Seat, Hupfer Speak On GOP Leadership At Lincoln Day Dinner
April 28, 2017 at 6:16 p.m.
By David [email protected]
They touted the GOP’s successes in the election, but warned that work had to be done to continue that achievement as they approach 2018 midterm elections.
Pete Seat, executive director of strategic communications and talent development and former deputy assistant press secretary to President George W. Bush, worked directly with press secretaries Tony Snow and Dana Perino. Perino is now on Fox News and Snow passed away in 2008 after a battle with cancer.
“Obviously, as you could imagine, I have a lot of great stories. I could bore you for hours with great White House stories and memories from my nearly four years working for President George W. Bush, but there’s one that is a hallmark and tell everywhere I go so forgive me if you’ve already heard this one,” Seat said.
The story goes back to October 2008 at the tail end of the Bush administration. As staffers left their jobs at the White House during his presidency, Bush would invite them to the Oval Office with their families for departure photos.
Seat invited his parents to come with him. Both were immigrants to this country, his dad from England when he was 4 and his mom from what was then Yugoslavia when she was 20. Seat is their only child.
“I invited mom and dad, immigrants, middle-class people from northwest Indiana, to go into the Oval Office and spend some time with our nation’s 43rd president,” he said.
They had their visit with Bush, and Seat’s mom told Bush she had to tell him something.
“You could imagine the feeling in my stomach at that moment. This literally could be anything in the world. What was she about to tell him? She said, ‘Sir, I have to thank you, because earlier this year ... you took my son, our only child, to Croatia with you. And he was able to meet three of my sisters and one of my nieces for the first time in his life. And it’s because you took him on that trip,’” Seat recalled.
He said his relatives traveled five hours from Serbia to Croatia to see him for two hours in a hotel lobby.
“It was a truly remarkable experience for me. The president looks at my dad and says, ‘Pops, where you from?’ Dad said, ‘I’m from England.’ He kind of pauses for effect, the president does, and says, ‘Think about that for a second, y’all. We’ve got two immigrants to this great country, and their only child works for the President of the United States. That’s pretty darn cool, ain’t it?’”
Seat’s mom started crying. Bush gives her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, but there’s a slight communication between the two and the kiss ended up on Seat’s mom’s lips.
“I witnessed my mother kiss the President of the United States on the lips in the Oval Office,” he said, drawing laughter from the crowd.
After Seat and his parents left the office and into the Rose Garden, his dad stopped and looked around. Seat told him they had to get going. His dad replied, “I’m just thinking. ... Wondering when I get to make out with Laura.”
Seat said he loves to share that story because it says a little about Bush.
He then mentioned Vice President Mike Pence, Indiana’s former governor and how former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats was chosen by Trump to serve as Director of National Intelligence
Hoosiers, he said, are serving in the White House and all across the federal government “working hard, doing amazing work they did here in Indiana, in Washington, to make this a better country to live in for all of us.”
Seat then introduced Kyle Hupfer, Indiana State Republican Party chairman.
Hupfer said he got connected to former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels when he was in Indianapolis, and eventually became Daniels’ campaign coordinator in Marion County.
“He was my political mentor, and also in a lot of ways a business mentor because he then asked me to come and run the Department of Natural Resources for him, which I did for two years, and was part of that first wave of folks who truly transformed state government,” Hupfer recalled.
He said Indiana has had it good for the last 12 years after Republicans took over the state from the Democrats. “But don’t forget we went into that with close to a $2 billion debt, we had schools having to borrow money from the state to make budgets, and we were at the highest level of state employment, the highest level of jobs in its history – at state government, not around the state, just in state government. It was the employment factory.”
It was Daniels’ transformational government that Pence and now Gov. Eric Holcomb are building upon, Hupfer said.
Along the way to becoming the Indiana GOP Party chair, he said he got to know Holcomb, who had laid the groundwork for Daniels to run for governor.
2016 was another transformative year for Indiana and the country, Hupfer said. It began with Gov. Pence asking Holcomb to step in as the lieutenant governor, replacing Becky Skillman. Holcomb was planning to run for the U.S. Senate. A few months after Holcomb took the post, Trump asked Pence to be his vice president.
“That set off a unique trigger of events in Indiana. And let me tell you, it made the races for state committee this year a lot more interesting,” Hupfer said, as the committee had to decide who was going to be the party’s nominee for governor. Holcomb eventually was chosen. Then the lieutenant governor had to be picked in a 72-hour window. Suzanne Crouch was chosen.
“Those two are doing, obviously, great things down in Indianapolis,”?Hupfer said.
On the 2016 election, he said, “We ended up having a landslide election. We retained every seat that we had in Congress, all seven seats in Congress. Picked up a United States senator. Obviously, we picked up two new congressman, you all got a new one in Congressman Banks; and southern Indiana got a new congressman in Trey Hollingsworth. We turned around, and as soon as the election was over, I was very pleased to be a part of the process to name a state auditor to replace now Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch.”
Hupfer said the party is starting to set up “an extremely strong” ticket for 2018 where three incumbents are likely to seek re-election for secretary of state, state auditor and state treasurer. All three are women.
“We constantly come under attack from our loyal opposition of saying that the Republican Party has a war on women. But that’s clearly not the case in the Indiana Republican Party because our women are leading across the board, and I see that continuing and just getting stronger and stronger,” he said.
He said the party’s making investments in data early on. Data is driving the elections at this point and time and is critical in winning elections.
“I will tell you that, as we start canvassing county by county, the number of folks who came out and put us over the top in Indiana because they were either a Trump supporter, or a Todd Young supporter, or a Gov. Holcomb supporter, who came out for the first time, a lot of them were driven by President Trump. We’ve got to capture those folks and engage them and get them back out because they made a significant difference. It was a landslide in Indiana we hadn’t seen in decades.”
They touted the GOP’s successes in the election, but warned that work had to be done to continue that achievement as they approach 2018 midterm elections.
Pete Seat, executive director of strategic communications and talent development and former deputy assistant press secretary to President George W. Bush, worked directly with press secretaries Tony Snow and Dana Perino. Perino is now on Fox News and Snow passed away in 2008 after a battle with cancer.
“Obviously, as you could imagine, I have a lot of great stories. I could bore you for hours with great White House stories and memories from my nearly four years working for President George W. Bush, but there’s one that is a hallmark and tell everywhere I go so forgive me if you’ve already heard this one,” Seat said.
The story goes back to October 2008 at the tail end of the Bush administration. As staffers left their jobs at the White House during his presidency, Bush would invite them to the Oval Office with their families for departure photos.
Seat invited his parents to come with him. Both were immigrants to this country, his dad from England when he was 4 and his mom from what was then Yugoslavia when she was 20. Seat is their only child.
“I invited mom and dad, immigrants, middle-class people from northwest Indiana, to go into the Oval Office and spend some time with our nation’s 43rd president,” he said.
They had their visit with Bush, and Seat’s mom told Bush she had to tell him something.
“You could imagine the feeling in my stomach at that moment. This literally could be anything in the world. What was she about to tell him? She said, ‘Sir, I have to thank you, because earlier this year ... you took my son, our only child, to Croatia with you. And he was able to meet three of my sisters and one of my nieces for the first time in his life. And it’s because you took him on that trip,’” Seat recalled.
He said his relatives traveled five hours from Serbia to Croatia to see him for two hours in a hotel lobby.
“It was a truly remarkable experience for me. The president looks at my dad and says, ‘Pops, where you from?’ Dad said, ‘I’m from England.’ He kind of pauses for effect, the president does, and says, ‘Think about that for a second, y’all. We’ve got two immigrants to this great country, and their only child works for the President of the United States. That’s pretty darn cool, ain’t it?’”
Seat’s mom started crying. Bush gives her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, but there’s a slight communication between the two and the kiss ended up on Seat’s mom’s lips.
“I witnessed my mother kiss the President of the United States on the lips in the Oval Office,” he said, drawing laughter from the crowd.
After Seat and his parents left the office and into the Rose Garden, his dad stopped and looked around. Seat told him they had to get going. His dad replied, “I’m just thinking. ... Wondering when I get to make out with Laura.”
Seat said he loves to share that story because it says a little about Bush.
He then mentioned Vice President Mike Pence, Indiana’s former governor and how former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats was chosen by Trump to serve as Director of National Intelligence
Hoosiers, he said, are serving in the White House and all across the federal government “working hard, doing amazing work they did here in Indiana, in Washington, to make this a better country to live in for all of us.”
Seat then introduced Kyle Hupfer, Indiana State Republican Party chairman.
Hupfer said he got connected to former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels when he was in Indianapolis, and eventually became Daniels’ campaign coordinator in Marion County.
“He was my political mentor, and also in a lot of ways a business mentor because he then asked me to come and run the Department of Natural Resources for him, which I did for two years, and was part of that first wave of folks who truly transformed state government,” Hupfer recalled.
He said Indiana has had it good for the last 12 years after Republicans took over the state from the Democrats. “But don’t forget we went into that with close to a $2 billion debt, we had schools having to borrow money from the state to make budgets, and we were at the highest level of state employment, the highest level of jobs in its history – at state government, not around the state, just in state government. It was the employment factory.”
It was Daniels’ transformational government that Pence and now Gov. Eric Holcomb are building upon, Hupfer said.
Along the way to becoming the Indiana GOP Party chair, he said he got to know Holcomb, who had laid the groundwork for Daniels to run for governor.
2016 was another transformative year for Indiana and the country, Hupfer said. It began with Gov. Pence asking Holcomb to step in as the lieutenant governor, replacing Becky Skillman. Holcomb was planning to run for the U.S. Senate. A few months after Holcomb took the post, Trump asked Pence to be his vice president.
“That set off a unique trigger of events in Indiana. And let me tell you, it made the races for state committee this year a lot more interesting,” Hupfer said, as the committee had to decide who was going to be the party’s nominee for governor. Holcomb eventually was chosen. Then the lieutenant governor had to be picked in a 72-hour window. Suzanne Crouch was chosen.
“Those two are doing, obviously, great things down in Indianapolis,”?Hupfer said.
On the 2016 election, he said, “We ended up having a landslide election. We retained every seat that we had in Congress, all seven seats in Congress. Picked up a United States senator. Obviously, we picked up two new congressman, you all got a new one in Congressman Banks; and southern Indiana got a new congressman in Trey Hollingsworth. We turned around, and as soon as the election was over, I was very pleased to be a part of the process to name a state auditor to replace now Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch.”
Hupfer said the party is starting to set up “an extremely strong” ticket for 2018 where three incumbents are likely to seek re-election for secretary of state, state auditor and state treasurer. All three are women.
“We constantly come under attack from our loyal opposition of saying that the Republican Party has a war on women. But that’s clearly not the case in the Indiana Republican Party because our women are leading across the board, and I see that continuing and just getting stronger and stronger,” he said.
He said the party’s making investments in data early on. Data is driving the elections at this point and time and is critical in winning elections.
“I will tell you that, as we start canvassing county by county, the number of folks who came out and put us over the top in Indiana because they were either a Trump supporter, or a Todd Young supporter, or a Gov. Holcomb supporter, who came out for the first time, a lot of them were driven by President Trump. We’ve got to capture those folks and engage them and get them back out because they made a significant difference. It was a landslide in Indiana we hadn’t seen in decades.”
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