Rhode Island Republican Party Chairman Joe Powers on Sunday announcing his resignation from his post effective January 15th because he has a day job which prevents him from devoting himself to running a major political party in one of the 50 states in the union, the Rhode Island Current reports.

“The role of Chairman demands constant focus and daily engagement, especially moving into an election year, neither of which Chairman Powers can provide at this time,” said the party in a press release while Powers was in Tampa to meet with a client for his consulting business. Powers had a rough time winning reelection to a second two-year term last year, which was actually the first contested party leadership race in 30 years, yet he’s gotta pay the bills with his day job.

Who the hell knows how many of the state Republican or Democratic party chairs are actually paid positions. Texas GOP’s chairmanship is a $150,000/year job, the Arizona Dem chair is a $12,000 per month “contract” position. Those are just anecdotes and there’s no comprehensive list, but one can imagine that the size of the party/state as well as its electorate’s competitiveness probably corresponds to it and as such the Rhode Island GOP chair is probably ranked somewhere around the Wyoming Dem chair in pay/benefits – if any. Still at the same time maybe part of the reason that Rhody is such a deep Blue State has to do with the fact that the GOP chair would quit to devote more time to his day job and that making it a paid, full-time professional position could end up being a wise investment. If nothing else they could at least get someone to funnel more money to the national party by going down to Newport yacht clubs to hustle the Roman numeral Brahmins.