40 years.
“Haley takes a very inclusive approach,” said Maine Sen. Susan M. Collins, one of a only a handful of northeastern Republicans left in Congress. “I think he’d be a strong candidate.”
The Inside Track
“The ultimate insider” is no political slogan, but Barbour’s long years toiling in party politics at the state and national levels, in Washington’s power corridors and within the Republican Governors Association give him an inside track to winning support among party leaders.
No other Republican elected official can match Barbour’s party-building pedigree, and few have a network as broad or deep among state-level party officials. In the case of other governors, that might mean the assistance of statewide political machinery in a primary.
That’s not enough on its own to win a nomination — much less the presidency — but it doesn’t hurt.
“It helps, but it doesn’t help nearly as much as it used to because they wield so little power,” Shirley said. “The power has shifted from the state parties and the delegates and the state conventions and it has shifted to the media and the consultants, and they are the new political bosses.”
Barbour’s political mettle first was forged in the fiery 1976 Kansas City convention showdown between the insurgent Ronald Reagan and incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford when he was executive director of the state party.
“Despite Haley’s best efforts, [Dick] Cheney and Ford and other people in the Ford campaign were able to flip, at the convention, those 30 delegates,” said Shirley, who wrote a book about the primary.
Now Barbour is keeping his own counsel when it comes to presidential politics.
Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander , a two-time presidential candidate, said Barbour would be a tough candidate “if he chooses to be” in 2012. “He has a long future ahead of him.”
Comments
Barbour is just the man to help the GOP shed its image as the Southern White Christian Party.
I can only hope and pray that the GOP nominates Governor Barbour so that the party can go the way of the Whigs.
Writing that Gov. Barbour is not tarred by Katrina seems to damningly faint praise. In the aftermath of Katrina, Gov. Barbour had the opportunity to demonstrate dynamic leadership. Other than the Mississippi GOP flack machine, no on has noted any great competence, energy or even leadership emanating from the Governor. Barbour could make a contribution as the Howard Dean of the GOP, if he could get around his background as the quintessential conservative insider.
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