Bass to Main Street

The 2006 midterm election decimated the ranks of centrist Republicans in Congress. Now one of the casualties, Charlie Bass of New Hampshire, is leading an effort to rebuild the GOP’s moderate contingent.

Bass is new chief executive for the Republican Main Street Partnership and president of the group’s board of directors. The partnership is dedicated to supporting a “fiscally conservative, inclusive ‘governing majority,’” according to its website.

Current executive director Sarah Chamberlain Resnick will become the finance director for the group.

The midterms, which gave Democrats the majority in both the House and Senate, were particularly brutal for New England Republicans, who tend to be more centrist than GOP members from other parts of the country. Only Connecticut’s Christopher Shays won reelection. Bass lost to Democrat Paul Hodes.

“The beginning of the 110th Congress and the November midterm election results should serve to renew our faith and our efforts in restoring fiscal responsibility and limited government as true hallmarks of the Republican Party,” Bass said in a statement.