New York Times
By Jonathan Martin
January 9, 2014
WASHINGTON — Ed Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, has told senior members of his party that he will challenge Senator Mark R. Warner of Virginia and announce his candidacy as early as next week, giving Republicans a top-tier candidate in what has become one of the nation’s most competitive swing states.
The bid by Mr. Gillespie, a longtime party operative turned lobbyist with ties to both Republican grass-roots and establishment wings, also underlines the intent of more mainstream Virginia Republicans to retake control of the party after a Tea Party-backed candidate lost the governorship.
He begins the race as a pronounced underdog. Mr. Warner, a former governor now in his first Senate term, is the most popular politician in Virginia, and has $7.1 million in his campaign account and access to millions from his personal fortune. But Republicans in the state believe that, because of resistance to the new health law and President Obama’s declining popularity, they have an opportunity to at least make the race competitive.
In Mr. Gillespie, Republicans have a viable candidate who can raise the money needed to run in a large state and mount a serious campaign in a contest they had thought to be out of reach. Virginia Republicans, mirroring the party’s national struggle, are suffering from deep ideological rifts between the Tea Party activists, personified by last year’s losing candidate for governor, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, and their traditional, business-oriented wing.
“Ed brings a long record in the conservative movement and a national profile to a party that’s looking for unity and a lot of resources,” said Pete Snyder, who narrowly lost the Republican nomination to run for lieutenant governor last year.
Mr. Gillespie declined to comment for this article.
Even with all his experience in politics, serving as a congressional aide and a counselor to President George W. Bush, Mr. Gillespie has never been a candidate. He will embark on a campaign when, for the first time since 1969, Virginia Republicans hold no statewide office, and voters know far less about him than about Mr. Warner.
And before he can try to unseat the incumbent, Mr. Gillespie first has to overcome any suspicions among conservatives about his long history as a lobbyist, though not in the past six years, and his stance as an unapologetic supporter of a comprehensive immigration overhaul. There are already two announced, though little-known, Republican candidates running for the nomination, which will be decided in June at a convention in Roanoke.
Mr. Gillespie, who opposes abortion rights and is conservative on most other issues, is running on the belief that he can unite the party in a way that did not happen last year. He has been reaching out to some of Virginia’s conservative activists since Election Day, sounding them out and asking for their support.
Mike Farris, a conservative who once ran for statewide office and is now a top figure at Patrick Henry College and the National Home School Legal Defense Association, said he had talked to Mr. Gillespie “several times” in recent weeks and was open to what he called the former party chairman’s “uphill but winnable” candidacy.
“Anybody associated with the national Republican hierarchy is a little bit suspect,” Mr. Farris said. “Sometimes that’s fair, sometimes that’s not fair. He’s going to have to prove he’s not the same as the rest of the Washington Republican establishment.”
Mr. Gillespie has also sought out Morton Blackwell, Virginia’s longtime national Republican committeeman and conservative movement stalwart. “I have encouraged him to run, and I have told some others that I have encouraged him to run,” said Mr. Blackwell, who has known Mr. Gillespie since the candidate-to-be was an aide to the former House majority leader Dick Armey.
Republicans, both in Virginia and in Washington, partly blame the party’s choice of a hard-liner-dominated nominating convention over a primary last year for the losses by each of their three nominees for statewide office. But in a state where there is no registration by party, the bulk of the state party’s governing board would prefer to stick with conventions to ensure that conservative candidates win. So it was notable when Mr. Gillespie reached out late last year to one conservative activist who sits on the state party’s governing board to make it clear that he would not try to engineer a switch to a primary in 2014.
“That spoke volumes to me, that he would respect the party and not try to get involved,” said the member of the Virginia Republican central committee, who later added, “I really think he is our only shot.”
Mr. Gillespie, who was general chairman for the campaign of Gov. Bob McDonnell in 2009 and is also a former state party chairman, has begun lining up his team, retaining the ad-maker, pollster and campaign manager from Mr. McDonnell’s campaign.
Virginians who have recently spoken to Mr. Warner said he was consumed with the idea of a challenge from Mr. Gillespie. One longtime political hand in Richmond said Mr. Warner shifted a recent conversation to the topic of Mr. Gillespie “within about the first 15 seconds.”
Democrats say Mr. Gillespie’s lobbying career, which included representing Enron, the notorious Texas energy company, is his most significant vulnerability. “The likelihood that he will be embarrassed by this race is at least as great as the likelihood that he will run a respectable race,” said Geoff Garin, the pollster for Mr. Warner.
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