Is Dan Logsdon resigning?

If the rumors that Dan Logsdon is resigning as the State Party Chairman are true, the party needs to find someone that is willing to step up their A game so that we don't lose the statewide races. We need to find someone that will rile up the base a la Howard Dean.

It's a ighter year given that all we have are statewide races to worry about but it's also a worrysome year in that there is the 50% chance that David Williams leads the Republican gubernatorial ticket not because of his merits but because of his running mate's college history.

We need someone with the charisma of Jerry Lundergan. I admit that I was not his biggest fan during the beginning of his chairmanship but I warmed up to his leadership during his term. What he was able to do was to bring in all these leaders at individual party dinners in each district. I remember volunteering for the October 2005 dinner in which they brought in then-Senator Joe Biden. Biden missed his flight so he stayed late while talking with the Young Democrats that had volunteered that night.

There was the Family Day event, in which former Senator Max Cleland was brought in. I don't know if they've repeated that event.

Bob offers his suggestions:

There needs to be someone who is politically tied in to the Democratic party loyalists across Kentucky, and who has decades of experience. Like Logsdon, this person MUST work full-time at the position. For 2011, it will actually be a slightly lighter year in many ways. While the entire statewide office slate of races is up, there will be no legislative races.

What else is needed? Something that may be beyond the ability of any chair to provide: the Democratic leadership in the executive branch, the house and the senate need to be looking out for everyone’s interests, and not just the interests of one of those areas. The first great example of that will come with the ten-year redistricting. Last time around, one of the areas of leadership essentially said of redistricting that as long as that area got what it wanted, there was little concern for other changes in the redistricting. As a result, the Republican advantage in the senate that had been cobbled together with discontented eastern Kentucky Democratic senators was stretched further with custom-made districts. Ten years later, those districts that were meant to secure the House have only forestalled a day of horrible reckoning that began last week. Discharge of bills will now be an available maneuver in the House.[...]

The Democratic Party needs to confer and work together, not just to secure the governorship next year, but to wake up and recognize that one chamber of the legislature and the executive branch cannot be played against each other, and that working together can paint the Republican senate in its true obstructionist colors, and that working together can result in the coordinated plan beating out the senate leadership.