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Blair GOP retains Foreman despite Kaneshiki challenge

Incumbent Blair County Republican Committee Chairman Jim Foreman on Thursday retained his seat against a challenge by former Chairwoman Lois Kaneshiki.

Foreman won 71 to 48, according to Kaneshiki.

Foreman ran on being “reasonable and responsible” — a collaborator who seeks to unify, the re-elected chairman said on Friday.

“Not to say that anyone else isn’t” reasonable and responsible, Foreman added.

Foreman has served one two-year term, running and winning in 2018 against Michael Haire, after qualifying to run in the primary that year by winning a committee seat in his Blair Township precinct.

Winning that committee election, coupled with the other committee position being won that year by Mike Routch, meant that Kaneshiki, who lives in the same precinct and who finished third in the committee voting, was unable to run to retain her county chairmanship in 2018.

In this year’s primary, Foreman was again elected to a committee position, while Routch and Kaneshiki tied — with Kaneshiki getting the seat based on winning a drawing of lots.

Kaneshiki “campaigned (for the chairmanship) diligently” and had “good points,” Foreman said of Thursday’s contest.

Those points included not having a job to distract her from committee work, coupled with energy and willingness to make calls and recruit volunteers, Foreman said.

His answer to her argument is a willingness to delegate — to work other committee officers to get things done, he said.

Kaneshiki ran to restore “the political process to the people, the way it was set up and was meant to be,” the former chairwoman said Friday, lamenting that her initial two years in the post didn’t give her enough time to accomplish that.

Such reform work is necessary to bring the party back to the way it was before laws in the 1960s make political patronage jobs illegal, she said.

Before that, committee people routinely kept their neighbors informed about electoral considerations, she said.

The biggest current problem is that the dominant sources of information on politics are the media and political campaigns, according to Kaneshiki.

No longer are people able to rely on committee members in their home precincts to provide “honest and authentic information” about upcoming elections, she said.

Committee members should be “front men” in their precincts “not just on election day, but throughout the entire election cycle,” Kaneshiki said. “Their neighbors need and want information, and they’re not getting it.”

That was evident during the recent primary on at least two counts: a dearth of election officials for staffing all the potential polling places and the befuddlement of voters who didn’t realize that many polling places had been consolidated, at least partly to adjust for the election worker shortage, Kaneshiki said.

“The culture has evaporated,” she said of the current state of local party politics. “No one has come up with a vision for a new culture.”

Indicative of that evaporation: “half the people in that room last night were brand new,” and thus lacked context for understanding the significance of the chairmanship election, she said.

Despite the loss of the election, she plans to continue to work toward reforming the Republican culture in Blair County, and hopes that it eventually could be a model for other counties, she said.

Better “to invest some time in the political process than for people to come to blows and throw bricks through storefronts,” she said.

One of the attendees Thursday said there were “two excellent candidates,” Foreman said.

It’s good to have a choice, he said.

“There’s nothing more fundamental” than party committee elections, Foreman added. “It’s ground zero for the American political system.”

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.

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