College GOP elects Arkansan for national co-chair

The lieutenant governor gave Skot Covert an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Inside the famous Feltner’s Whatta-Burger in Russelville on a spring day in 2010, then-candidate Mark Darr sat down with a 19-year-old Covert to ask his help launching a political campaign. Twice already the two had met, and twice the Arkansas Tech student had politely declined.

“This guy was really getting on my nerves,” Covert, now 23,said.

But on this third occasion, Darr’s persuasion and burger-joint bribe - a vanilla milkshake - proved too convincing. And looking back, Covert said Tuesday, he’s sure glad he took the offer.

The Ozark native was elected national co-chair of the College Republican National Committee last month, during the organization’s convention in Washington, D.C. The former chairman of the Arkansas Federation of College Republicans and campaign aide for Darr will tour college campuses across the country in his new role, representing the 300,000-member organization at speaking engagements and political rallies nationwide for the next two years. Covert said he’s settling into the role at a critical time for young Republicans.

“If the voting age were30-and-up, we would be saying President [Mitt] Romney today instead of President [Barack] Obama,” the newly elected co-chair said in a phone interview. “We are committed to winning back the youth vote in this midterm election.” Covert thanked his political mentors for the support they’ve provided since his high school days, when he served as a volunteer on gubernatorial candidate Asa Hutchinson’s 2006 campaign. He said Darr and state Rep. Bill Gossage, whose campaign he managed in 2012, deserved much of the credit for his successes. He remembered missing so much school campaigning for Hutchinson in 2006 that he bordered on truancy, forcing Gossage, a longtime employee of Ozark Schools, to pull some strings so the 16-yearold could sit on stage with President George W. Bush at an election rally in Bentonville without being punished for missing more school.

“Bill worked it out where I was able to go,” Covert recalled. “Being able to sit on the stage with the first Republican president I knew - that’s your reward and your payoff for all that hard work.”

Darr got to know Covert in the often-cramped quarters of a black Chevy pickup in 2010, when the two set out on the open road for a six-hour, cross-state journey from Springdale to Jonesboro - at 4 a.m. The first thing the candidate noticed: Covert’s erratic driving.

“It wasn’t too far into the trip to where I was like ‘good God,’” Darr said over the phone Tuesday. “He’s basically no good at driving. At the end of the day, on the way back, I basically said ‘Pull over; I’m driving.’”

When not behind the wheel, Covert contributed tireless dedication to the cause, pounding hundreds of campaign signs into the ground, enlisting dozens of volunteers, making phone calls at all hours, Darr said.

“I would honestly say that I wouldn’t be lieutenant governor today if it wasn’t for Skot,” he said.

Gossage said Covert’s election was an example of triumph through adversity. The former College Republican National Committee regional vice-chairman, who will pursue a master’s degree in meteorology at Penn State University this fall, grew up with no father and a single mother. Covert looked to the politicians and campaign workers, Gossage said, as mentors - father-figures. And his positive attitude was inspiring.

“He had always told me, ‘you’re going to run one of these days and I’m going to help run your campaign and we’re going to get you elected,’” Gossage said.

Covert’s term as chairman of the Arkansas Federation of College Republicans didn’t come without controversy. A citizen complaint was filed against him in March alleging the federation failed to register as a political action committee, despite receiving financial contributions substantial enough that they required the organization to register with the state. The Arkansas Ethics Commission dismissed the complaint in June.

“I wasn’t worried about it,” Covert said of the complaint, though it came just months before the co-chair election.

Covert said on Tuesday he’d apply the lessons he learned in Arkansas to his new position. The College Republican National Committee national chair, Alex Smith, said Covert would be responsible for “bridging the communications gap” between Republicans and young voters.

Recalling his campaign work in Ozark and his cross state journey with the lieutenant governor, Covert said achieving the goal boiled down to a strategy learned in his home state.

“Living in Arkansas, being the co-chair from Arkansas, I understand the needs of Arkansas in Republican politics in the campaigns that will be waged in the next year in a half,” he said. “If there’s one thing Arkansas taught me - maybe it’s the southern hospitality - it’s that people matter.”