The old saw claims that a vacation is “2 weeks that are 2 short after which you are 2 tired 2 go home and 2 broke not 2.” My “vacation” lasted just a few days more than three months.

For nearly six years I represented the Sixth Congressional District to the State Central Committee (SCC) of the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV). SCC members must live in the district they represent. So, when the Virginia Supreme Court handed down their December decision about redistricting, I, along with Lynchburg, Amherst, and the Forest part of Bedford County found ourselves in the Fifth District – not the Sixth. Thus, my vacation began.

I supported my friend and colleague on SCC Susan Lascolette, who was moved from the Seventh District into the Fifth, in her bid to fill the SCC seat that our friend Ed Yensho lost due to redistricting. She won easily.

Then Nancy Rodland, a long-time resident of the Fifth, resigned her SCC seat due to family issues. On April 2^nd, the Fifth District Committee elected me by acclamation to take over that seat. Thus, my vacation is over.

Not that I really stopped working during that time. I have been helping the Lynchburg committee interview and vette potential city council candidates, and I helped elect a dynamic new chairman for the Lynchburg Committee, Veronica Bratton. She is a “woman on a mission” to flip City Council red for the first time in over twenty years. She is a born leader, and she has the drive to make it happen.

But an issue came up at the April 2^nd meeting that reveals a misunderstanding of how the RPV’s Party Plan (bylaws) views the biannual mass meetings each unit holds in even-numbered years. Not only does the mass meeting elect a new chairman, the attendees at the mass meeting also elect a new local committee. The old committee ceases to exist when the mass meeting is called to order, and a new committee is elected and comes into being when the mass meeting is adjourned. Therefore, it doesn’t matter when you joined your local committee prior to the mass meeting; if you were not elected at the mass meeting you are no longer a member of your local committee.

What happens is this: the local Republican committee that was put in place two year prior has the duty to call a mass meeting to which every Republican in the city or county is invited. That “mass” of Republicans then elects (or reelects) a chairman and also elects individuals to serve on a committee that is tasked with handling all Republican affairs in that city or county – on behalf of all Republicans in that jurisdiction – for the following two years. If you are not elected to that committee in that manner, you are no longer a member.

Others can join the new committee if the members of the new committee choose to add to their numbers, but unless they do so, individuals who were members of the previous committee but who were not reelected at the mass meeting are not members of the NEW committee.

If you find yourself in that situation, the fix is simple. Get elected to the new committee by the new committee under whatever process your local bylaws prescribe.

If you think about it, all of us are on a temporary “vacation” from our local committees for the three hours or so that our biannual mass meetings are in session. But when the meeting is over, vacation is over.

In the same way, many among us have been taking a well-earned vacation from the tremendous efforts we made to elect all three of our state-wide candidates last November. But vacation is over. We have elections coming up this year for many local offices and for every one of our Congressional representatives. Vacation is over.

We must engage volunteers, organize them, train them, and make things start happening NOW for November. The Democrats never took a vacation. Because of that, we are behind. Local committees are not designed so that people can sit around and squabble over policy. Local committees are designed to get the job done themselves and with other Republicans who want and need to be involved, to be given direction, to know what to do for their Commonwealth and their country.

Vacation is over – for all of us.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

I’m not back writing my newsletters weekly yet, but I have been busy. We have been vetting potential city council candidates in Lynchburg because we have a good chance of winning all three seats up for election in November, and if we do so, we will have a 5 to 2 majority on Council. In fact, it would be the first Republican majority on council in 22 years.

We have done serious work toward election integrity in Lynchburg that played a major part in our 20-percent positive swing between the 2020 election and the 2021 election.

We just elected a dynamic and determined Republican chair for Lynchburg, Veronica Bratton. She headed up our election integrity efforts last November and did a fantastic job. I can’t wait to see what she can accomplish for Virginia as chair of Lynchburg.

And it looks like I have a chance to be elected to the State Central Committee again, this time from the Fifth District. They have a vacancy due to a resignation, and the District Committee meets April 2^nd to fill it. I’ve gotten a lot of support from the voting members, so we shall see.

But that isn’t why I am writing to you. I need your help. Senate Bill 591 has gone to the Governor’s desk, and it is a bad bill as written. It purports to stop marijuana sales in Virginia. I’m okay with that part. However, they have rolled into the bill a prohibition against CBD, which is a non-toxic, non-mind-meddling by product of the hemp plant.

CBD has a number of quantifiable health benefits, and for some people, it is the ONLY thing that helps. People often use CBD for their pets for the same reasons. That would all end if Senate Bill 591 is signed into law as is.

I am asking you to contact the governor’s office and ask him to send SB 591 back to the General Assembly and remove any prohibitions on CBD from the bill. You can reach his office at 804-786-2211 and leave a message. Or you can go to https://www.governor.virginia.gov/constituent-services/communicating-with-the-governors-office/ and send an email via the form provided.

In full disclosure, my son owns one of the seventeen businesses that will have to close in Lynchburg alone. (I have invested in his business.) It will also harm a lot of other businesses in the Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth Districts.

Someone in the General Assembly got over-zealous in creating this bill. Please contact the Governor and ask him to send it back to the General Assembly to rectify what would be a major economic disaster for quite a few small business owners in Virginia.

Hopefully, you will be able to find the time TODAY to make the call or send the email. It is on the Governor’s desk, and I have no idea when he plans to sign it.

Thank you for your support over the years and your help today.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

The Virginia Supreme Court declared final redistricting boundaries this past week. Although the final boundaries are somewhat close to the draft created by the Court-appointed “special masters” earlier in the month, the Court apparently paid attention to the many comments that were posted to the Court’s redistricting site.

Craig County stayed in the Ninth instead of moving into the Sixth. The Sixth did get Alleghany, Frederick, and Clark Counties along with the cities of Winchester, Covington, and Salem. The way Roanoke County is divided between the Sixth and the Ninth Districts changed a bit as well.

The Sixth District lost the northern part of Bedford County to the Ninth except for the Forest area, which along with Lynchburg City and Amherst County went to the Fifth. The southern part of Bedford County moved from the Fifth to the Ninth. You can look at the final boundaries of Congressional districts by clicking here, of House of Delegates districts by clicking here, and State Senate districts by clicking here.

Redistricting means that the State Central Committee (SCC) of the Republican Party of Virginia faces a major change in its membership. By rule, a member of SCC must live in the district from which he or she was elected. Because of redistricting, a lot of people who served on SCC until this week are no longer members. I know of two district chairs who are no longer district chairs because their homes are no longer in the districts that they chaired. Quite a few regular members in the eastern part of the state are no longer on SCC because the district changes were rather substantial in that end of the state.

One (now former) SCC member from the Ninth lives in one of the precincts that moved into the Sixth. Even though the Sixth also lost a SCC member, the former Ninth SCC member does not automatically fill the vacant slot in the Sixth. One former SCC member from the Fifth lives in Green County, which is now in the Seventh District. Another former member lives in Goochland County which was in the Seventh but is now in the Fifth. They cannot trade jobs. Each district committee has the responsibility of filling any vacancies on SCC from their own districts.

The seat I held representing the Sixth on SCC is now vacant because Lynchburg moved to the Fifth. I have worked closely with many people in the Fifth over the years, and I may see about running for the open Fifth District SCC seat. Either way, things should be interesting in Republican politics for the next little while.

As I leave the Sixth let me say that I have greatly enjoyed the time I have spent serving Sixth District Republicans on SCC. It has been my honor to serve you and my delight to meet you. You continue to give me hope that we can turn this mess we call our government around. There are still good people in America, and a healthy percentage of them live in the Sixth Congressional District of Virginia.

I was asked to run in 2016, and once I decided to run, I also decided to do the best job that I could. I have kept the campaign promises I made in that campaign. Until COVID I traveled to meetings and events all over the district talking with you and getting to know you so that I could better represent you on SCC. Secondly, I have done what I can to educate you about Virginia political issues. Even before I was first elected, I began writing a weekly newsletter for that purpose. The first one posted on March 16, 2016.

Think about the responsibility of preparing a cogent, intelligent, educational, helpful article of approximately 800 words every week for six years. Some weeks I’ve had several topics from which to choose. Other weeks, I had no idea what my topic would be until just hours before my article was due. At times that weekly deadline just weighed on me. I don’t think people understood how important their encouragement was to me when they mentioned that they liked an article or even that they read my articles every week. That encouragement kept me going.

I have never made a cent for any of my articles no matter whether they came out in a newsletter or in a rewritten form for the Waynesboro News Virginian or in The Bull Elephant. I kept writing because I made the commitment to the Republicans of the Sixth District that I would do so for the sake of keeping you informed. Now that my term is (prematurely) ended, I can say that I have fulfilled that commitment I made six years ago. I’m going to take a little time off from writing newsletters. Maybe I will pick it up again if I see the need. But in any event, thank you for your support and encouragement. It has been a wild and wonderful trip.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

I was in a hardware store in small town America, somewhere out in “Fly-Over Country” as the east and west coast thumb-suckers call the middle of our country. If the liberal dweebs truly knew the people they were belittling as unimportant, they would know that they ignore them to their peril. But I digress.

The lady salesclerk – yes, ladies, including the female owner of the store, can be quite knowledgeable about hardware. The lady helping me had a fussy toddler in one arm while she helped me find the right sheet metal screws with the other. (Family is important in fly-over country.) As the child continued to fuss, one customer said, “Looks like someone doesn’t want anything for Christmas. Santa is still making his list.” The little girl – who will probably know hardware as well as her mama by the time she graduates middle school – got very still and stopped fussing.

This is an example of how Christmas has gone full circle.

Jesus was not born on December 25. Church historians believe Jesus was born in the spring of the year. However, the people of the dark ages of Europe held pagan festivals in honor of the winter solstice. They, as do we, need the occasional holiday, so instead of forbidding the people from celebrating the festival, Church leaders founded a religious celebration in its place. They called it Christ Mass.

This in no way denies the reality of the miraculous birth, sinless life, and atoning death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This merely points out how we came to celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25.

You wonder what this has to do with a hardware store. Follow me here. As the Christ Mass (or Christmas) became increasingly popular with the people. Various elements were added to it. In the Netherlands, Bishop Nicholas started the tradition of going around the night before the celebration and giving treats and small presents to “good little girls and boys.” Often he was called Bishop Claus, which is a short form of Nicholas. Thus, when the Catholic Church canonized him and declared him a saint, he became Saint Nicholas, or in the Dutch, Santa Claus.

Centuries later Santa Claus was given his jolly, fat, chimney-crawling-in-a-red-suit, reindeer driving persona in a poem authored by Clement Clarke Moore in 1823 entitled “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” or more commonly “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

This is where things started to come full circle. Instead of being a festival to honor the birth of Jesus Christ, Christmas began slowly reverting to – at least in the minds of many – nothing more than a gift giving festival at the winter solstice that causes great anxiety, stress, greed, disappointment, and lack of gratitude among those who have forgotten “the reason for the season.”

The only giving we really need to be concerned about is the gift of God’s Son to bring joy and salvation to the world. Instead, kids are concerned about getting what they want, parents go deeply into debt each year so that their kids won’t curse at them for not getting them what they demanded, and stores fear bankruptcy if they don’t make at least a minimum amount in sales at Christmas time.

I suppose this is inevitable since one poll recently indicated that for the first time in American history less than half of Americans attend church regularly. Another poll indicated that less than half of millennials believe in God at all.

Those people need our pity. They seek out joy and fulfillment in things that will never provide it on a scale that can be met only by a relationship with God. Instead, they seek meaning in drugs, food, sex, money, power, all the things that might make someone feel good for a moment, but cannot provide lasting peace, joy and fulfillment.Back to the hardware store: as I watched the little girl become very good at the threat of Santa not bringing her presents, it hit me that Christmas has reverted to a pagan festival for far too many people. There is more to Christmas than the all-consuming gift-getting practiced in too many homes. Unless these families one day discover the true wonder of Christmas, all they will have left from the gift getting season is a huge pile of discarded packaging.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

The Republican Committee of Virginia’s Sixth Congressional District (CD6) held their quarterly meeting in Waynesboro on Thursday night, September 16, 2021. It was a quiet and positive meeting.

For the sake of those who may be new to Republican Party organization, a District Committee consists of the chairmen of each local Republican committee in the district along with officers elected at the biennial district convention. Those officers include the District Chairman, three individuals to represent the District on the Republican Party’s State Central Committee (sort of like the board of directors of the state party), and regional vice chairmen (in the Sixth District anyway). Committees also include representatives from Young Republicans, College Republicans, and the Virginia Federation of Republican Women, all three of which are auxiliary organizations to the Republican Party. The membership is rounded out by a vice chairman, secretary, treasurer, and if the district’s vote for Republicans meets certain criteria, one or two more representatives to the State Central Committee. These last five officers are all elected by the other members of the District Committee.

Because this past meeting was deep in the holiday season, several members were unable to attend, although eight members sent proxies.

Juliana McGrath, the College Republicans’ representative to CD6, reported on the change in the thinking of college-age voters. In the gubernatorial election four years ago, exit polls showed that 68 percent of college age voters had voted for the Democrat candidate. In the gubernatorial election last month, exit polls showed that only 52 percent of college-age voters had voted for the Democrat. In just four years, the split went from 36 points to only 4 points – a huge turnaround.

The committee then took a brief look at a call for convention that CD6 is required to hold in the late spring of 2022 for the purpose of electing a District Chair and three regional vice-chairs as well as nominating our candidate for Congress.

The difficulty the committee faces is that the call cannot be completed until after redistricting is completed. Until that happens, the committee does not even know who is eligible to attend the convention. As of this writing, CD6 is slated to gain four counties and three cities while losing one and a half counties and one city.

Also, because Republicans use “weighted votes” at conventions, the number of delegate votes allotted to each county and city is still up in the air depending on how much of a county is located in a given district. For example, a larger percentage of Roanoke County may be incorporated into CD 6 than had previously been there. That would change the percentage of Roanoke County’s weighted vote that could be used at a CD 6 convention as opposed to the other district (CD9) to which the rest of the county will likely belong.

CD6 would like to hold the convention somewhere in the middle of the district – Augusta or Shenandoah, depending on the facilities available. At the moment, anyone interested in attending the convention as a delegate or observer should pencil in Saturday May 21 on their calendar as the date currently being considered for the convention.

Following that discussion, a resolution was presented by the Resolutions Committee. After stating a number of reasons supporting the resolution (the “whereas’s”), the resolution called upon the General Assembly to undo the damage that has been done to our Second Amendment rights during the past two years. These include removing “Red Flag” laws and reversing the law that allows local governments to pass their own laws independent of the state. This only leads to confusion for law-abiding gun owners.

Additionally, the resolution acknowledged, praised, and supported the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) in their efforts to protect our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Randy Gilbert gave a brief report on election integrity efforts in Virginia, following which the meeting adjourned.

All in all, it was a quiet meeting and a positive one as well.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.