Republican chairman blasts conservative activist

The internal fight for the direction of the Ohio Republican Party got uglier as chairman Bob Bennett blasted the leading critic of Deputy Chairman Kevin DeWine in an email to party leaders across the state.

Bennett told members of the state central committee and county party chairmen in an email Monday that Lori Viars is engaging in “divisive and destructive behavior” after she has emailed supporters and asked them to share their opinion of DeWine with county party leaders and committee members.

Viars is the executive director of Ohio's Family First political action committee. She and other conservative activists, have criticized DeWine for saying Republicans need to exchange a socially-conservative message for a fiscally-conservative message in a press conference following the election.

“Unfortunately, these comments were presented in news reports without context, and the ringleader of one particular group saw an opportunity to drive a wedge,” Bennett wrote of Viars indirectly. “I should add that this person never bothered to contact Kevin, myself, or any member of the staff before firing off her email campaign.”

Viars said she’s disappointed that Bennett would target her and by extension the party’s grassroots.

“I think it’s sad that when the grassroots base of our party have an opinion on whether or not we should stand by the issues in our platform, we’re called divisive and destructive,” she said.

Bennett said DeWine’s comments are being “greatly twisted out of context by people looking to generate a phony controversy” and that he said nothing more than the party needs to restore its credibility on fiscal issues.

Finally, Bennett personally vouched for DeWine’s ascension to chairman.

“He has spent countless hours and driven thousands of miles getting to know our grassroots leaders, contributors, and volunteers,” he wrote. “I can say first-hand that leading a major battleground state political party is never easy, but Kevin has the skills and the temperament to be an outstanding chair.  More importantly, he has the overwhelming confidence and support of our party leadership – especially after these misguided attacks.”

Viars said DeWine has not led the party to endorse conservative candidates in Republican primaries over more liberal or moderate candidates, after being asked by conservative activists to do so.

“He would say all the right things then completely dismiss us, and not do anything we asked or talked about,” she said. “We had concerns about him previously but this kind of upped it a notch.”

Despite her sending emails urging central committee members to tell the party what they think of DeWine in light of his controversial comments, Viars said there’s no active movement to unseat him.

“Our goal is not to find somebody to challenge Kevin. Our goal is to keep our party standing up for the issues that made us strong in the years that made us strong,” she said.

The co-founder of the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes asked central committee members in an email sent last Friday to vote against DeWine for chairman.

No one has publically come forth to challenge DeWine in the chairmanship election next month.

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