Three chartered affiliates and one group of members from an unchartered state are gathering from January through April for Republican Liberty Caucus state conventions or organizing meetings.

Arizona RLC Organizing Meeting: January 30

The Republican Liberty Caucus of Arizona will hold its organizing convention at the Wheeler Taft Abbett Sr. Library from 12:00 to 4:00 pm on Saturday, January 30. Please come a little early to expedite the credentials process.

If you wish to make a motion to propose changes to the bylaws from the floor, please bring your typed motion with sufficient copies for our members to review prior to holding the debate and the vote. If you would like a copy of the proposed bylaws, contact Ken.

We hope you can attend this important event. Members have been hard at work to put this organizing convention together and to finally get Arizona chartered by the national RLC.  You can also RSVP to attend the event on Facebook.

California RLC Convention: March 13

The 2010 Regular Convention of the Republican Liberty Caucus of California will be held in 60 days, on the evening of Saturday March 13 in Santa Clara, California. The exact time and place of the Convention will be announced later. The convention will be held at or near the location of the simultaneous convention of the California Republican Party.

Any Regular RLCCA Member whose dues are paid may run for any of the 7 seats. Any Regular RLCCA Member whose dues are paid 30 days prior to the convention may vote in the elections. Nominations are now open. Nominations for Regional and At-Large Directors are now open. Nominations, which must be seconded, should be submitted via email or mail to the Secretary at secretary@rlcca.org. Nominations close 14 days before the Convention. You can RSVP to attend the event on Facebook.

Michigan RLC Convention: February 27

The Michigan chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus will hold its annual convention at Andiamo Italian Restaurant in Novi on February 27 from 4:30 to 6:00pm. In addition to hearing remarks from Governor Gary Johnson, the RLC will also hold its annual business meeting to elect officers for 2010-2012. Hors d’oeuvres will be served.

We are asking for a small $10 entry fee for non-RLC members. In order to vote or run for an officer position, you must be a dues-paying member of the RLC ($30 annually; $20 for students). You can RSVP to attend the event on Facebook.  Contact Tyler for additional details.

Utah RLC Convention: April 17

On Saturday, April 17, the Republican Liberty Caucus of Utah will be having its 2010 convention. We will be electing state officers and endorsing candidates for public office.

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson will be our keynote speaker. Possible public office endorsees who have been invited to speak include U.S. Senate candidates Mike Lee and James Williams, U.S. Congressional candidate Morgan Philpot, State Representatives John Dougall (confirmed) and Craig Frank, and State Representative candidate Rob Alexander (confirmed). You can RSVP to attend the event on Facebook.  Contact Rob for additional details.

In Mississippi, Chair-elect Jeff Powell, who has been the state RLC coordinator since 2007, put together several conference calls and in-person meetings to establish the Mississippi chapter of the RLC. The affiliate, which has established a website at http://www.mississippirlc.org/, has already accomplished a wonderful feat in establishing a Liberty Index for the state. Members are planning a 2010 Convention and will issue candidate endorsements.

In Wisconsin, Republican Liberty Caucus members in Appleton and Milwaukee gathered in November at two separate meetings to organize their affiliate. The chapter, which furnishes a website at wi.rlc.org, is in the process of sending out the Liberty Compact to Wisconsin candidates, organizing local meetings/affiliates, and recruiting new members. A top priority among members in the northern part of the state is to help RLC-endorsed Congressional candidate Terri McCormick win her September primary to face U.S. Rep. Steve Kagan (D) in November.

Below is a photo from the Milwaukee RLC meeting that took place on November 29.

Arizona and Nevada RLC members are also in the process of forming affiliates. The Arizona RLC will host a statewide RLC Convention in late January and the Nevada RLC has drafted its by-laws and charter document. Contact Ken Rineer to become active in the Arizona chapter and Dan Rego to help with the Nevada affiliate.

The Republican Liberty Caucus is pleased to announce the latest candidates we’re recommending you support in 2010.  They include:

* Congressional candidates Brian Miller (AZ-08), Adam Kokesh (NM-03), Jaynee Germond (OR-04), and Terri McCormick (WI-08);

* Virginia State Senate candidate Steve Hunt (January special election); and

* State House candidates Jenn Coffey in NH (incumbent) and Paul Curtman in Missouri, as well as Missouri House incumbents Shane Schoeller, Tim Jones, and Jim Guest.

Learn more about these and other endorsed candidates at our 2010 endorsements page.

Spring elections have boded well for Republican Liberty Caucus members. In addition to recent victories by Texas RLC Treasurer Lisa Mallory to a large school board in Austin and RLC member Michael Tams’ recent election to a Town Board post in northern Illinois, Virginia RLC members recently helped Attorney General candidate Ken Cuccinelli capture the GOP nomination against two opponents.

And earlier this month two other RLC members won their local elections: Kara Egbert in Arizona and Bradford Wyatt in Massachusetts.

In the town of Sahuarita in southern Arizona, Kara Egbert spent $2,554 to gain a second place finish in a race for three seats on the Sahuarita Town Council. Sahuarita is a town of 16,000 in Pima County. It’s growing very rapidly, as the population in 2000 was just 3,000 people.

Egbert and the two other victors trounced the incumbents. Egbert, who lives in Rancho Sahuarita, said she looks forward to representing “all of Sahuarita during the next four years and will work to keep the small-town values in our growing community.” Egbert is involved in the Pima County affiliate of the Republican Liberty Caucus in Arizona, according to RLC organizer Ken Rineer.

In Massachusetts, RLC member Brad Wyatt, who is working to reorganize the Massachusetts RLC affiliate, easily defeated an incumbent in a race for Boylston School Committee. Boylston is a town of about 4,000 near Worcester. Using the slogan “Put Boylston First,” Wyatt, a first time candidate, ousted a two-term incumbent.  Brad, a business owner in the neighboring city of Worcester, intends to bring business common sense to local government.

His campaign was based on voter identification and door-knocking.  His advice to future candidates is — on Election Day — to “call favorable voters, and then call them again, and again, until they say they voted.”

Wyatt campaigned on honesty and transparency in government. He hopes to put his technology experience to work in the district, especially in the area of communication, including the district’s websites and the School Committee’s scheduling.

You may not have heard much about it, but there’s a quiet movement afoot to reassert state sovereignty and stop the uncontrolled expansion of federal government power. Almost half of the state legislatures are currently considering or have representatives preparing to introduce resolutions to reassert the principles of the 9th and 10th Amendments and the idea that federal power is strictly limited to specific areas detailed in the Constitution and that all other governmental authority rests with the states.

In the version of this bill being considered in Washington state, they appeal to the authority of James Madison in The Federalist who wrote:

“”The powers delegated to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, [such] as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people.”

The Founders believed in a balance between state and federal power. The state sovereignty movement clearly arises from the belief that the balance of power has tilted too far and for too long in the direction of the federal government and that it’s time to restore that lose balance.

The emergence of this movement is a hopeful sign of the people asserting their rights and the rights of the states and finally crying “enough” to runaway government. With the threat of increasingly out of control federal spending, some of these sovereignty bills may stand a fair chance of passage in the coming year.

There’s a lot of excitement about these bills, but there are also a lot of misconceptions, with people claiming that some states have already declared sovereignty and that the movement is much farther along than it really is.

Contrary to popular rumor, none of the states has actually enacted a sovereignty law yet. Some have come close. Oklahoma’s bill passed their lower house overwhelmingly but stalled in the Senate last fall and is being held over for consideration in the new year.

Contrary to the fantasies of some extremists, these sovereignty bills are not the first step towards secession or splitting up the union, nor are they an effort to block collection of the income tax, appealing though that might be. For the most part, they are not so much political statements of independence as they are expressions of fiscal authority directed specifically at the growing cost of unfunded mandates being placed upon the states by the federal government.

Despite the movement picking up steam as he came to office, the target of these bills is not President Obama, but rather the Democrat-dominated Congress whose plans for massive bailouts and expanded social programs are likely to come at an enormous cost to the states.

It has become increasingly common for Congress to pass legislation which dictates policy to the states, but which comes without adequate federal funding and the expectation that the cost of these programs, which the states had no real say in approving, will come out of state budgets. This has been a long-term problem with Medicaid and Medicare, but the unfunded mandate which stirred up the most ire recently was the No Child Left Behind program. More concern has been raised with the recent reauthorization and expansion of the SCHIP program which has a history of requiring more expenditure than is provided for in the federal budget.

The text of the bill proposed in Arizona makes the clearest statement of the intent to block unfunded mandates:

“That this Resolution serves as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.”

and

“That all compulsory federal legislation that directs states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties or sanctions or requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding be prohibited or repealed.”

What this movement is most similar to is the Nullification Crisis of 1832 where the State of South Carolina asserted that it had the right to nullify the authority of federal laws within its borders. In this case the states are not asserting anything as broad as the Doctrine of Nullification, but are merely reasserting the limits which the 10th Amendment places on federal authority, specifically as it applies to spending, the idea being that they don’t have to pay for federal mandates if their legislators choose not to.

Not all of the bills fall within these limitations. Missouri’s bill actually goes somewhat further and does assert the right of the state to negate federal law, specifically in reference to the proposed federal Freedom of Choice Act, which some fear would bar states from passing laws regulating abortion. New Hampshire’s bill actually goes so far as to lay out a very strongly worded variant of the Doctrine of Nullification which specifies acts by the federal government (many of them currently being proposed in Congress) which would effectively negate the Constitution and the authority of the federal government within their state. Hawaii’s proposed sovereignty bill comes very close to being an actual act of secession, based on native tribal rights.

As things stand right now, it looks like Arizona, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Washington will all definitely consider sovereignty bills this year. They may be joined by Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Nevada, and Pennsylvania — where legislators have pledged to introduce similar bills.

Twenty states standing up to the federal government and demanding a return to constitutional principles is a great start, but it remains to be seen whether legislatures and governors are brave enough or angry enough to follow through.

As the Obama administration and the Democrat Congress push for more expansion of federal power and spending that may help provide the motivation needed for the sovereignty movement to take off.

The Republican Liberty Caucus operates a Political Action Committee to help our candidates get elected. The PAC, called RLC-USA PAC, can accept contributions from individuals or charitable foundations of up to $5,000. Donations are not tax deductible. The PAC has a new address:

Alan H. Cousin, Treasurer
Republican Liberty Caucus PAC
185 Main St., Apt. 14
Malden, MA 02148

Arizona RLC Interim Chair Roy Miller with Jeff Flake. Miller delivered a $1,000 check to Congressman Flake from the RLC-USA PAC in October 2008.

In an article from The Arizona Republic on Dec. 30, the newspaper opined that Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona may be exactly what the GOP needs if it wants a successful future. In its November issue, Esquire Magazine named Flake one of the 10 best elected officials in Washington. “A true conservative, Flake is as rare as the dodo. Republicans should learn from him, and liberals and libertarians will find in him a strong privacy-rights ally.”

In 2006, the Arizona RLC hosted a banquet for Rep. Jeff Flake at the Gainey Ranch Golf Club in Scottsdale. In both 2006 and 2008, the RLC-USA PAC contributed $1,000 to support Jeff Flake’s successful re-election efforts.

In 2008, the RLC-USA PAC also contributed to two unsuccessful candidacies: Sydney Hay for Congress in Arizona and Tom Feeney for Congress in Florida.

Roy Miller with Sydney Hay. Miller delivered a $1,000 check to Ms.
Hay in October 2008 from the RLC-USA PAC.

The RLC-USA PAC assists pro-liberty Republicans running for office who have been official endorsed by the RLC.

Please contribute to the PAC today!

According to Politicker Arizona, “Ahead of today’s House vote on the $700 billion bailout package, U.S. Rep. John Shadegg is calling for the resignation of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.” According to Shadegg:

“Congressional leadership received less than four hours notice before the Secretary publicly warned of an imminent collapse of the market and announced his bailout plan. Clearly, it was his duty to provide Congress and its leaders time to evaluate this situation, and he failed. The Secretary went public with dire warnings, scaring the nation minutes after apprising Congressional leaders of this problem. That is simply unacceptable.”

“The problems in the market today did not occur over night. In the last six months, Secretary Paulson has insisted that the federal government rescue Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and AIG. Each time, Secretary Paulson assured Congress that it would solve the problem. Obviously, Secretary Paulson has been wrong. The American people can no longer have confidence in him and he should submit his resignation, effective immediately,” Shadegg concluded.

[Editor's note: After this blog post was published, Shadegg switched his vote from opposition to the bailout to support of it.]

A good number of RLC-endorsed candidates advanced through their primaries and on to the general elections in 2008, in what could be considered a breakout year for libertarian Republicans.  A listing of all of the RLC’s candidates is available here.

Each of the below candidates endorsed by the RLC ended up advancing in their respective primary race.  Congratulations!

• Alaska: Lt. Governor Sean Parnell, who was endorsed by the RLC, looks likely to lose in his race against Don Young. Both men are vying to represent Alaskans in Congress. Even if Parnell does lose, he will remain Lt. Governor. If McCain-Palin are successful in November, he will become Governor.

• Arizona: Sydney Hay, who is currently the underdog to replace Rick Renzi in Arizona’s First Congressional District. Hay received a donation from the Republican Liberty Caucus PAC.

• Colorado: George Lilly, who was inspired to run for Congress by Ron Paul.  Lilly is running in District 1 and is not favored to win the race due to district demographics.

• Florida: Ritch Workman, who is running for State Representative in District 30.

• Georgia: Dr. Paul Broun, who won his first campaign for Congress in 2007 and then faced a challenge from the establishment GOP in 2008.  Additionally, incumbent State Senator Jeff Chapman and State Representative Steve Davis, both RLC-endorsed, fended off challengers.

• Idaho: Elizabeth Allan Hodge, a former State Representative, won the GOP primary for State Representative in district 16B.

• Indiana: GOP challenger Bill Johnson narrowly lost his primary for State Representative in District 19.  However, in a victory for the RLC, the GOP challenger dropped out of the race for personal reasons and the county GOP decided that Johnson would be the ideal replacement.

• Maryland: The RLC has endorsed several victorious primary challengers in Maryland, including Richard Matthews (CD 02), Peter James (CD 04), Collins Bailey (CD 05), Roscoe Bartlett (CD 06), and Dr. Michael Hargadon (CD 07).  Unfortunately, all of the challengers are likely to lose due to district demographics.  Rep. Roscoe Bartlett is likely to retain his seat.

• Michigan: Three RLC candidates were victorious in their primaries in Michigan, including Justin Amash for State Representative (District 72), Bob Genetski for State Representative (District 88), and Tyler Whitney for Bash Township Trustee.

• Montana: RLC-endorsed candidates Greg Hinkle and Mike Miller won their races for State Senate and State Representative, respectively.

• Nevada: Kris Pickering won her primary for State Supreme Court and up-and-coming GOP rock star Lindsay Nicole Madsen won a tough primary for State Senate in District 7.

• North Carolina: Dr. B.J. Lawson won his primary and will face incumbent David Price for U.S. Congress, District 4.

• Oregon: Delia Lopez won her primary in Oregon, District 3 and will face veteran Earl Blumenauer in November.

• Texas: Dr. Ron Paul won his primary in Congressional District 14 and will return to Congress come January.

• Washington: Michael Delavar won his primary against an establishment GOP candidate in Congressional District 3. He will face incumbent Democrat Brian Baird in November.

• West Virginia: Edward R. Burgress, the RLC contact for West Virginia, won his primary in District 30 (St. Albans) for the House of Delegates. Seven individuals, all of them currently Democrats, represent this large district.

Good news to report in Arizona’s Republican primary in Congressional District 1: Sydney Hay, the RLC endorsed candidate, has won a five-way Republican primary. At her web site, Mrs. Hay quotes John Shadegg saying, “We need [Sydney Hay] in the halls of Congress.”  Barry Goldwater, Jr. has endorsed her candidacy, as well.

Unfortunately, Ron Harders, RLC endorsed candidate for State Representative in District 16, narrowly lost his race, 48% to 52%.

In June, the Arizona and DC chapters had their first affiliate meetings. The DC chapter is very close to chartering. [UPDATE Oct. 2008: The DC affiliate is now chartered. Join the RLCDC eGroup HERE to learn more.]

On July 15, the local chapter of the RLC — which is not yet chartered — sponsored a forum with RLC member Dick Heller of Heller v. DC, the Supreme Court’s recent gun case. The youthful audience asked questions of Mr. Heller and worked to formalize a charter.

RLC member Ken Rineer organized a meeting of RLC members and activists in Tucson, Arizona on July 29. Interested parties discussed chartering an RLC affiliate in Arizona. Additionally, Joe Higgins, Republican candidate for the Pima County Board of Supervisors (District 1), was the guest speaker.

DC and Arizona are expected to submit their charter paperwork to the RLC National Committee in short order.

In Indiana, a meeting was held at RLC organizer Kevin Van Linden’s house on August 17. The chapter submitted its Charter Application and affiliate by-laws to the National Committee for consideration shortly after their meeting. Photos from the meeting follow.

[UPDATE Oct. 2008: The RLC in Indiana is chartered and has its own web site.]

Additional chapters are working to charter RLC affiliates, including Connecticut, Mississippi, Missouri, and Wisconsin.