That’s right. The old man is going to give it to you straight today. It’s about time for some serious talk in our party at the local level and since no one else is going to do it, I guess I’ll start.
Independents? Why?
Because votes. That’s why. The last time I looked, Stanly County has about as many independents as it does Republicans. Truthfully they’re almost all republicans.
Yeah, yeah, I know.. you’re not republican! You’re independent. Bulltshit. No, you’re really not. If they were democrat, we wouldn’t have such a huge republican influence and absolutely ZERO democrat influence (RINOjokes aside). The independents we have in Stanly predominantly vote republican every time, so yes, I’m including them in this too. Now, moving on.
It’s time to stop with the childishness.
I say this on the eve of the biggest Republican fund-raiser of the year for a reason. Some of you will be there tonight. Some of you won’t. Those that WILL be there, pay attention. Look around you this evening. Sure, you’ll see the occasional new face because there are candidates present that want to solicit votes, but for the most part you’ll see the same 75 faces you see at every other meeting we have. My guess, tonight is going to max out at about 175 people. About 1/3 of those will be there because someone else paid for their ticket.
The inspiration for this article is simple. I just came back from helping setup for the Lincoln Day dinner. Once again this year I watched as the same few people showed up to help, to offer assistance, to prepare the venue, to volunteer their time. That’s sad. I don’t mean that in the sarcastic sense. I mean in the very real literal sense.
I see HUNDREDS of you if not THOUSANDS of you posting the same old flag-waving crap on Facebook or TikTok every day. But when the rubber meets the road, it’s about 15 people that do the work for the entire county (and I’m probably being generous with that number).
Where are you? Where are the new faces? What are you doing to help others learn about the party? You want people to share our beliefs, our sense of community, our sense of good old southern hospitality and right and wrong…. but you’re never there and you never bring new people to share in the experience.
DOING THINGS TOGETHER is what builds community. Showing up. And yes, giving your money!
That’s topic #1. I’m going to move on to topic #2, and then I’ll circle back.
Freedom Network – I hope you’re listening
This past election in the party caused a rift almost exactly like the last rift we just spent the last four years trying to heal. You all remember it. No one talks about it. Well, we’re going through it again, and to be honest, this time I’m going to come out and say it -“My team” is just as guilty of it as the “other guys” are.
There was this huge fear when the “freedom network” got a “foothold” in some “key positions”. Yes, I’m using quotes to illustrate how dumb that sounds when you say it out loud like that. They’re going to take over the party! They’re going to ruin the county! They’re going to set us back twenty years! Oh God, the sky is falling!
Guess what they’ve done? Nothing. Literally, not a damned thing… except… wait for it… wait for it……
SHOW UP. Our local party’s Vice Chairman is a Freedom Network guy. Our local party treasure is a Freedom Network gal. Since they got elected and since the executive committee got “infiltrated” by the “FN Crowd” half the regular supporters of the GOP just stopped showing up, stopped participating, stopped supporting the party.
Guess what… at least I see THEM doing things. I see them volunteering to help get things going. I see them tossing out ideas. Heather, bless her heart, works harder than I think ANY of us have this past year. She’s not done anything partisan, or freedom-flavored (I just coined that one. I like it. I’m gonna use that one again.) since she took office. What she HAS done is volunteer her time, do an amazing job at her elected position AND volunteer to do other things because no one else is there to do it. No one is stepping up.
Let me be clear here. When I saw “I see them” doing things, I don’t mean showing up at Jay’s downtowner, eating a meal, not donating to the party, and then going home to gossip about what transpired.
What it means to support the GOP.
Showing up to GOP meetings for the food and seeing a few friends of yours for an hour is NOT doing ANYTHING WHATSOEVER to help the GOP. So if you’re at home thinking “Well, I do my part” and that is the part you’re referring to, that’s not “doing “doing” anything. In fact most of those folks that DO show up wouldn’t bother if it weren’t for the fact that they could eat dinner. They’re there for the meal, not for the GOP. If you showed up and at least dropped a $20 in the plate, congratulations, you helped out. But if you came, ate, listened, and left… you did nothing. If you didn’t offer an idea, sign up to help at an event, offer to help clean up or setup, or do SOMETHING to take a load off someone else, you didn’t “do” anything at all. All that effort you spent patting yourself on the back could be better spent pushing a broom, dialing a phone to sell some raffle tickets, setting up tables ,filling salt and pepper shakers… I mean literally ANYTHING.
My honest suggestion – Disband the Freedom Network
Wait a minute before you start trying to crucify me. Hear me out.
The freedom network got its reputation to the rest of us during COVID. Yes, according to some of those like myself, some of their notions were a little kool-aid flavored. Remember all that “We’re going to get people elected and then we’re going to accomplish XYZ from those offices?” Yeah, how’d that work out?
It worked out exactly like I said it was going to… nothing happened. It was a bunch of passionate people that REALLY wanted to make change that had all heart and no experience. To be honest, most of us agreed with the kind of change they wanted to make. They just picked the wrong political offices to run for to make those kinds of changes and then learned the hard way. Commissioners don’t do anything about school policies. They don’t set health standards. They set tax rates. At the end of the day, that’s 90% of the job – budget allocation and tax rates. But the causes they support matter to them, and if we had a Republican party in this county that actually DID something, they might have worked with us rather than going off on their own half-cocked and just pissing a bunch of people off.
I’m going to be brutally honest here. Truthfully, the FN crowd and the rest of us agree on about 90% of things. We really do. We literally share about 90%, maybe even 95% of the same passions and beliefs. It’s that squirrely 5-10% that some of us aren’t necessarily fans of. And you know what? That’s fine!
There’s absolutely zero reason we can’t focus on the 90% we do agree on and work together to make change!
My wife doesn’t agree with me on tons of things. There are TV shows she loves that I hate. There are shows I love that she hates. Then there’s that 50% we both love that we watch together each week religiously. The other stuff we do on our own time away from each other.
Hobbies are the same way. She like wine and having wine parties. I could care less about wine and want to go repair the fence. She hosts a wine party. I go build a fence that day. See how simple that is?
Collaborate when you can and when it moves things forward and do the other stuff on your own time.
Me and Matt Swain are pretty good friends. It’s not a secret. (Even though he was a Crony back in the day – inside joke). We hang out together outside of GOP work. That’s fine. We’re a decent example of like-minded friends that come from the same stock. I’d like to think that Wayne Sasser, Chris Bramlett, and others are much the same.
Me and Levi Green share some passions related to politics but don’t have much more in common. Great. That’s fine. We can both work an event, share some common ideas, and go back to our own hobbies when it’s over. No one’s feelings are hurt. Am I voting for him? Nope. Am I trashing him? Nope. He’s a ridiculously smart dude. He really is. I just think the other candidate is better suited. It’s as simple as that. If I had the money to offer a guy like Levi a job, I’d hire his ass in a minute! Yeah, I’m not voting for him but I’d let him help me run a company in a damned second!
He’d probably be awesome and help me make my first million if I could afford him. I guarantee Levi doesn’t give two hoots whether I think he’s the best guy for commissioner. He wants votes and now he knows he has to get one somewhere else. Fine. It’s just business.
Jason Phibbs and I have butted heads on things. We’ve also agreed on things. Again, this is a smart dude. I probably disagree with Jason on more things than I do some of the others, but at least he’s passionate about his beliefs and he’s fighting for them. Does that make him an asshole, just because we don’t see eye to eye on stuff? Nope. If I see him somewhere I shake his hand. If he’s walking in behind me, I hold the door like my momma taught me. If he asks for help with something, I’d offer it.
Imagine if he and I could find some common ground that we need to see movement on and decided to work together on that and leave the rest of the shit behind us? To be honest, I’d just about give a kidney to see someone from “my side” of that aisle dedicate half as much effort and time to making change as he does.
And that brings me to my segue; that word right there was perfect, though I didn’t intend it. “Aisle.”
We in Stanly County right now are divided by an Aisle that needs to be torn down. Hell, it’s really more like a wall. The freedom network has, for the past couple years, maintained their private little Facebook group where they plan, coordinate, and forward their agendas and goals.
And you know what? That’s fine. But in my humble opinion it’s about time to stop and come out and join the rest of us and let’s work TOGETHER on what we can. Besides, it’s like the worst kept secret in Stanly County. Every person I know has some other secondary Facebook account they use to monitor what goes on in in there. It’s not like they don’t know that. I mean, hell I got one! There’s 1845 members in that group on Facebook and probably 500 of them are fake secondary accounts lol.
Let’s just STOP and work together.
Maybe it takes some conversations with “leadership” to make it happen. I don’t know. I’ll broker that conversation if it’ll help. Or find someone else that’s more neutral to make it happen. But it needs to happen. We need to come together, take down the barriers, and focus on things we agree on.
Math – just for the fun of it.
Let’s just say there’s a thousand people in there, actually real legit people. Imagine if 1,000 of them and 1,000 of us actually wanted to show up to the GOP meetings and start talking about making change – REAL CHANGE, and change that IS actually within our grasp to start with on a local level.
That’s 2,000 people. Think about it. If 2,000 people got together what could we accomplish?
Can you imagine the strength and size of the Republican Party in Stanly County if 2,000 people worked together on something?
If everyone shows up and gives $1.50 per meeting via the credit card app we have, we’d clear $2,000 a meeting after fees. That’s $24,000 a year.
We haven’t had a freakin’ office to really call our own since I moved to Stanly County. How pathetic is that? Literally… like in a decade or so. We only even have a phone number for people to call because I setup a VOIP number and the officers and myself man the voicemail. That’s right.. voicemail. There’s not even a way for a voter to reach someone in person at the freakin’ republican party. That’s shameful folks!
Some of you out there fret and worry and post about all the damage the democrats and liberals are going to do to our country and you can’t even get together enough money to pay RENT somewhere?
Just for consideration, there are 17,000 republicans in Stanly County. How about some of us start a mailer, a campaign, something, to solicit a $2 per month donation from the republican voters. Want a crazy idea? Let’s do the same thing to the other 17,000 independents too! Let’s make it a goal of 10%.
Let’s get 10% of those two parties of people – and let’s work together to do it- to donate $2 per month recurring.
Need me to do that math for you? If Levi’s reading this, he already did it in his head. That’s $6,800 a month. That’s $81,600 a year!
CAN YOU – FOR ONE SINGLE MINUTE – IMAGINE WHAT KIND OF PRESENCE – WHAT KIND OF CLOUT – WHAT KIND OF IMPRESSION WE COULD MAKE TO OUR STATE AND OUR COUNTRY WITH $2 PER PERSON?
We could build/rent a venue that would seat 500 people. We wouldn’t pay speakers to come to Stanly county. They’d come to us because we’d be the ones to win over. They’d be asking for speaking events in our little county if we had a venue capable of seating 500 or 1,000 people. We could rent it out for income! What an amazing idea!
As it is – and this is plain old fact right here folks – all the work the volunteers have done for the GOP for tonight’s event. – it might clear $4,000. Months of planning. Many many volunteer hours to make it happen that’s been shouldered by a very few select people and it would have been just as easy to get Me, Jeff, Roddie, and Wayne to write a check and not even bother having the event. If you see 200 new faces tonight that have never come to an event, then it’s a huge success. If you see the same 100 or so, then it was just a lot of work to buy you dinner.
Surely you’ve all seen the flyers going out this campaign season. I could wallpaper my mancave with them there’s so many. Imagine if that were OUR PARTY sending those out all year long to let people know about important events, to help bring people to our cause, to help be sure the right issues were tackled in Raleigh with our schools, our tax money, our homeowners insurance rates? It takes between $5,000 to $10,000 to do a good massive mailer at our county level. At our current rate, we’ll never do one, not a meaningful one anyway.
I hate to break it to you – but in case you don’t know – the thing that makes grass roots campaigns work is MONEY. Literally, everything comes down to money. If you don’t want to contribute time, contribute money! That equates to time for someone else, and it acts a force multiplier.
Example: We can’t really do a mailer worth much for $500. But if we had $10,000 sitting in the bank, we could to a $5,000 mailer to advertise a mid-summer GOP bbq at the fair grounds, spend the other $5K on the event, charge $100 a ticket, and as soon you sell 101 tickets, the event is making money! We sell 500 tickets. That’s the goal. We have maybe 2,000 people just trying to sell a measly 500 tickets.. that’s one in four people. That would bring in FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS in one day guys and gals.
You do that to get those independents off the sidelines and playing for our team!
No one wants to go hang out with a bunch of old people eating popcorn shrimp. For God’s sake we need to stop that crap!
Instead, you have the event somewhere that can handle indoor/outdoor incase of weather, you have a band show up, you sponsor the fire departments for a fund raiser to buy new turn out gear – or you sponsor the Sheriff’s dept to work on purchasing a new drone, or new radios, or whatever the hell other great cause we want to support because there are tons of them! Because you know who votes for you? The people you help out. Why do you think democrats get votes so easy? They believe in free shit… duh.
Free education. Free this. Free that. Free free free.
So go support someone we care about and do what works. Show our support with our money!
I’ve got an idea for an annual fundraiser to sponsor a scholarship for a child each year from Law Enforcement and from the Fire Dept and EMS. We could actually, for real, in a meaningful way, impact the lives of those in our community that we can be proud of! I know a group that’s done this year after year and they’re willing to help us do it ourselves… if we’ll get together and make it happen. But as it is, I can’t find more than about five people that care enough to put the work in.
We have got to SHOW PEOPLE WE CARE!
We’re not doing that. We’re not “together.” We’re NOT one party.
The Stanly County Republican Party CAN BE the single most awesome driving force for good in our community… if we just want to come together and do it!
Sadly, NONE of us are going to succeed until we do. You can bitch and moan and whine on social media and grumble about it at breakfast every day and not a damned thing will change. The old people will eventually die. The young people will never have been brought in to the party because we do nothing that appeals to them. Our party will continue to stagnate and be overwhelmed when we make the occasional $2,000 from an event.
I’m tired of it, y’all. I’m so tired of it.
There is absolutely no reason we don’t already have a HUGE freakin’ building somewhere in Stanly County (not in the damned city because no one can afford that) that is painted American Flag Red with a GIANT US flag sitting on front of it where we have volunteers manning the phones each and every single day of the year, rain or shine…. except that we don’t care enough to see it happen.
Stop bitching. Stop fighting. Start working… together.
If you can’t figure out how to start, it’s simple. Go find someone from the other “side” of this wall of ours and ask them this: “Tell me three things you want to see change in our county and state.” Or “tell me three things you want to do to raise awareness for the republican party.”
Surely, one of the three is something you’ll agree with. Chances are if they’re Freedom Network, republican, or independent, you can find ONE thing you both agree on.
Work on that thing together. Ignore the other stuff. Just ignore it. Seriously.
Respect each other for showing up when no one else does.
Respect each other for being willing to physically WORK to implement change.
I bet, if you do this together a couple times, you’ll find that you have enough in common that you’ll come to agree that it’s OK that you don’t agree on everything.
If we don’t do something… if we continue like we are… we’ll remain a useless little backwater that no one takes seriously.
We CAN be a force in our county. The larger things we want to change at the state level can happen too, but those take reputation and clout and you have to EARN that. Yelling doesn’t make it so. Whining doesn’t make it so. Having a proven track record of success, even in the small things, THAT is what makes it so.
Age Matters
Some of you probably get tired of hearing me make references like “the old people are going to die eventually.” I don’t think most of you honestly know what I mean or why, so let me explain it better.
Stanly County is made up of old ass people. Sixty, seventy, eighty year old people. They still cling to the fact that the vote goes their way. They seem to have absolutely zero care that their politics don’t appeal to the younger generation. I can’t think of a better example than the fact that we choose to have our meetings at a seafood restaurant that’s cash only. I feel like I’m freakin Marty McFly and I stepped back to 1965. Don’t get me wrong. I’m 46 and from the beach.. I’m fine with catfish and popcorn shrimp once a month. You’re NOT going to get 100 young people to attend that kind of meeting at that kind of location. I’m not picking on anyone. I’m stating a fact that some of you seem to have overlooked and you need to wake the hell up before its too late.
Older North Carolinians, those born 1928-1964 tend to vote Republican. That’s a fact.
The thing you’re NOT taking into account, is that the generations behind them, GenX, Millenials and most people born after the mid 1960s TEND TO VOTE DEMOCRAT!
We are blessed to have some great Republican leaders in this county, but they ARE older. Well, they’re not growing any more old folks in the people-factory. They cant pop those out of the factory. They ARE popping out younger ones every day – because science!
That means that every year that goes by that we have more older people in meetings and less younger people in meetings is one more nail in the coffin for our Republican values. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing if you’re not attracting the younger generation.
I’m lucky that I’m still technologically advanced enough to be able to straddle both sides. I was raised with the old values but I’m still working and living in the techno-world dominated by the younger generations. I see them every day. I work with them. I know their habits, their trends. I use the tiky-toky and the insta-snap thingy.
I hate hearing the “I don’t use that crap” comment from people. Social media has been around for THIRTY DAMNED YEARS guys. It’s NOT going away, and it IS where 99% of the next generation are. So just like you did when they retired your VCR and you had to start buying DVD, just accept it and get on board with it – or give money to those that will and let them get things done.
If we don’t get off our asses and make some progress and work to provide a strong reason for the next generation to adhere to our core values, the other side will simply win by attrition folks.
Maybe you don’t care. Maybe you figure that you’ll be dead and it won’t matter. But as for me, I’ve got kids. One day I’d like to have grand kids. (Not too soon kids… no rush). I’d like to leave them a world to grow up in that respects the same things I do – but still admit that it’s becoming THEIR world.
You can’t shape the world with old people. It’s stupid. It’s asinine. And it’s never worked. You.. we… have GOT to get in through our thick heads that the next generation is going to be running the towns, the county, the state, the country, and the world in less than 20 years. If we don’t prepare them, the other side will!
End of rant…
I want to see us come together, all of us. If you share ONE value in kind with me, then let’s find that one value and make progress on it. But in my opinion it has got to start with a headquarters building and that means some serious fund-raising! I can’t tell you how sad it is to sit in that exec meeting and hear how $1,000 a month is too much in rent. Kids can’t get a place for that these days for a single bedroom apartment and we want to run an entire political powerhouse and voting education center on a shoe-string budget?