Lia Roberts, I can safely report, is not overly impressed with herself. If you ask the Nevada Republican Party about her they will give you a contact number. She's still personally picking up that number. John Kerry style politicians have staff for that. She doesn't, even though she could afford it. She'll be in Romania through April 4 so things might change as her run gets more organized but its nice to see a well financed candidacy for such an important post where the candidate isn't in a bubble surrounded by a nearly impenetrable barrier of staffers.
As of March 1st she's no longer the head of Nevada Republicans though no doubt President Bush will still take her calls. Resigning a party post is normal and expected under the circumstances. Still the Nevada Republicans are getting 5-10 calls a day from press and romanian-americans asking for information about her run. As time goes on, I expect that number to increase.
The fundamental problem for romanian centrists and sane right wingers is that until Mrs. Roberts' candidacy, they had no obvious practical place to turn to for the 2004 presidential election. The left will likely be uniting around the current prime minister, Adrian Nastase while the xenophobic right will rally to Corneliu Vadim Tudor (or as his detractors like to call him VC Tudor). That left a broad swathe of the romanian electorate up for grabs, still reeling after the monumental stupidity the center right engaged in in 1996 by creating an electoral "Contract with Romania", promising to resign if they didn't fulfill the contract terms, and then, to a man, going back on their word.
Lia Roberts is not implicated in that long ago mess. She was busy heading up the Nevada Federation of Republican Women at the time. The question is whether she will be able to cobble together a coalition sufficient to get her into the 2nd voting round where broad style coalitions quickly form up for the last push to the Presidency.
Posted by TMLutas at March 9, 2004 11:27 AM