By Richard Engle

The Republican Party in Oklahoma's fourth largest county, its fastest growing county, and the "reddest" county in America's reddest state was in crisis. The annual Flag Day event was canceled. The annual golf tourney was canceled for lack of interest. The party organization continued its habit of holding monthly meetings, but with little fanfare and low turnout. The well worn parade float was recycled and remodeled (to make it smaller) and the party faithful put up a good front, but the hodgepodge of old political signs did little to motivate the crowds.

Observers within and without suggested that county party activists should be dancing in the streets. The County is the largest with a 100% Republican success rate. Every single elected official in a partisan office is a Republican. State Republican Chairman Matt Pinnell said, "What Canadian County has done is very impressive. Population growth and good leadership from the grassroots level of the county party has resulted in great success -- a clean sweep for Republicans!"

From the County Commission, the Sheriff, the County Clerk, Court Clerk, Treasurer and Assessor to the District Attorney which it shares with other counties all are Republican. Add to that the fact that every state legislative district that has so much as a single precinct in the county is held by a Republican.

Republicans were so eager to tap into the conservative voting base of the county that districts were carefully gerrymandered to pull in Canadian County voters. The odd result was that only one legislator actually lived in the county while the citizens were served by ten different legislators at the state level. Of course both Congressmen serving Canadian County are Republicans and Canadian County voters were critical to securing that every single statewide office is Republican. As is well known, the U.S. Senators are both Republican as was every Presidential Elector from the state of Oklahoma. All this success was due in part to the solid conservative vote in Canadian County for the GOP.

The larger and more famously Republican leaning Oklahoma County failed to pull for the GOP in the statewide vote last year and Canadian County was critical in making up the difference and securing the statewide "clean sweep."

With such a level of accomplishment, why would the local party organization do anything but rejoice? The reason -- nothing left to do! For most people a political party exists to elect its own members to public office. Canadian County GOP had a crisis of success!

After acknowledging the failure of the golf event, forward looking party executives decided to re-purpose the party organization to four goals. They held a strategic planning meeting to choose from 17 possible goals. Those party leaders (including the author of this article) chose to set precinct organization as the highest priority for the county. As redistricting has changed much of the landscape in the county (including adding a full legislative district) the party will recruit and train a new class of volunteers for advancement of conservative causes and Republican vote turnout.

The second goal will be educating voters. They decided that there is more to being a good Republican voter than voting for the Republican nominee in November. They are planning a wide range of educational programs designed to reach the mass of voters and not just the known activists. Among the activities designed to educate voters is a program to provide free copies of the Oklahoma Constitution newspaper at popular public venues around the county.

Third, the Canadian County GOP will build on the early transitional efforts of previous county party Chairman Pete Katzdorn by securing that the nominees are better, more conservative, Republicans. Katzdorn was instrumental in establishing the pattern of holding candidate forums for those running for the Republican nomination for county area offices. The current GOP executives plan on expanding those forums, promoting them, and defining the format and questions in a manner that will ferret out the liberal tendencies often found in local candidates. By forcing the candidates to take a strong conservative stand on local and state issues it is expected that they will be rewarded with the electoral support of the strongly conservative Republican base in the county.

Finally, the Canadian County GOP will work to get Republicans elected to the various non-partisan offices throughout the county. County Chairman Robert Hubbard took significant heat for beginning this process early this year by revealing that the incumbent Mayor of Piedmont was a Democrat and the challenger was a Republican. The Republican won in part due to that activity along with Hubbard's courageous endorsement.

School and Career Tech boards, city councils and fire districts as well as the judicial offices will be the target of electoral efforts in the county. Many Democrats hide their affiliation with their liberal and unpopular party by running for these offices. The voters of Canadian county have not had the opportunity to be properly informed in the past about the partisan or ideological bent of candidates in these offices. Those days are coming to an end.

Canadian County is not the first to find itself in a crisis of success, it's just the largest. Nor is it the first to have a solidly conservative party leadership. Rather than radicalizing the operations of the party, the Canadian County GOP is taking rational steps to advance its purposes as set out in the Oklahoma Republican Party rules. "Republican" means something in Canadian County as it does throughout Oklahoma. It means we take our common sense conservative party platform to heart and we intend to see its ideals prevail.