Thank you for caring enough about our democratic process to contribute your time, money and talents to elective politics, including the Republican primary for Congress in Indiana’s Fifth District.  While many benefit from our political system, too few contribute to the process.

I trust that you share my interest in bringing new, dynamic leadership to the Fifth District, which should be represented by someone prepared to offer bold, new solutions – framed by conservative principles – to today’s critical issues.

We have much work to do in the next couple of years here in Indiana and in Washington.  This race should not become a distraction or drain of important time and resources.  Thus, I believe we should come together to put forward one challenger to the Republican incumbent next spring.

This primary can become a model of candidate selection and leadership development, where a candidate is judged on his or her history, substance, creativity, leadership skills, grassroots organization, public official endorsements, financial support, and electability.  This primary election cycle provides us with a perfect opportunity to do so and to generate trust and appreciation among voters who are tired of cynical politics.

To achieve this goal, I propose a multi-pronged approach:

• Conduct several substantive policy forums this fall where the announced challengers gather to debate the issues.

• By October 15th, convene the challengers to begin developing a broad cross-section of criteria that will be used to measure candidate viability in the May primary.

• By December 1st, finalize the criteria and ask all candidates to publicly declare their adherence to the process.

• Review credible, third-party polling data to determine who likely GOP primary voters believe is best suited to represent them

• Between January 15th and February 1st, convene a meeting of the challengers and their top supporters for purposes of reviewing the previously agreed upon criteria and reaching consensus on the top performing candidate.

Over the next six months, I encourage you to continue to support the candidate you believe is best suited to represent the District and encourage him to participate in this process.  You can help us make this approach work by making clear that you will rely on this process to determine which candidate you will support after February 1, 2010.

If the opinion leaders, donors, party activists and others who are most critical to the ultimate success of such a campaign embrace this goal and this approach, we can generate civil discourse, a model process, a great candidate, and a clear choice for the electorate in May.  I hope you will be a voice for turning this competitive situation into a very positive and decisive outcome.  I look forward to placing my background, ideas, vision and skills to this test.

Sincerely,

Brose A. McVey

Candidate to represent Indiana’s Fifth Congressional District

June 9, 2009