State GOP leadership post goes to Vero Beach activist

The new chairman says her goals are to strengthen the party at the local level and re-elect the president.

Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 26, 2003

ORLANDO -- A longtime activist from Indian River County on Saturday defeated three other candidates, including Pinellas County's GOP chairman, to become the next leader of the Florida Republican Party.

Carole Jean Jordan, 58, of Vero Beach, defeated state party vice chairman Jim Stelling by a vote of 111-92 in a runoff election for the two-year term. She becomes the second woman to lead the party.

Pinellas County Republican chairman Paul Bedinghaus was eliminated early Saturday, along with Paul Senft of Polk County, in the first of two rounds of voting.

"I promise to spend the next two years of my life in your counties," Jordan told more than 200 Republicans. "We're going to re-elect President George Bush and we're going to show once and for all that we do know how to count and we do know how to vote."

Bedinghaus, who decided a couple of weeks after the November election to seek the state chairmanship, said he was disappointed he did not win but optimistic about the party's new leadership.

"That's the great thing about this campaign for chairman is that any one of the four of us would have done an excellent job, and each of us are from the grass roots organization in the party," Bedinghaus said soon after arriving home Saturday afternoon. "We've all labored in the party a long time and are all known by the members of the party."

The 244-member executive board met to choose a new chairman to replace Al Cardenas, who oversaw the close 2000 presidential election victory and the 2002 Republican landslide in Florida during his four years in office.

Bedinghaus, 38, said he was told by some executive board members that his age might have worked against him in the voting.

He is about 20 years younger than the other three candidates.

"One thing that had been mentioned is that people thought, since I was the younger one in the group, that I could afford to wait a while," Bedinghaus said.

Gov. Jeb Bush, who didn't attend the meeting, refused to endorse a candidate, contributing to the wide-open nature of the race.

U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-West Palm Beach, noted that "nobody is going to be hired without (Bush's) acquiescence."

Jordan, a national committeewoman to the Republican National Committee and longtime member of the Republican Party of Florida's executive committee, cited her goals as strengthening the party at the local level and making sure a Republican wins a U.S. Senate seat.

Democrats picked new leader Scott Maddox earlier this month under darker circumstances, having been roundly defeated in the 2002 elections.

"Ours was a friendly campaign, and it was unlike the other party, not much rancor in our leadership change," Bedinghaus said.

Other state Republican officials elected Saturday were J. Allison DeFoor of Wakulla County as vice chairman; Stevie Landon of Columbia County as secretary; Donna Solze of Bradford County as assistant secretary; Joel Pate of Washington County as treasurer; and A.J. Matthews of Hillsborough County as assistant treasurer.

-- Times staff writer Amy Wimmer contributed to this report.

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