Waukee, Iowa
KEN MEHLMAN WAS IN HEAVEN. And heaven for the Republican national chairman was Dallas County outside Des Moines. Mostly an exurb, it lies miles from downtown Des Moines and is dotted with new homes and housing developments still under construction. Locals brag it's the 10th-fastest growing county in America. It's also Bush country. President Bush won the county in 2000 but lost Iowa. But in 2004, he more than doubled his margin of victory in Dallas County and won Iowa.
Mehlman, naturally, emphasizes fast-growing exurbs. "This is where you find the new conservatives and the new Republicans," Mehlman says. After taking over the Republican National Committee in January, he delivered Lincoln Day dinner speeches in several exurbs: Douglas County outside Denver, Lee County in southwest Florida, Pottawatamie County in Iowa across the Missouri River from Omaha. And last week Mehlman came to Waukee, a boomtown in Dallas County, for a party fundraiser. He was greeted like a rock star.
He isn't one. Mehlman, 38, is neither flamboyant nor brash. He wears bland suits. He is anything but excitable. And he is unusually task-oriented. He travels constantly, and his trips are not junkets. In Iowa, before getting to Dallas County, he met separately with social conservatives interested chiefly in the president's judicial nominations, Republican legislators, and with state party officials. He did two TV interviews and two radio interviews. And he chatted with two Des Moines political reporters, both of whom he knows from past Bush campaigns in Iowa.
Besides winning elections, Mehlman has
two overriding goals and a pet project. One goal is to transform the Republican party into a powerful grassroots force for enacting the president's agenda in Washington. The party already has an email network of 15 million people and a list of 1.5 million volunteers. A second goal is related: Tie the national party more closely to Republicans in the states. And he is waging a personal crusade to recruit more blacks and Hispanics to run for office as Republicans. In Iowa, he spent time on all three missions.
As Republican chairman, Mehlman has emerged as a major public figure. He stepped forward last week, for instance, as the party's leading defender of White House official Karl Rove, accused by Democrats of leaking classified information. Of course, Rove is more than a Republican ally and a friend to Mehlman. Since they met in 1997, Rove has been Mehlman's patron, aiding his rise from the Bush campaign's Midwest coordinator in the 2000 primaries, to national field director in the general election, to White House political director in Bush's first term, to 2004 campaign manager, and finally to RNC head.
Conservatives who worry Mehlman isn't one of them need not be concerned. Mehlman grew up outside Baltimore. His father was a supporter of Ronald Reagan and "Reagan is how I became involved in politics," he says. He went to Franklin and Marshall College and Harvard Law School, where he joined the Federalist Society. He worked in private law practice until joining the staff of Republican representative Lamar Smith of Texas in 1994. He became chief of staff to another Texas House member, Kay Granger, in 1997. Rove was her political consultant and thus the Rove-Mehlman alliance began. "I'm a Texan by employment," Mehlman says.
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