Who are you supporting for MI-GOP Chair (2015)?

“The mechanics of effectively running a state Party takes lots of experience and contacts. We need someone who has shown the ability to recruit, train, inspire and lead grass roots. Someone who has run a district and county Party and knows what that entails. Someone who has run major campaigns and has experience helping the GOP win presidential elections and send REPUBLICAN presidential electors.”

Norm Hughes – http://www.normforchair.com

From Norm Hughes on Fundraising as MIGOP Chair

The Chair as the major Party fund raiser is unique to the last four years. Prior to that, a finance team took responsibility for raising money and administrating the donor program. One Chair candidate says she is depending on only one donor/bundler to raise funds for the Party. Our Party cannot be so dependent on the whim of just one or a few donors. That can lead to overdue influence on the Party, its policies, the leadership and nominees and also diminishes the influence of the grass roots, local Parties and you, the delegates.

Our Chair to be most effective, must be involved as the CEO in numerous aspects of organization, recruiting, training, grass roots, branding the Party, and enabling local Parties and clubs. He/she must be an accomplished business administrator who can manage the operation. One legislator told me he has not gotten one call or contact from the State Party in four years. We will discuss each of these is future messages, and lay out our management plan with targeted goals.

We have major fund raising consultants and expert finance administrators lined up, some who have raised more than the Party’s whole budget during the last election cycle. In 2016 we will not have a race for governor or U.S. Senator, or state senators. We WILL have a President to elect, a state House to keep, Court positions to defend and education posts that have been neglected. We need to put help into local races as well.

Our successful Freedom To Work laws, when fully implemented, should take about $125 Million a year from union bosses – money that mostly supports Democrats and far-left causes. That is half a billion dollars in one four-year cycle. Taking the money from them may be more important than all the money that has been raised and spent over the last few years. I am so thankful for those who helped make that happen.

Volunteers are the real wealth of the Michigan Republican Party. We lost thousands of volunteer hours this last cycle because of antipathy in the primary. We must be worthy of getting these back, and more. In the future we will work to gain back these thousands of volunteers and their untold volunteer hours, which is just like raising money for the bank.

Broadening the base of our party is critical. Thousands of new stakeholders — both volunteers and donors — helping build the Party assure “ownership” of the Party and our candidates. It also builds’ a healthy, broad based donor program for the long-term. We will use direct mail, social media and other forms of communications outreach to bring back volunteers and smaller donors.

Each minute, each mile given by a volunteer and each dollar given by a donor is an unearned gift. Volunteers and donors must be cherished and given proper respect. We do this by thanking our volunteers and donors and by spending the resources they’ve given frugally and well. This thanks and respect is best shown by standing by Party principles and directing expenditures where they can do the most good.

The National Party has given millions to the Michigan Republican Party and more will be coming as we approach the Presidential election. We managed to raise enough money for two major successful statewide grass roots operations. Give us the Rolodex and see what we can do. Your thoughts and support are most welcome.

God Bless,

Norm Hughes
http://www.normforchair.com

Norm on Experience

Posted by Norm Hughes on February 15, 2015

Dear Dr. Moore and Gary,

Thank you for your inquiry regarding my studies and professional career, and how I cut money in the Federal government. We did issue one letter on this but you inquire about additional details.

I turned down a football scholarship at Univ. of Michigan because I liked the Architectural Engineering program at Lawrence Tech better. Architecture had been watered down at M, and LTU was winning all the collegiate design competitions. I went on to found the 3rd largest CR club in the state and was elected President of the Student Government. I had to work my way through college, starting as a draftsman then designer and checker on automotive design, tools and fixtures, and technical illustration.

That moved to aerospace and high allow technologies. I was involved with fixturing to build the SST/B1 bomber engines that became the engines for the 747 and DC10. I had several patents and publications in power transmission (designed mining, power plant and other equipment) and was Chief Metallurgist for a division of Dana at the young age of 24. Along the way I earned a Bachelor of Science degree in architecture with about 50 additional hours in math, science and engineering. I went to law school at University of Detroit and did graduate work in metallurgy and mechanical engineering and construction management at Univ. of Michigan, Eastern and Wisconsin.

In 1972 I founded our own AE/CM firm and through the years designed, consulted on and/or construction managed more than $800 Million in projects all over the Midwest. We have won several awards and Who’s Who designations, including the Outstanding Facility of the Year Award in Michigan. We have done all kinds of industrial, commercial and institutional projects and a few larger residences. We specialized in church projects, a way to give back. I did work as a consultant with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and served as project manager and Vice President of the Alden B. Dow CM firm, so I spent some time in your home town of Midland.

In 1982, after declining for a year and a half, I accepted President Reagan’s request that I join his Administration. The first assignment was as Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Conservation and Renewable Energy, a Senior Executive Service sub-cabinet position. Our annual budget was $ 1.8 Billion. I embarked on a detailed review of all programs, then all contracts. It was an 18-20 hours a day, six+ days a week experience with the program directors, contract researchers and congressional staff stonewalling and fighting all the way.

There were so many wasted demonstration projects (wind projects the size of counties and solar farms the size of townships), and projects competing with the private sector. On one battery program we were spending $20 million on a zinc-chlorine battery at a NASA lab, that was years behind a private sector zinc-bromine battery (halogens, one electron apart) right here in Madison Heights, Mi. As a fellow engineer you can imagine the hazard of a rear-end collision in the Windsor Tunnel with an 800# chlorine battery.

Prestigious companies asked for regulations that would require competitors to buy proprietary components from them, or for other competitive advantage. Even conservative members of congress wanted pork for their prime supporters or funders. I zeroed many contracts and cut or re-wrote many more so the taxpayers would at least get some value from their tax dollars. I could easily write a book on waste after waste, and special interest influence, but I doubt anyone would believe it. We cut $1 Billion out of $1.8 Billion and could have taken it down to about $220 million before we got most of the fat.

They tried to set me up. Each Tuesday they would pile two feet or more of contracts on my desk and report to Congress the next morning that I was setting on them and if they are not signed immediately some catastrophic harm would come to the programs and irreplaceable infrastructure. They told me in my position I should not look at contracts for less than a million dollars. I told them I know real people struggling to pay their taxes and I would look at every project and contract regardless of size.

The bureaucracy conspired with Congress and fed them information to try to force more spending on their pet projects, themselves and friends. We got a new Secretary who had to make commitments for spending as a condition of getting confirmed. Some were programs we had cut with the President’s approval and encouragement.
They eventually had a Congressional hearing on possible impounding of funds. I had everything well documented and prevailed in a hearing of several hours and the hostile Democrat Committee Chair eventually slumped in his seat, and came down to compliment me on our preparations and competence. I asked to return home as I thought I had done all I could and the new Secretary was reversing some of our gains. President Reagan asked me to stay on for a while to monitor the Department.

Reagan asked me to take a second assignment as Senior Policy Advisor and Associate Director Designate for Emergency Operations at FEMA, an Executive IV level (sub-cabinet) position. It was a larger budget and a national security, Continuity of Government program that I cannot talk much about, even though there have been books and articles that revealed some of the facilities and programs involved. I was, essentially, trained to be the next Chief of Staff for a new or interim President should the worse case happen.

My third assignment was on a Presidential Commission with ten cabinet officers.
Perhaps equally important are the executive assignments I have accomplished in politics, from campaign manager and Chief of Staff for a member of Congress to directing Reagan’s Michigan campaign in Michigan, co-founder of the Tax Limitation Amendment (TLA) and Michigan Freedom To Work (MFTW) movements. Both were built to huge state-wide grass roots organizations. As Chair and strategist of MFTW we built the coalition to 218 groups, 70,000 members and 20,000 businesses.

I co-founded Michigan Conservative Union and Chair Michigan Conservative Political Action Conference, the premier Michigan conservative planning and networking event each year. We have The PLAN, a tactical and strategic plan that has accomplished many legislative and electoral successes over the last few years. We privately funded these programs and organizations, showing the ability to raise funds, strategize, design, recruit, schedule, manage, lobby and prevail.
One other candidate claims management experience as an office manager of a political consulting company. My wife was Assistant to the North American President of a significant International automotive supply company with responsibility for office management and human resources. She staffed executive decisions, but that is far different from being an owner/CEO meeting payrolls and with front line primary responsibility for projects and families. She now owns a couple successful companies but it was a huge leap from staff to CEO.

The Chair of the Michigan Republican Party must manage millions of dollars, many employees and thousands of volunteers. We have not had a Republican presidential elector in 26 years – six election cycles. Five of the six elections prior we did, and I was instrumental in all of them from delegate, directing Reagan’s campaign, as a District Chair when we recruited and trained 600 precinct delegates, County Chair when we turned out record votes, and Elector, nominating President Reagan. I believe the experience is clear, proven leadership. I can best prepare and lead the MRP into a successful presidential campaign in 2016.

Thank you again, for your inquiry. I look forward to seeing you in Lansing.

Godspeed,
Norm Hughes

FROM: Roland Bell

You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? –Matthew 7:16 Tomorrow, Michigan Republican Delegates will elect who they want to lead

A Choice Not An Echo

You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?
–Matthew 7:16

Tomorrow, Michigan Republican Delegates will elect who they want to lead their party: who they want to make the rules, who they want as the face of their organization.

It’s no coincidence that Republican Party leadership is elected less than two months after the new term begins, just as it’s no coincidence that massive tax increases are proposed in Lansing two weeks after the November election.

If the party convention was held six months from now, delegates might demand their leaders hold politicians accountable for their bad behavior, which is typically evident six months into a term.

That is nothing they want now, when the Party Establishment is, once again, pushing upon the delegation its choice for Chair, draped as always in warm words for the grassroots Republicans who labored in the precincts to elect these politicians.

Yet even held this early, we can glance over to the national stage, where our elected representatives remind us that it’s for the Establishment they work for, regardless of whether the grassroots elected them.

Ann Coulter explains how the Republican Establishment is already selling the grassroots out on amnesty for illegal immigrants:

Back when they needed our votes before the last election, Republicans were hairy-chested warriors, vowing to block Obama’s unconstitutional “executive amnesty” — if only voters gave them a Senate majority. The resulting Republican landslide suggested some opposition to amnesty.

Heading into the election, college professor Dave Brat took out the sitting House majority leader and amnesty supporter Eric Cantor in a primary, despite being outspent 40-1. It was the greatest upset in history since the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” at the Lake Placid Olympics: Never before has a House majority leader been defeated in a primary. And Brat did it by an astonishing 55.5 percent to 45.5 percent.

Again, the voters seemed to be expressing disquiet with amnesty.

After that, even amnesty-supporting Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., was denouncing Obama’s executive amnesty. “If the president were to do that,” he said, “and we have a Republican majority in the United States Senate, why, we have a number of options that we don’t now have to remind him to read Article I of the Constitution.”

Poll after poll showed Americans ranking illegal immigration as the No. 1 most important problem facing the nation. We haven’t changed our minds. Last week, an Associated Press-Gfk poll showed that Obama’s single most unpopular policy is his position on illegal immigration.

In other words, Obamacare is more popular than amnesty. That’s like losing a popularity contest to Ted Bundy.

Since at least 2006, voters have insistently told pollsters they don’t want amnesty. Seemingly bulletproof Republican congressmen have lost their seats over amnesty. President Bush lost the entire House of Representatives over amnesty. What else do we have to do to convince you we don’t want amnesty, Republicans? Make it a host on “The View”?

Before the election, then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell complained that Obama’s decision to delay his executive amnesty until after the election was a ploy to prevent Americans from “hold(ing) his party accountable in the November elections.”

But voters went ahead and held Obama accountable! Now McConnell is Senate majority leader — and he claims his hands are tied.

McConnell’s spokesman at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Brad Dayspring, predicted that Obama’s amnesty threat would drive voters to “elect a new Senate (that) will stand up to the president.”

Check! Mission accomplished! Done and done! Officially off our bucket list. OK, guys, your turn. When do you start standing up to the president? Hello? Hell-oooo?

To gin up votes, “Republican insiders” told the Washington Examiner last fall that “the results of the midterm elections” would determine how “aggressive” the GOP would be in fighting Obama’s amnesty.

Voters gave you a blow-out victory, Republicans. You cleaned their clocks. (Have you seen Harry Reid lately?) Where’s that promised aggression on amnesty?

Republicans and George Will tell us they can’t stand up to Obama’s executive amnesty because the media are unfair.

Oh, well, in that case … never mind. [...]

Why don’t Republicans spend all their airtime attacking the media for lying about what Obama’s amnesty does and what the Democrats are doing? It’s hard to avoid concluding that Republicans aren’t trying to make the right arguments. In fact, it kind of looks like they’re intentionally throwing the fight on amnesty.

If a Republican majority in both houses of Congress can’t stop Obama from issuing illegal immigrants Social Security cards and years of back welfare payments, there is no reason to vote Republican ever again.

The Republican Establishment never opposed amnesty. The Republican Establishment is not even truly Republican. It’s just the Establishment.

As conservative matriarch Phyllis Schlafly explained in her recently updated 1964 classic, A Choice Not An Echo:
After Mitt Romney’s November 2012 defeat, the Republican National Committee issued a ninety-seven page report that commentators called an “Autopsy.” The Republican Party was not really dead as the title implied, but it was bleeding from the Establishment’s mistakes, namely, imposing on us a series of losers–Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, all so-called moderates. The highly paid Republican srategists instructed all candidates not to discuss social or moral issues and were so incompetent that they lost nearly all the US Senate races on which they spent three hundred million dollars in television ads (pocketing a handsome percentage of that figure in fees, of course.)

Romney and his paid staff made no effort to reach out to various subgroups such as the Tea Parties, or the Reagan Democrats (who were looking for a leader to stop the hemorrhaging of US jobs to Asia), or the social issue conservatives. Then Romney insulted the libertarians. Ron Paul claimed 177 duly elected delegates to the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, but Romney’s people refused to allow their votes to be announced during the roll call of states.

The RNC’s Autopsy included a lot of chatter about “growth” and “opportunity.” Thirty times it brought up the need to be more “inclusive,” but that inclusiveness did not extend to those who want to talk about the right to life or traditional marriage. The Autopsy pompously declared, “You have to have candidates who don’t make tragic mistakes,” but the fatal mistakes were made by the Establishment’s own candidates and their strategists. The Establishment has a worse record of picking candidates than the grassroots, who have picked winners such as Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee.

[Any of this sound familiar? Who picked Terri Lynn Land to run for US Senate last year? The Establishment, or the grassroots?]

The liberal pollster Patrick Caddell summarized the Republican problem. “The Republican Party is in the grips of what I call the CLEC–the Consultant, Lobbylist, and Establishment Complex,” which he defined as “a self-serving interconnected network of individuals interest in preserving their own power far more than in winning elections.” Caddell reminded us, “Just follow the money,” commenting on the hundreds of millions of dollars this group spent on the losing efforts of most of their so-called “moderate” candidates.

The most insufferable part of the Autopsy’s advice is the admonition to embrace comprehensive immigration “reform.” Massive evidence collected by Eagle Forum from the leading pollsters proves that endorsing or legislating any form of amnesty will produce votes for Democrats, not Republicans.
And now here we are.

The Establishment’s candidate is absolutely clear. In fact, this year it’s never been clearer: instead of two competing factions (DeVos and Yob) both factions have united behind one candidate.

Ronna Romney McDaniel is the Establishment’s candidate and everybody knows it. Nobody is so foolish as to deny it.

The past two presidential campaign cycles were engineered by the Party Establishment to benefit one candidate, Mitt Romney, who was assumed to walk away with Michigan since after all, he was born here and his father was governor. Hence, the primary was moved very early, in defiance of RNC rules, as the “Mitt-mentum” Michigan was expected to create would help him. If it meant our national delegation was stripped by half, so be it–the state party was all in for Romney, and set the rules for his benefit.

Now that Mitt is not running, the state legislature just voted to push Michigan’s primary back behind “Super Tuesday,” often the deciding date in the nomination process, removing any remaining relevance we might have had in the presidential race, since, after all, the Establishment’s chosen candidate, the pro-amnesty, pro-Common Core Jeb Bush, has no interest in Michigan.

There is no need to speculate how Ronna Romney McDaniel, member of the Republican Royal Family, would govern the Michigan Republican Party. We can see it happening now.

So instead of pretending Ronna Romney McDaniel is not the Establishment, we are told that yes, Ronna Romney McDaniel is the Establishment, but a kinder, gentler Establishment, one that will be inclusive to the grassroots.

We are told, Look! Ronna has lots of experience working with the grassroots! Really? How so?

She was an early backer of David Trott, the Establishment’s pick to knock out Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, the so-called “accidental congressman” whose only crime was being an ordinary citizen elected in extraordinary circumstances. Bentivolio was a “grassroots” politician if ever there was one, but Ronna, along with the rest of the Establishment, decided it was time to knock off a Republican incumbent. (No issue with Bentivolio’s voting record was ever cited, of course.)

Her record consists of backing campaigns (selectively, as we have seen) and holding party offices. These are easy things to do when your grandfather was our governor.

McDaniel has never held elected office, so we have no basis for separating campaign oratory from grounding principles that would be put into effect. She has never led an issue advocacy campaign.

She was not elected by a state delegation in convention assembled, but by the state central committee, to her post as National Committeewoman. She had no “grassroots vetting” process then.

We have no record of substance to demonstrate that Ronna Romney McDaniel’s overtures to the grassroots are anything more than campaign rhetoric.

We are told, Look! She has chosen Jeff Sakwa for co-chair! He’s definitely with the grassroots!

The cochair is subordinate to the chair, just as the Vice President is subordinate to the President, so it doesn’t matter; and in the same manner as a Vice President’s true purpose is as a running mate, an individual to bring otherwise lost factions out to vote for the President, that a perceived “grassroots” candidate is tapped to run for co-chair is an admission of her problems with that area.

But that aside, what qualifies Jeff Sakwa as a grassroots candidate? He has never held elected office of any kind.

His record consists of twice losing races for MSU Board of Regents. That’s it.

He too has no record to back up the rhetoric.

But Sakwa is irrelevant. If elected, Ronna Romney McDaniel calls the shots, which is to say the Establishment calls the shots.

The fact is as plain as day: The Establishment is pushing Ronna Romney McDaniel on the party.

With no record whatsoever of standing up to the Establishment, Ronna Romney McDaniel expects us to believe she is one of us.

The question is simply this: are we gullible enough too believe it?

Roland Bell is a pseudonym. In the world of politics where there are consequences for not “going along to get along,” anonymity is sometimes the only option.

Posted from Roland Bell email by @JLenardDetroit
support Norm Hughes for MIGOP Chair
@NormForChair http://www.normforchair.com

From CLOSETHEPRIMARY
(just one reason I am supporting @NormForChair)

From: CLOSE THE PRIMARY
(just ONE of the reasons I am supporting Norm Hughes for MIGOP Chair)

Alert For Grassroots Conservatives!

This week Lansing politicians passed a bill for another Open Primary in Michigan. Unfortunately, they are dishonest and call the bill a Closed Primary. The fact remains that it isn’t possible to close a primary in Michigan without party registration, and this bill does not include party registration.

If you are opposed to Democrats trying to steal our primary elections like happened in Mississippi and across Michigan for the past few cycles, please consider the following action items:

1) Tell your legislators to stop perpetuating the lie regarding their Open Primary bill. Let them know that you don’t want Democrats voting in our primaries, and that you don’t appreciate the dishonesty they are showing by lying and referring to this as a Closed Primary.

Contact a GOP House Member

Contact a GOP Senate Member

2) Vote for State Committee Members this weekend who won’t perpetuate the lie put forward by the legislature and instead will support a closed process. Since the legislature passed the Open Primary bill this week the only options State Committee has are Caucuses like Iowa, a Party run Primary like in South Carolina, or a State Convention like in 1988.

3) It is not accurate to say that a party run primary would cost the party money because the party can charge the campaigns to participate. In Iowa they charge for the list, and in South Carolina they charge for ballot access. Therefore, it doesn’t need to cost the party anything.

Please help stop the lie, and stop the Open Primary, and instead support a closed process that doesn’t allow Democrats to vote.

Please also ONLY vote for candidates for Michigan Republican State Committee who will support closing the process from Democrats voting – regardless of the legislature choosing to waste $10 million on an open primary that doesn’t have any role in allocating delegates to the National Convention.

This message sent to @jlenarddetroit by [email protected]
Close the Primary
1 Ionia Avenue SW
Grand Rapids, MI 49503