President’s Message
I hope everyone had a very happy 4th of July with family and friends. Summer is in full swing!
Most clubs go dark in the summer and we are busy with vacations or relaxing at the beach, a lake or in the mountains but we still have important work to do, especially in an election year.
The summer provides us with many opportunities to register more Republican voters at summer block parties, arts & crafts fairs, volunteering at County fairs, candidate events, or walking precincts and working at phone banks. During election season be sure you always carry not just voter registration forms but also you club brochures and membership applications! We need to continue to recruit more members so we can have an army of boots on the ground in November to GOTV. Keep a supply of forms, brochures and applications in your car trunks as well. You never know when you will meet a new Republican so be prepared!
Be sure to send in your voter registration information to your Division Voter Registration Chair each month. CFRW has a very exciting contest with certificates and even a trophy to help inspire you to register even more voters during this critical election cycle. The more Republicans we register to vote the more Republican votes we have to help our candidates win and the greater number of members we can appoint to the CRP.
Don’t forget to keep track of all your volunteer hours on a monthly basis. You might want to carry a small calendar with you to record the hours you work, and remember to include the travel time to and from a volunteer event. Club President’s be sure you appoint a Volunteer Hours Chair for your club to collect and tally all the volunteer hours your club puts in. There will be 6 awards given at the 2015 NFRW Convention so keep adding up your hours! Check out the CFRW website for more information. Remember you want to include volunteer hours from July 1, 2013 -June 30, 2015.
If you have not seen the movie America, please check out a location in your area and invite friends to join you. Dinesh D’Souza offers a passionate and sharply reasoned defense of America, knocking down every important accusation made by progressives against our country. This is a movie every voter needs to see, so lets all help get the word out.
God Bless America
Thank you for all you do,
Roseann
Working Together To Make A Difference
Recount in CA
California is in the midst of a recount for the state controller’s race. The Republican candidate, Ashley Swearengin, was the top vote getter for this race. Battling it out for second place is Democrat Board of Equalization member Betty Yee and Democrat Assemblyman John Perez. Perez called for a recount in 15 counties when his campaign saw that only 481 votes separated him from Yee’s second place finish. With just over 4 million votes cast in the State Controller’s race, this is the closest election margin in California history. The recount efforts in 15 counties will also be the largest recount in California’s modern era. But Perez is only calling for votes to be recounted in counties where he did well, as Yee said in a statement, “Cherry-picking only the 15 counties that he won, and sorting the precincts within the counties to reflect his strongest areas indicates that he has no interest in a fair and impartial recount.” In L.A. county alone, the recount could cost as much as $1 million and the candidate pays the bill. The 15 counties have been working overtime to certify the recount ballots by tomorrow, July 11th.
NFRW Talking Points- The Hobby Lobby Decision
- Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (5-4) in favor of Hobby Lobby.
- Hobby Lobby is a closely-held private company. The evangelical owners of the Oklahoma-based craft chain claimed the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare") violated their First Amendment right to religious freedom. The Supreme Court agreed.
- The case is about religious freedom, not contraception.
- The health care plan that Hobby Lobby provides its employees covers 16 of 20 types of contraceptives mandated under the Affordable Care Act.
- The four it does not cover are considered abortifacients (i.e., IUDs and the morning-after pill).
- Speaker of the House John Boehner remarked, "The mandate overturned today would have required for-profit companies to choose between violating their constitutionally-protected faith or paying crippling fines, which would have forced them to lay off employees or close their doors."
- Hobby Lobby employs 13,000 people.
- Hobby Lobby voluntarily pays its full-time employees at least $14 an hour - almost twice the federal minimum wage.
- The Hobby Lobby decision adds momentum for Republicans seeking to regain control of the Senate by highlighting the ongoing problems with the Affordable Care Act, which passed by the narrowest of margins on a partisan vote.
- Earlier the same week, the Supreme Court struck down another example of government overreach - unanimously determining that President Obama exceeded his authority by making "recess appointments" to the National Labor Relations Board during a brief Senate break
