CASTLE ROCK, Colo.-
Republicans unanimously picked Dick Wadhams to be the new chairman for the state Republican Party on Saturday, hoping Wadhams can lead them out of the political wilderness after they lost several key races in two short years.
Wadhams had no opposition at the party’s central committee meeting and was chosen by acclamation.
Wadhams said his first order of business will be to find a candidate for the U.S. Senate to replace GOP Sen. Wayne Allard, who is retiring next year, leaving an open seat.
Republicans are trying to prevent another searing loss after two straight years of losses, including a U.S. Senate seat, two U.S. House seats, the governor’s office and control of the Legislature.
Wadhams said Democrats have had a string of issues since taking power, including a bill that angered the business community that would have made it easier to form a union.
“We’ve already seen that they can’t control their own excesses. It’s a target-rich environment,” Wadhams said.
Wadhams ran successful GOP campaigns in Colorado, Montana and South Dakota, but last year he managed the failed campaign of Virginia Sen. George Allen, a potential presidential contender who blew a comfortable lead in the polls and lost his re-election bid.
Wadhams managed the campaign for Allard in 1996 and 2002 and for Bill Owens in 1998, when Owens became the first Republican elected governor of the state in 24 years.
In 2000, he managed Montana Sen. Conrad Burns’ successful campaign and turned it into a victory, and in South Dakota, he was credited with engineering the defeat of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in 2004.
In Virginia, Allen was comfortably ahead in polls until August, when he referred to the son of Indian immigrants as “Macaca,” regarded by some as a racial slur. The incident, caught on videotape, became international news.
