Tag Archives: baker

Ward Baker Profiled by The Hill

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The Hill talks with Tennessean Ward Baker about his new job as political director of the Republican National committee and his assignment: win enough seats to give the GOP control of the U.S. Senate after the 2014 elections.
An excerpt:
In his new role, Baker will allocate the NRSC’s budget, shifting resources as the map develops. He’ll also do much of the hiring for the committee’s independent expenditure arm and help shape the messaging and strategy needed to achieve the GOP’s 2014 goal of regaining the Senate majority.
Baker readily admits that, coming out of 2012, there are things the party needs to do differently, particularly in terms of expanding the GOP’s appeal.
“We’ve got to do a better job of reaching new voters. I agree with a lot of what [Louisiana Gov.] Bobby Jindal said. … We should not run away from our party,” he said.
Jindal charged during his keynote address at the RNC’s winter meeting that while the Republican Party shouldn’t change its values, it “might need to change just about everything else we are doing.”
Baker indicated that one of the biggest changes coming to the NRSC will be in recruitment. 
“There are a lot of senators that have offered to help us recruit” besides the NRSC’s two vice chairmen, Sens. Rob Portman (Ohio) and Ted Cruz (Texas), Baker said.
Baker is bringing a winning track record — and wealth of experience in hard-fought races — to the NRSC. But his career began in the military. 
After graduating high school in Tennessee, Baker eschewed college in favor of joining the Marines. He was stationed at the 8th and I location on Capitol Hill as a member of the ceremonial drill team.
He credits his military training with giving him the self-discipline and team ethic that has guided him in his career in politics.

A Pitch for Americans Elect in Knoxville

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Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican who once was New Jersey governor and then EPA administrator, made a pitch for the new political movement Americans Elect in a Knoxville speech, reports Georgiana Vines.
She said people are growing increasingly disillusioned with the two-party system and concluded that neither the Republican nor Democratic parties deserve their support anymore.
“That is why I agreed to serve on the board of an organization called Americans Elect. It’s a nonpartisan effort to hold America’s first-ever online presidential nominating convention and to secure a place on the ballot for its presidential ticket in every state in the nation,” she said.
She said more than 2.5 million signatures have been amassed on petitions and earned a place on the ballot in 25 states.
Ileana Wachtel, Americans Elect national press secretary, said Friday the group is awaiting certification from the secretary of state for its candidates to be on the November ballot in Tennessee.
“We filed nearly 80,000 signatures (in Tennessee),” she said.
Blake Fontenay with the secretary of state’s office said a little more than 37,000 signatures have been verified and they need a little more than 40,000. They have until Aug. 16 to get on the ballot.
Whitman said the ticket will include a presidential candidate from one party and a vice presidential candidate from the other.

Tennessee Operative to Serve as Romney-RNC Go-Between

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A sentence from a New York Times political blog on the Republican National Committee declaring Mitt Romney the party’s presumptive presidential nominee and moving to coordinate efforts:
Ward Baker, a Tennessee-based political consultant, will serve as another go-between for the political operations at the committee and the campaign.
Baker, a veteran political operative, has been a consultant to several Tennessee campaigns, starting at the state legislature level.

Howard Baker, Bob Dole Hailed for Bipartisanship

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Once upon a time in Congress, compromise between Republicans and Democrats was the norm. And a witty GOP senator named Bob Dole was one of the best practitioners of the art, preferably on a West-facing balcony of the Capitol where he could get sun on his face while lawmaking.
Nearly 16 years after Dole left the Senate to run for president, the balcony is named for him. And the former Kansas senator is half of a pair of leaders being feted in Washington for their century of combined service and for practicing this thing called bipartisanship that seems lost, for now.
“All I know is I don’t have to make a speech,” Dole, 88, said in a telephone interview before the festivities. He said he’s feeling a bit better lately but still suffers from chronic back pain.
Dole’s predecessor as Senate Republican leader, Howard Baker of Tennessee, also was being honored Wednesday night by the non-profit group they helped found, the Bipartisan Policy Center, dedicated to “great moments in compromise by encouraging civil, respectable political discourse between the political parties.”
That sounds quaint after more than a year of divided government mired in standoffs over the nation’s troubled economy and, lately, a selection of long-settled social issues like access to contraception and the Violence Against Women Act. So polarized is Congress in the 2012 election year that centrists like Maine Republican Olympia Snowe and Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson are fleeing.
In fact, Dole and Baker, both former presidential candidates and veterans of World War II, were at the center of such historic moments of bipartisanship. They could each be conciliators and fierce partisans.
Baker, 86, served in the Senate from 1967 to 1985 and was the senior Republican on the congressional panel investigating Watergate. He is famous for asking the question of his fellow Republicans: “What did the president know and when did he know it?”
His calm demeanor was considered key to passage of the 1978 Panama Canal Treaty, which called for the gradual transfer of the canal to Panama. He served as Senate majority leader from 1981 to 1985.
The equally steady and acerbic Dole was his successor as leader of the Senate Republicans. He developed a reputation in the Senate of valuing thoughtful discussion over incivility in lawmaking, and, wounded in World War II, became a leading advocate for veterans and disabled Americans generally. He was a key to passing the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990.
“I think the Senate operated more effectively then than it does today,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., one of the hosts of the tribute. “But I don’t think it would make much to change it today. It would take a change of behavior rather than a change of rules.”