THE 165 members of the Republican National Committee meeting in Washington, D.C., last week knew what they wanted in an RNC chairman: they wanted Haley Barbour. RNC members knew how much Barbour had done to build the party. They knew too that, to an unprecedented extent, he had been a serious player on the policy side, regularly brought into strategy discussions between Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole. But Barbour had made up his mind to step down, and so committee members had to settle for looking for a successor.
Eight contenders were eager to succeed Barbour. The most prominent candidate, former New Hampshire Governor Steve Merrill, was not a member of the committee, and so he lacked the personal contacts his opponents had. Also, he had friends in all the wrong places. His advisors were Dole campaign staffers, and even some Bush retreads. Republican governors lobbied their states on his behalf, but a number of committee members feared that a Merrill chairmanship would be “a full-employment program for the Dole campaign”-and that he would give Republican governors too much clout at the RNC.
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