Monday, July 28, 2014

From Alex, a pledge to tutor Bryan Williams

 Summit County Republicans must be feeling  a lot more secure about the vitality of their party now that their chairman, Alex Arshinkoff, has assured them that he will personally tutor  the new kid on the block who will be presiding over the party's  executive committee.

Well, not exactly a new kid is Bryan Williams,  who seems to have never   been  more than a phone call away from one political job after another.  But it sure sounded that way when Arshinkoff, no more than 12 years Williams' senior, told the Beacon Journal he fully expected his protege to  "do fine" in the new committee position, to which he was elected last week.  Unanimously, of  course.

"I'll work with Bryan for four to six years," Arshinkoff breezily told the paper.  "Let him learn the ropes.  He'll be good chairman."  (Four to six years? He's not going to med school,  folks. )

The time frame for Williams' OJT  was fertile in telling us something about Arshinkoff's own future as the party chair, which he has tenaciously held for 36 years while seeming   like so many more. Six more years with the title would place him at age 65, a time to retire.  Maybe.

Meantime, Williams, with the boss's powerful blessing, is a fellow who can't lose these days. You may recall he caused quite a stir when he resigned from the State Board of Education after the ABJ revealed in December 2013  a conflict of interest in which he was also wearing the lobbyist's hat of a client group that,  among other things,  ran a vocational charter school.  He also sits on the Summit County Board of Elections.  Republicans tell me that he  is the heir-apparent to the party's chairmanship when Alex retires in the next millennium.

Plenty of time for Williams to learn the ropes, don't you think?

By the way, what exactly do executive committee chairmen do?








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