Planned Parenthood’s Virginia affiliate has just donated $3 million to Ralph Northam’s gubernatorial campaign. That single donation almost equals the entire $3.2 million war chest that our Ed Gillespie had on hand at the end of June. They plan to use that money to send canvassers to knock on 300,000 doors, send mailers to 400,000 homes, and run digital and radio ads. Planned Parenthood is also supporting Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Justin Fairfax, who would cast any tie-breaker votes in the Senate for the Demorats and our despicable Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring, who has already proven that he defends liberal principles and NOT the laws and constitution of Virginia.

Granted some of Planned Parenthood’s money will go for paid canvassers, but the Democrats have a lot of volunteers out knocking on doors. And the more volunteers they have knocking doors, the more money they have to spend on mailers and advertising.

Part of the Republican strategy is to work hard to get our Delegates and local officials elected and piggyback our statewide officials on their campaigns. That way, we get double the bang for our buck. While our people are out campaigning for their local candidates, they also campaign for Gillespie, Vogel, and Adams.

And this double focus has a far-reaching impact. Virginia’s next governor will preside over redistricting following the 2020 census. So not only do we want to avoid another four years of Democratic stupidity in the governor’s mansion, but we also want to make sure that the Democrats don’t gerrymander us out of control of the General Assembly. We also need someone who will restore integrity to our voter registration rolls. This is a high stakes election. If we don’t win, we could lose more than we know.

So we Republicans have to respond to Planned Parenthood’s push to elect people whose views are totally antithetical to our values. I don’t happen to have $3 million to donate. (If YOU do, we need to talk.) But at the Sixth District Executive Committee meeting this past week, we voted to release up to $9500 that has been set aside for Get-Out-the-Vote efforts in the Sixth. That doesn’t seem like much compared to $3 million, but it’s a start. And if enough Republicans in the Sixth will donate to the Committee for that purpose, I can assure you that the money will be well and wisely spent. You might have a favorite candidate you want to support. If you coordinate your giving through the District Committee, we will be able to create a synergy that will allow us to win on many levels.

Someone told me last week they don’t think Ed is very exciting. How does that matter? We aren’t electing someone to entertain us. We are electing someone who will lead the government of Virginia with common sense and Constitutional values. We won’t have that with Ralph Northam. If Republicans sit this election out like they did four years ago (because they didn’t like our candidate then either) we will lose again by a similar slim margin.

More importantly though, we Republicans have to invest time in our candidates. Just to match the Dems, we Republicans must knock on at least 300,000 doors between now and November 7^th. We have 81 days until the election. That means across the Commonwealth, we have to average – AVERAGE – almost 3700 doors each DAY! That isn’t happening with just the paid field directors or the elected officers of unit committees. We have to have a concerted effort from everyone who wants to make Virginia a better place for ourselves and our children.

To help our Republican base get energized, the Sixth District Executive Committee has also approved a special, election event in September and three, District-wide Super Saturday events to help get our people do what we have to do to protect our Commonwealth. I’ll get the specifics to you as soon as plans are finalized.

It’s easy to talk about having Republican principles, but if we don’t apply some “sweat equity” to those principles, they won’t mean a thing because we won’t have the people in government necessary to make them happen. If we don’t win these statewide elections, we could lose more than we know.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. Democrats are “all in” for this election. We, likewise, have to be all in. We can’t win elections just with wishful thinking.

As I write this there are 89 days left until the election, and we are starting to get campaign signs into the units and field offices. The RPV is working hard to get the signs to distribution centers around the state so that each unit can send someone to pick up the signs earmarked for them. As soon as your unit gets their signs in, you should be able to pick one up for your yard. The sooner the signs go up, the more effective they will be at building name recognition for our candidates.

John Wood and I drove over to Vinton this week to pick up Ed Gillespie campaign signs for Lynchburg and Amherst County. John is both the College Republican Federation of Virginia Representative for the Sixth District and the Chairman of Liberty University CRs. We had a great time talking during our two hours on the road. We covered a wide range of topics from how our respective parents met, to his girlfriend’s excellent abilities as an entrepreneur, to his goals and aspirations for his future and for his tenure in CRs.

John can passionately articulate what he wants to accomplish, so I put on my “former professor” hat and gave him a suggestion based on experience. I suggested he write out his “metrics.” Metrics are the measures by which you can determine whether and how well you accomplished your goals. I want John to write his down so that he can “start with the end in mind,” as a good friend of mine frequently advises. Record precisely where you want to go so that at the end of the day you can measure how close you came to getting there.

And I like John’s goals. His goals aren’t about how many people he can get to his meetings or about how good he can make himself look. He is about how many people he can engage who will do the work that needs to be done. It’s about how involved he can keep the members of his CR club. It’s about what experiences he can arrange for his members that will benefit them in life. It’s about helping to create new clubs in the District and strengthening the clubs we already have. It’s about creating benefit for the people who have given him authority and responsibility.

Granted John and all of our CRs still have a lot to learn in life – they have a lot of life to live in order to learn it. It seems a shame that by the time we get that life experience we seem to lose the passion that fuels our efforts to make the most of what we know. It would be wonderful if we who have political experience could effectively partner with a generation of Millennials who have a passion to make their future better, to improve the country in which their generation will, hopefully, live long and fruitful lives, and to pass on to their own children the promise and responsibilities of liberty.

But as great a thought as that is, there are forces working against them in an effort to use them rather than help them.

A week ago, Governor Terry McAuliffe announced what he called a “Task Force on Millennial Civic Engagement.” Its purpose is to foster “the development and growth of a culture of civic engagement within Virginia’s colleges and universities.” On the surface it sounds like a good thing. But the U.S. Census Bureau says Millennials are those people currently between the ages of 17 and 35. McAuliffe’s task force consists of 15 college students – an easily swayed demographic generally between the ages of 17 and 21 – who are supposed to represent that whole generation. It includes no one who is older than college age, or who chose to go into the military or trade school or straight into the work force, or who chose to stay at home to raise a family. And of the narrow demographic slice he chose, four are College Democrats while only one is a College Republican. Social media posts show that seven others appear to lean liberal while only one leans conservative.

A Republican governor who created such a biased group would never hear the end of it. But we’ve heard nary a word about this taxpayer funded “task force” with a built in bias that purportedly speaks for a whole generation.

I like John Wood’s goals and standards a whole lot better than Terry McAuliffe’s. For the sake of John’s generation, let’s become as passionate as John is about getting our conservative candidates elected. Let’s not win the battle for the White House only to lose the war for the hearts and minds of our next generation.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. Four people lived in a very small town. Their names were Everyone, Anyone, Someone, and No One. A very important task that would greatly benefit the town presented itself. Everyone said that Anyone could do it. Everyone said that Someone should do it. But as usual, No One did it. Let’s not live in that town.

A lot of different topics have caught my attention this week, but none of them stood out as more important than the others. So here are a few of the things I’ve found interesting.

I’m glad Anthony Scaramucci only lasted ten days as Director of Communications at the White House. I think that was about ten days too long. “Tony the Mooch” comes across as conceited, he is demonstrably profane and insulting and inaccurate – President Trump called some of his remarks “inappropriate” – and Scaramucci is solidly in favor of gun control. We don’t want a man to get that close to the President if he does not understand the freedoms protected by our Constitution. And Scaramucci seems to be so sure of his own rightness that he can’t imagine anyone with a different opinion being anything other than wrong.

Congress is currently considering H.R. 2997, a bill that will take our national Air Traffic Control (ATC) System – the organization that keeps planes from running into each other in the air or on the ground – away from the Federal Aviation Administration and put it under the control of a private organization. You can see how well that worked out with the U.S. Post Office, which continues to operate with billion dollar losses each year. Even though the airline industry is pushing for this change, Delta Airlines’ own study shows what a costly mistake it would be. Supporters of the bill use Canada as an example of how it would work here, yet passengers in Canada faced a 59 percent increase in ATC fees on airline tickets. In the United Kingdom ATC fees rose 30 percent. During the same time period fees in the U.S. rose only six percent. That’s why a lot of Canadians cross the border to fly out of U.S. airports due to cheaper airline tickets.

While I normally support privatizing government functions where practicable, doing so with the ATC System would place a greater financial strain on smaller airports such as those that serve the Sixth District. Those smaller airports could be forced to limit flights or close due to high costs. Not only would a lot of people have to travel to major airports to get flights, but economic development in smaller communities would be stifled due to reduction in the ability for business people to travel to and from these locations. As a former general aviation pilot, I am strongly opposed to ATC privatization. Please contact your Congressman and ask that he vote against HR 2997.

Ed Gillespie got a lot of good press coverage from his stop last week in Nelson County at Silverback Distillery. Owner Denver Riggleman, who also ran for the Republican nomination for governor, hosted a big event for Ed with over 100 people in attendance. Denver was the favorite of the most conservative wing of the Party. It’s a good sign that Ed is making progress in bringing our sharply divided party together so that we can elect a better man than Ralph Northam.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has started talking with Congress about a debt ceiling increase this fall. The Trump administration wants a clean bill without any strings attached. That could be difficult. The Democrats are balking at a debt ceiling increase at the same time the Republicans want to cut taxes. Conservative Republicans want to tie the debt ceiling increase to other spending cuts. I don’t see any problem with tying a debt ceiling increase to a spending cut – except maybe for the debt ceiling raise part of it. If our representatives in Washington can’t figure out how to live within their means – like the rest of us have to – then we need to get new representatives in Washington.

Senators David Pardue (R-Georgia) and Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) have introduced a bill to reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed into the U.S. each year from one million to a half-million. And they want to do away with Obama’s lottery system and return to a merit based system that allows in skilled and educated individuals rather than just lucky ones. Democrats are outraged that the bill would require immigrants to speak English and that they would be highly paid individuals who would be more difficult to turn into Democrat voters.

There’s a lot going on. Take part in it. Make a difference for your country, your commonwealth, and your family.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. On August 19^th, Vice President Mike Pence will be in Richmond campaigning for Ed Gillespie. I don’t know the time or location, but it’s nice to know that our top elected officials in the country care that Ed wins the governor’s mansion in November.

 

Ed Gillespie wants to build community within the Republican Party. He ran a very positive primary campaign for the nomination. He doesn’t have to go back and unsay negative statements – not that anyone can – about his Republican primary opponents. He didn’t make any. I wish we could say the same for all Republicans in Virginia.

When a candidate loses, his supporters can do one of three things. They can (1) get on board to elect our nominee, or (2) decide to sit out the election since their candidate didn’t win, or (3) fight against the nominee and his/her team.

Obviously, #1 is the way to go if Republicans want to win elections, so I won’t belabor the point.

We have a lot of people who settle for #2. They aren’t helping our cause, but they aren’t really doing much damage. And I respect people who can specifically give me reasons of conscience why they can’t support a given candidate. I don’t expect a pro-life voter to support a pro-abortion nominee or a pro-2^nd Amendment voter to support a gun control advocate regardless of their party. (Ed Gillespie is both pro-life and pro-2^nd Amendment.)

There are some people who opt for #3. They are so filled with anger or hate or something that they want to make sure that the person who beat their candidate fails miserably. And that is just plain childish.

We have the same type of behavior in our units. When a given person is elected chairman and puts in his own executive committee, some committee members will get on board because they see the big picture. Some committee members will sit and do nothing – although a lot of people do that no matter who wins. And some would fight against the elected leaders of their committee because they are so filled with bad feelings that they can’t stand to see those leaders be successful.

And you wonder why Virginia is drifting blue.

Philip Yancey writes: “’Community is the place where the person you least want to live with always lives,’ says Henri Nouwen. Often we surround ourselves with the people we most want to live with, which forms a club or a clique, not a community. Anyone can form a club; it takes grace, shared vision, and hard work to form a community.”

The Republican Party would do much better if we had fewer cliques – and more community. The Democrats will have knock-down-drag-out fights in their nomination process, but once they have selected a nominee, they rally behind that nominee. Republicans just seem to keep on fighting each other.

In the second book of The Hunger Games trilogy, the heroine, Katniss Everdeen, is getting ready to go into the Arena for the second time. She and 23 other people who also have won a prior game will go in. Only one is destined to come out alive. As she heads to the arena, Haymitch Abernathy, her mentor, gives her a last word of advice: “Remember who the real enemy is.” His point was that the other people in the arena are not the real enemy. The real enemy is the system that makes them play in the Hunger Games.

We too need to remember who the real enemy is. It is those forces that would destroy our freedoms. But we don’t act like we know that. We are too busy fighting over who has control of the Party to have a party that can be effective against the real enemy. It’s like fighting over who gets the best deck chair on the Titanic.

We desperately need to build community rather than cliques. We desperately need to focus on the real enemy, not on intraparty rivalries. But at the same time, it requires give and take on both sides – and unfortunately, that isn’t something I’m seeing right now. I guess some things just take time.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. Ed will be in a lot of locations around Virginia as he works to win. Find one of those events and talk with him. Ask him your questions and give him a chance to show you where he stands on the issues. Donald Trump is not the only victim of “fake news.”