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Matt Rexroad: GOP Got Out-Hustled, Not Cheated

GOP Consultant and Supervisor Says Pro-Publica Story “Something about Nothing.”

by Brian Leubitz

Robert challenged the ProPublica story very effectively, but today we here from an involved Republican consultant (and Yolo Cty Supervisor) that there really was no there there.

Matt Rexroad has been involved at many levels in the GOP establishment. He writes prolifically online as well. His work has appeared on FlashReport many times, but he’s a GOP consultant as a day job.  In his latest bit of writing, he called out the ProPublica for the snow job that it was.

When you start the process telling people not to be involved and then end the process complaining that others were too involved, you have created your own emergency. In the end, the ProPublica story was something about nothing.

Did Paul Mitchell and the Democrats win in redistricting? Maybe, but it was not because of some corrupt process. It was because they showed up and engaged with good data when the issues were presented to the commission. Meanwhile, the only active Republican engagement with the commission was actually from the business community with little or no involvement from either the party or the legislative caucuses.  

As Republicans, if we did get beat at redistricting, we should blame ourselves for being outworked by people that engaged the process while our party stood by waiting for things to happen. (Capitol Weekly)

As Robert has said many times, and I have commented in the same vein on Twitter, there really wasn’t anything here.  Did ProPublica expect both parties to simply stand down? Democrats organized. Republicans well, they did something, but as Rexroad says, if “you haven’t used an astroturf organization, you aren’t a professional.” Both sides knew the game coming into the process.  Democrats did a better job organizing.

Olga Piere and Jeff Larson wrote a splendid hit piece, but I suspect that rather than exposing the Commission for any sort of scheme, other than mere good government hopefulness, the only targets that they really hit were their own careers.