Montco GOP struggling with money and mission

GOP stalwarts look back fondly on the Montgomery County Republican Committee's fund-raisers of old.

Twice a year, party luminaries would gather at country clubs to discuss political intrigues, plot election strategy, and celebrate their reputation as the local party in the state that could not be beat at the ballot box.

Hors d'oeuvres were served, cocktails consumed, and, most important, wealthy local donors were persuaded to empty their wallets to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

Those days have passed.

Facing a tough fund-raising climate and a dysfunctional three years at the helm of county government, the organization once viewed by Republicans statewide as the party's pocketbook has fallen on hard times.

The committee has more than $90,000 of debts - some as old as two years - to printers, caterers, political consultants, and other vendors.

And it has become increasingly dependent upon the benevolence of one man - Gladwyne lawyer, educator, and billboard company owner Vahan Gureghian, who operates the state's largest charter school.

His $93,000 in contributions make up more than a quarter of the money the Montgomery County GOP has taken in this year, according to its latest financial filings with the Department of State.

The combination of mounting financial obligation and outsize importance of one donor could spell trouble in Montgomery County's 2011 local elections and the for party's future health, some members fear.

"People's concern would be that the party could become so overextended that only a donor like Vahan Gureghian would be in a position to bail it out," said Bruce L. Castor Jr., the Republican commissioner considered the favorite to lead the party's 2011 ticket in a reelection bid. "That could give rise to a situation where he could exercise inordinate influence over party decisions."

Despite concern from some in his ranks, committee Chairman Robert Kerns remains sunny about his party's outlook.

"There's no doubt in my mind that we can raise money," he said. "It's been a tough couple of years, but it's changing. It's coming around."

That a local political party finds itself in debt is not particularly unusual, strategists on both sides of the aisle say. County-level Republican and Democratic committees across the state routinely rack up thousands in financial obligations during election season.

What makes the Montgomery County Republican Committee's situation unusual is that its debts have been mounting since early 2009. And though $90,000 may not sound like much to a group that routinely brings in more than $600,000 in contributions each year, that those liabilities have sat on the books for so long is a troubling sign, said veteran Republican strategist Aaron Cohen, who has worked on campaigns in Montgomery County.

It has started to affect how the party operates. For years under previous chairmen, the party relied on the same caterers, the same event halls, the same print shops for many of its functions and operations. Over the last three years - since Kerns was elected chairman - the organization has bounced from one vendor to another.

After performing a dine-and-dash on many of the businesses that have been loyal to the organization for years, the party can't go back.

Gus Mandracchia, owner of Presidential Catering in East Norriton, got stuck with a $3,000 bill in 2008 after years of putting food on the table at party functions. Since then, his regular business from the committee has dried up.

"I would have been the first to say, 'Just pay me what you can,' but to not pay at all and then just go somewhere else - that's wrong," he said.

Even the party's own candidates are feeling the hurt. Pete Kohut, a longtime Bridgeport councilman who made an unsuccessful run for the state House this year, said the party promised him $2,000 for his campaign mailings. He says he's still waiting for a check.

As bills have piled up, lawyers have become involved, lawsuits have been threatened, and the party's small staff has deferred drawing a paycheck.

"I just don't know how you run an operation like that," Kohut said. "You certainly don't like to take advantage of those who are working on behalf of your party."

So how did the local Republican committee in the heart of Pennsylvania's political fund-raising capital get to this point? Local conservatives have continued to donate in big numbers to GOP candidates and statewide causes.

The economic downturn has certainly taken its toll on fund-raising efforts in Montgomery County, Kerns said. But he places most of the blame on the epic public feud played out during the last three years between the two Republicans on Montgomery County's Board of Commissioners - Castor and his estranged colleague, James R. Matthews.

Shortly after their election in 2007, Matthews struck a power-sharing agreement with the board's lone Democrat, Joseph M. Hoeffel III, to edge out Castor's influence on the three-man panel. Since then, the two have lobbed insults back and forth at county meetings and political functions.

"People like to give money in a situation where they see stability - where they're going to believe that you're the winning candidate," Kerns said. "When you have a situation where you have infighting between two Republican commissioners, that sure doesn't lead to stability."

That Gureghian, the committee's major donor and finance chair, has stepped in with such large contributions has helped restore some calm, Kerns said.

Since 2008, Gureghian and his wife, Danielle, have donated more than $250,000 to the county Republican committee, while also emerging as a major GOP benefactor across the state. His gifts of more than $334,000 helped push Republican Gov.-elect Tom Corbett to victory in November.

"I have worked very diligently to ensure that the party's operations are adequately funded, as they certainly are today," Gureghian said in an e-mailed statement. "I will continue to do so, to the best of my ability."

Yet some in the Montgomery County party say its leaders have become reliant on Gureghian's money to the exclusion of seeking donations from other sources.

"When you see someone giving $339,000, people start to think, 'The committee doesn't need my money,' " Matthews said. "That's a bad situation."

It is also an ironic position for Kerns, considering the cause that helped sweep him into the committee chairmanship in 2008.

That year, with party members still reeling from what they saw as Matthew's betrayal, many blamed the man whose influence helped put him on the 2007 Republican ticket, GOP power broker and candy-maker Robert B. Asher.

A frequent and generous donor to the Montgomery County Republican Committee personally and through his fund-raising arm, the Pennsylvania Future Fund, Asher had accumulated too much influence over local party decisions, Kerns and his allies said.

Kerns' election as party chair was meant to signal the committee's move out from under Asher's thumb. (Asher has since gained new prominence as a major donor to Corbett's gubernatorial campaign. Though he still donates generously to specific candidates in Montgomery County, he has not contributed to the local party since 2007.)

"Now Vahan wants to be the next Bob Asher, and the leadership is letting him," Matthews said. "He saw the vacuum here in Montgomery County and threw his saddle on the party."

Some party members already see the same money-man influence Asher once wielded developing under its new benefactor.

As candidates begin to line up for a spot alongside Castor on the party's 2011 county-level ticket, Gureghian appears already to have picked his pony.

A $10,000 check he cut to Lower Merion Commissioner Jenny Brown last month is the largest donation of the campaign so far and makes up more than 80 percent of her fund-raising total, according to her latest campaign-finance report.

That puts the war chest of this newcomer to county-level politics at more than two times that of Hoeffel, a former U.S. representative and the Democratic commissioner running for reelection next year.

Though Castor has not yet decided about Brown as a potential 2011 running mate, he bristles at the suggestion that Gureghian's support has made up some minds already.

"I keep wondering why some people are pushing her to the exclusion of other candidates without even asking my view," he said. "I think that the party's candidate selection must be done by merit, and not done by who controls the purse strings."

Kerns sees Gureghian's role differently.

"If you took Mr. Gureghian's money out, we'd still survive, we'd still operate, we'd still run the party effectively," he said. "I don't have to rely on one man to make this party run."