The challenges facing the next head of the Michigan Republican Party appear daunting.

That person must stem the tide of Democratic support in the state following President Barack Obama’s overwhelming victory among Michigan voters in November. And that person must also do so fast enough to give the GOP a chance to take back the state’s governorship in 2010.

But the University alum now in position to take the reins of the Michigan GOP says he’s up to challenge.

Ambassador Ronald Weiser, who spent his undergraduate years at the University before graduating with honors from the Business School, approaches the job with the precision and straightforwardness of an entrepreneur.

“It’s like a business that is being run really well but isn’t making money — you have to change it,” Weiser said in a phone interview last night. “Our profit is wins, and we haven’t had many lately.

“So, we’re going to have to change what we’ve been saying and what we’ve been doing,” he said.

Weiser all but locked up the chairmanship when former State Rep. Jack Hoogendyk (R–Texas Twp.) announced earlier this week that he was dropping his bid for the position. Michigan Republicans will officially choose a new chairman when they hold their state convention in Lansing from Feb. 20 to Feb. 21.

In an exclusive phone interview last night, Hoogendyk said he felt it was the right time to leave the race.

“Looking at the landscape of the whole picture, I just felt that it was the right thing for me to do, for myself, for my family and for the party,” he said.

Hoogendyk said Weiser must focus on the issues that are the “hallmarks of the Republican Party” — limiting the size of government and reining in runaway spending — if he hopes to revitalize the Republican base in the state.

Weiser agrees, saying that when Obama was rallying Democratic support in the state before the election, he didn’t talk much about the Michigan’s faltering economy, which has been overseen by a Democratic governor since 2003.

“You can blame George Bush,” Weiser said. “But why is Michigan worse than the other states? Perhaps it's because we haven’t had the right leadership, the right ideas, the right directions and the right strategies to turn the state around.”

For that very reason, Weiser said he expects the Republicans to mount a successful bid to reclaim the governorship in 2010.

“This is about Michigan,” he said. “Elections coming up in 2010 are not about what’s going on in Washington, it’s about what’s going on in Lansing.”

Weiser’s candidacy for chair of the Michigan GOP follows a life of ventures in both public service and the private sector.

In 1968 he founded Ann Arbor-based McKinley Inc. — a real estate investment company that now manages more than $2.2 billion in properties and other assets.

Under his leadership, the company grew to more than 700 employees nationwide. Weiser then retired as CEO and Chairman in 2001 to become the U.S. Ambassador to Slovakia for three and a half years.

As an ambassador, Weiser was involved with Slovakia’s transition from an authoritarian government into a democratic country, and the experience, he said, would aid him greatly as GOP chair.

“I do know how to manage change,” he said, referring to Slovakia’s transformation under his watch. “And that’s one of the things that I think is going to be important for our party and the state.”

Weiser has been a big donor of both money and energy to Republican causes at the state and national levels. He got started in politics working for former Republican Gov. John Engler in his first bid for the governorship. In the 2008 presidential campaign, he served as a national co-chairman for GOP presidential candidate John McCain.

Weiser and his wife, Eileen, who is also a University graduate, have been major donors to their alma mater.