The man who headed the Missouri Republican Party for the past four years is pleased with the party’s performance during his time at the helm. But Doug Russell concedes there were some ups and downs.
Russell points out Republicans lost a U.S. Senate seat in 2006 when Democrat Claire McCaskill defeated incumbent Jim Talent, but in the 2008 elections Republican presidential candidate John McCain won the state in a close election over now-President Barack Obama. Republicans also picked up three seats in the State Senate, making Missouri the only state in the country in which the GOP made legislative gains.
Russell, a businessman from Lebanon, says he has confidence in new Chairman David Cole who now heads the party into an important 2010 election in which outgoing Senator Kit Bond’s U.S. Senate seat is up for grabs.