Many of you across the country will have a chance to vote in GOP primaries this month. If you care about limited government, secure borders, and parental/local empowerment against Fed Ed, here are some of the stellar candidates running at the local, state, and federal levels who deserve your support.
TODAY August 5:
KANSAS
Support Dr. Milton Wolf.
The staunch upstart conservative is running against entrenched GOP Sen. Pat Roberts, who is a 50-year resident of the Beltway. Roberts is better known as “Virginia’s third senator”. Half a century is enough. A radiologist and trenchant critic of socialized medicine, Dr. Wolf will bring a fresh, right-thinking Kansas conservative voice to Capitol Hill.
MICHIGAN
The pro-amnesty, Common Core-peddling DeVos family has ponied up gobs of money to defeat Tea Party and conservative challengers to the Michigan GOP status quo. Many “moderate” (read: liberal) incumbents are vulnerable. It’s a ripe opportunity for the next generation of limited government leaders. That is why I am supporting a fantastic grass-roots mom, Lana Theis for 42nd District State Rep.
Theis has a proven record of limited government activism:
I am a Graduate of California State University, Fullerton and hold a Bachelor’s degree in Biology with a Minor in Chemistry. Happily married with two kids, I am dedicated to limited government principles. Elected Treasurer of Brighton Township in 2008 and reelected in 2012, I’m the immediate past Chairman of the Brighton Area Fire Authority, the Livingston County Republican Party and the Livingston County Treasurer’s Association. I currently serve on the Brighton Township Planning Commission and continue to serve with the Fire Authority. I have received state and national recognition for my activism on behalf of limited government principles. The motto for my 2008 campaign still rings true today; “More Leadership, Less Government.”
August 7:
TENNESSEE
Support Joe Carr for Senate. GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander is another Beltway lifer who needs to be sent packing. Carr is an outspoken conservative state legislator with a proven record on fighting amnesty and turning off the entitlement magnets that attract illegal immigrants. (Beware of Alexander’s spoiler/friend/donor in the race, George Flinn.)
Alexander is also an encrusted educrat who embraced the Fed Ed underpinnings that catalyzed Common Core. Be sure to read these reminders of Alexander’s Common Core duplicity, review Alexander’s fecklessness here, and watch this creepy video from 1989:
Also in Tennessee, former principal and high school basketball coach David Byrd is running for state legislature in House District 71 and deserves your support.
Byrd’s main focus: opposition to Common Core, top-down testing, and Fed Ed mandates that undermine local control and choice in education.
August 12:
WISCONSIN
Tracie Happel is a conservative Wisconsin public school teacher and mom who is brave, tough, and principled. Happel is running for the state’s 94th Assembly seat and is a grass-roots leader in the fight against Common Core. We need committed constitutionalists like Tracie in every state legislature!
August 19:
WYOMING
Incumbent GOP Governor Matt Mead faces a groundswell of conservative opposition over his pro-Common Core stance, duck-and-run refusal to answer a grassroots education group’s survey, and his administration’s disturbing power grab involving a ploy known as Senate File 104:
The major controversy during Mead’s tenure relates to Senate File 104. That measure removed most of the duties of the state superintendent of public instruction, transferring them to an appointed director for the state Department of Education. The legislature passed that bill with a nearly two-thirds vote in the 2013 session, but the Wyoming Supreme Court overturned it in a split vote early in 2014.
Mead explained Senate File 104 as an attempt to revise the structure of the Department of Education for the “maximum benefit” of students and the state. “Both the legislature and myself, it wasn’t an attempt to cause problems,” he said.
Mead acknowledged the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the law. “We have to accept that,” he said. “When you make a mistake you’ve got to own up to it. The buck stops with me, and then you’ve got to try to improve and move forward.”
Outrageous. The best way to fix this “mistake” is to replace Mead with a conservative Republican who respects voters and the principle of separation of powers. The target of this unlawful power grab and railroading attempt, former elected Superintendent of Public Instruction Cindy Hill, is challenging Mead and deserves your support.
Hill has been a fierce and early opponent of Common Core, national testing, and data mining — which is why the establishment GOP desperately wants her to lose. Her electoral record is impressive:
Not only did she beat incumbent Jim McBride, she won the primary vote in all 23 counties. After that, she defeated former Democratic state senator Mike Massie in the general election. Hill’s tallied significantly more votes (47,165) in the superintendent’s primary than Mead did when he won the governor’s primary (30,308).
Hill was way ahead of the curve on Common Core and that is why she became a target of a politically motivated witch hunt:
In late 2009, a year before Superintendent Hill was elected, Superintendent Jim McBride applied for $159,000,000 in federal “Race to the Top” monies. The application for those monies required the State of Wyoming to describe whether it had adopted the Common Core and whether the state had taken steps toward adopting the national test, evaluation of teachers, and the collection of data on children. Wyoming scored poorly on the application because it had not taken steps to enact the federal agenda prescribed by the Race to the Top. At this point, the Common Core had not even been released to the public, but the federal government was requiring the adoption of the Common Core even before its release. When Governor Matt Mead states that the Common Core was the exclusive product of the National Governors Association, he neglects to say that Obama was the one pushing the states to adopt the Common Core through Race to the Top money.
In response to Wyoming’s poor showing on the Race to the Top application, in 2010, the Joint Education Committee chaired by Matt Teeters and Hank Coe, working with bureaucrats from the Wyoming Department of Education (WDE), began implementing the Race to the Top provisions in the Wyoming Accountability in Education Act. Additionally, the WDE put forth the Comment Core to this State Board of Education. The State School Board “approved the adoption” of the Common Core, but never put the Common Core out to the public for public comment—which was required under the Administrative Procedures Act for the lawful adoption of rules. Despite skipping public comment, that is required by law, the Department of Education directed the school districts to implement the Common Core.
When Superintendent Hill was elected in November 2010, and sworn into office on January 3, 2011, she immediately raised concerns over the fact that the Common Core had not been legally adopted. Much to the displeasure of the State Board of Education and the Department of Education, she insisted that the State Board of Education take the Common Core to the public for public comment and she organized many public outreach meetings across Wyoming to receive public comment. This was a year before Glenn Beck made Common Core a national issue. Superintendent Hill’s point about the Common Core was that it did not reflect Wyoming values, did not represent the highest standards, and Wyoming have the resources to create its own standards—the highest standards.
Shortly after Superintendent Hill was sworn into office, Mary Kay Hill, one of Jim McBride’s top advisers who had been involved in the Race to the Top application and the hurry-up adoption of the Common Core, quit and immediately went to work for Governor Matt Mead. Her parting comment was that Superintendent Hill “had no idea how many grenades have been rolled under her chair.”
Now, contrast Hill’s clarity with Gov. Mead’s mealy-mouthed answer on Common Core:
Cindy Hill is a fighter. So is Sheryl Lain, a top Hill aide who is running for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Lain is a longtime teacher and principal whose focus is on instructional excellence and resisting Fed Ed.
(Interesting side note: When Mead stripped Hill of her powers, he imported Big Government Jeb Bush-darling Rich Crandall from Arizona to fill her shoes and grease the skids for Common Core. Crandall is now back in Arizona.)
There are several anti-Common Core candidates running for state House and Senate seats. SF104 appears to be a motivating factor in many of the races.
In House District 60, Bill Hooley deserves your vote. He grew up in a blue-collar family, co-owned a small painting business, and works in the oil an gas industry. He is the father of three and husband of wife Christy, a former educator in Sweetwater School District 2 and longtime activist against Fed Ed. Hooley explained some of his motivating factors for running against an incumbent Democrat who has held office for two decades:
Local Control
The last year has brought us a broad range of loss of local control. There have been several instances of overreach by the EPA. New tough restrictions have been imposed on the coal industry by unelected bureaucrats. The privacy of citizens and students is violated by new massive national data collection. These are all examples of loss of control that our private citizens, localities, counties and state should have. I am not afraid to stand up for what I believe is right to protect our local control.
Education
I recently attended a School Board meeting in Sweetwater county. During this meeting the Chairman of the School Board admitted that our local board has been losing control of its power and rights for a “long time.” This is a huge red flag!
As a true conservative, I believe education is best handled when those making decisions about our children, are on local elected school boards, and not in Cheyenne, or Washington D.C. There are many in our current state leadership that vote contrary to local control and even try to strip powers from our elected leaders. This is NOT what a true republic was built on. I trust my child’s education to those who understand our unique challenges and see what our students need by interacting with their teachers and parents.
August 26:
ARIZONA
I endorsed state school superintendent candidate Diane Douglas in May and I double-triple-quadruple endorse her again. She’s a dedicated mom, school board veteran, and strong voice for local control of education. Her opponent, incumbent Republican state superintendent John Huppenthal is a zealous defender of Common Core who savaged opponents as “barbarians at the gate.” I hope the “barbarians” show Huppenthal the door.
GOP gubernatorial candidate Andrew Thomas is a stalwart and proven defender of our borders, the rule of law, and integrity in government. The former Maricopa County prosecutor is a longtime advocate for immigration enforcement, earning the wrath of the open-borders GOP elite, and is a true and trusted independent leader who stands out among establishment Republicans in Arizona. I’ve reported previously on Thomas’s nightmarish abuse at the hands of the state’s liberal judicial and legal elite. See here for more grass-roots and tea party support for Thomas.
NOTE: Many other national figures have endorsed Doug Ducey, but his campaign manager’s nasty, race-baiting comments about anti-amnesty conservatives are troubling to say the least. His close ties to Common Core racketeers at Achieve Inc. and McCain Central are also unsettling. And for me, those are insurmountable obstacles.
Congressional candidate Adam Kwasman is running in Arizona’s 1st district. He’s a state representative and economist by training who has a strong record on fiscal issues, the Second Amendment, education, life, and illegal immigration. Kwasman’s opponent is McCain/Boehner-backed amnesty promoter Andy Tobin. Congress certainly doesn’t need anymore of that ilk. Vote for Kwasman.
Florida
Jorge Bonilla is a friend, longtime blogger, conservative activist, and devoted father of two who is running in Florida’s 9th district. Yep, that’s Looney Tunes Alan Grayson’s district. Bonilla’s main primary competition is a Jeb Bush-backed, soft-on-Common Core Republican with Fed Ed proclivities. Bonilla is the only consistent and clear candidate in the field who opposes amnesty — and not in a mealy-mouthed Rubio-esque way — as well as defunding and repealing Common Core. Boot Grayson. Back Bonilla.
