Pack up the Crate

Published Nov 14 2006, 02:40 PM by Adam Reilly

[by David S. Bernstein]

To the surprise of nobody, Darrell Crate will not seek another term as chairman of the Massachusetts GOP when his term ends in January. Crate deserves credit for the fiscal solvency of the party, no mean feat given the meager return it offers for the prospective contributor's dollar.

Crate's four-year tenure will be remembered as the time when the Republican Party went from near-irrelevance to total irrelevance in the state, and he is not blameless in that. Nor is he the primary reason for it.

A better way to judge him in the long term, however, might be the loyalty of the donors he brought in -- primarily fellow investors and financial managers. If they continue to support the state GOP committee, with Mitt Romney gone and Kerry Healey humiliated, they will provide the financial platform for a rebuilding period. If they don't, the next chair will have his or her hands full just trying to avoid bankruptcy.