Bruce Parks' Purity Test: The Art of Shooting Your Party in Both Feet

When kicking out members becomes easier than building a bench.

Let's be perfectly clear: We've never been members of the Ed Lawson Fan Club. We haven't printed t-shirts, we don't have a secret handshake, and we certainly don't have his poster taped to our bedroom wall. But even a broken clock is right twice a day, and on this particular issue, the time reads "Bruce Parks is dead wrong o'clock."

The Washoe County Republican Party Chair's decision to excommunicate Lawson from the GOP represents everything wrong with Parks' leadership—a masterclass in how to shrink your political party while simultaneously wondering why you can't win elections.

Washoe County Republican Party Chair Bruce Parks supported Kathleen Taylor, because she was a registered Republican. Parks allows Taylor to remain a Republican in good standing but threw Ed Lawson out.

The irony is thicker than Parks' apparent skull: This is the same Bruce Parks who got absolutely played by Councilmember Kathleen Taylor—a Republican in voter registration only, who takes her marching orders directly from Mayor Hillary Schieve and Councilmember Devon Reese with the reliability of a well-trained show pony. Parks and his central committee not only embraced Taylor but actively promoted her candidacy during early voting, only backing away after the damage was done.

Yet somehow Lawson is the one deemed insufficiently Republican? Perhaps Parks should invest in a mirror before purchasing any more excommunication stamps. Who will Parks choose to support for Sparks Mayor. He threw Lawson out of the party but let us all remember he threw Commissioner Clara Andriola out of the party in 2024, and Councilmember Charlene Bybee, who is rumored to be running against Lawson for Sparks Mayor, was a total cheerleader for Andriola. So out of two Republicans running for Sparks Mayor who will the party support? Neither?

Bruce Parks supported candidate Michael Ginsburg went down in flames … Angie Taylor captured the Senate 15 seat.

The mathematical equation is simple: Under Parks' stewardship, the local GOP fielded a 2024 candidate slate so anemic it could have benefited from iron supplements. Rather than addressing this critical failure of recruitment and development, Parks has chosen the more straightforward path of reducing party membership one "impure" Republican at a time.

Bruce Parks found and supported Teri Kolesnick ‘The Angry Grandmother’ who, naturally, lost to Erica Roth State Assembly 24.

It's a bold strategy. Let's see if it pays off for him.

Double error by Bruce Parks. Myer ran against Mariluz Garcia for Washoe County Commissioner Distrcit 3 in 2022, lost, and then Parks had her run for Reno City Council Ward 3 and she was defeated by large number by Miguel Martinez.

To be fair, party building is hard work. It requires coalition-building, volunteer recruitment, candidate development, and fundraising. Bullying people who don't pass your purity test? That's comparatively easy—the political equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel while the real trophy catches swim freely in the lake.

When your party can't field competitive candidates for local offices, the problem isn't the Ed Lawsons of the world—it's leadership that prioritizes ideological enforcement over electoral victory. It's leadership that would rather rule over an ever-shrinking kingdom than share influence in a growing one.

The greatest trick Parks ever pulled was convincing Republican voters that their electoral failures were due to insufficient purity rather than insufficient leadership.

So here's a radical proposal: Instead of kicking Ed Lawson out of the Republican Party, perhaps the party should consider kicking Bruce Parks out of the chairman's seat. After all, in the private sector, delivering Parks' track record of defeat would result in a very different kind of exit.

Sometimes the person most in need of excommunication is the one signing the excommunication orders. But that would require self-reflection, which appears to be in shorter supply at the Washoe County Republican Central Committee than winning candidates.