Olmsted County GOP unveils new leadership, strategy

(ABC 6 News) – Following a midterm election that saw Olmsted County Republicans lose a state senate seat, and the DFL take control of the state house, senate, and the governor’s office, the Olmsted County Republican Party has a new strategy for taking back control.

Plans include an entirely new executive committee, and a new strategy to energize voters, called Project Victory. New Chair and local business owner Jim Kachmarzinski said in a rally this week that they’ve been working for the past year on this new plan, but the recent overhaul of the party largely comes from underperformance in the midterms.

“People thought that it was going to be kind of an automatic win, they thought the red wave was going to come in, and I think that some people just got kind of ‘lacksidasical’ and took their eye off the ball a little bit,” Kachmarzinski said. “There was no reason that we should’ve lost that senate seat. I mean, that shouldn’t have happened.”

He says the lack of a red wave wasn’t entirely the previous executive committee’s fault, but Vice Chair Ken Navitsky says the party needed an evolution.

“We nominated an entire new board so that there is no more excuses. And now we have a chance to put up, or shut up. That’s what we are,” Navitsky said to a crowd of a couple dozen.

Kachmarzinski conceded that the DFL worked harder to reach out to young voters in 2022.

“They [voters] don’t have to think that they’re going to be locked into some kind of dystopian, oppressive, restrictive…” Kachmarzinski said of his party.

The new plan is made up of seven “teams,” or subcommittees, that anyone in the party can sign up to help. They have a candidate team to recruit and train candidates, a growth team for outreach and education, and a finance team to tackle fundraisers.

The full plan can be found here, as well as a complete list of new leadership.