New Hampshire Republican Party Chair Jack Kimball, who won his post earlier this year with the help of Tea Party activists, has dug in against calls from state GOP leaders for him to resign as a result of problems with the party organization.
“I won’t step down. I will go to that meeting and they will look me in the eye and they will vote,” Kimball declared at a press conference Thursday, the New Hampshire Union Leader reports. In the face of a possible removal, Kimball also urged the board to “vote conscience instead of politics…I plead with them not to pick this fight.”
The state GOP has had fundraising and personnel problems this year, since Kimball took over, and has also lost a number of special elections for the state legislature. In response, numerous state GOP leaders, including freshman Sen. Kelly Ayotte, have called upon Kimball to resign.
Kimball reiterated his accusation that state House Speaker William O’Brien approached him last Friday, to convey a message from the Republican Governors Association that they would donate $100,000 to the state party — but only if he resigned.
“I won’t stand for that kind of deal-making – neither will the voters – and they deserve to know the truth,” Kimball said. And while some of his Tea Party movement supporters have alleged that the offer or withholding of funds in this peculiar alleged arrangement amounted to bribery of a party official under state law, Kimball said he would not call for any investigation: “As far as I’m concerned, it speaks for itself.”
Kimball also presented himself as being the bridge between the Tea Party movement and the GOP establishment. “I represent a movement – a political movement – much larger than myself,” Kimball said, also adding: “If I am voted out it is going to cause a fissure in this party that is going to open a wound that isn’t going to heal real soon. This is the worst possible thing to happen at the worst possible time with the first in the nation primary coming up.”
Get the day’s best political analysis, news and reporting from the TPM team delivered to your inbox every day with DayBreaker. Sign up here, it takes just a few seconds.
