County GOP Convention

Yesterday was the Utah County Republican party convention. I had several things going - I was there to help Morgan Philpot with his campaign for Utah Republican party vice-chair, to support and cheer for Lynn Taylor, running for county party treasurer, and for whom I acted as a campaign advisor, my own race to get on the state central committee and a party platform amendment that I had proposed, specifically about parents having the right to choose their family size and including adoptive parents in the right to have a family.


After a meager 2 hours of sleep, I got up at 4 am to get ready and load up. By 5, I and two of the girls - Kadee and Becca - were ready to go. We stopped at Wal-Mart to buy rope and cinder blocks, then made it to the Jr High in Orem where the convention was held by 6 am. We were not the first ones there.....

We set up and had the first delegates coming in by 6:30. Our first meeting was at 7, for all candidates, followed by a central committee meeting at 7:30 where my platform amendment was adopted, to a Senate district meeting at 8, a House district meeting at 8:40 (where my political blog was plugged by my Rep) and finally, the general session at 9:30.

Congressman Jason Chaffetz rocked the house, with standing ovations at the beginning and end of his remarks, plus plenty of applause in-between. He was greeted with cheers and loud applause as he began with “Welcome, fellow terrorists!” Obviously popular and well-liked, he talked about his recent visit to Iraq and Afghanistan, the out-of-control spending in DC and affirmed to the approving crowd that “We will not support a president who goes around the world to apologize for our being the economic and military superpower”. His speech stood in stark contrast to Senator Bob Bennett’s and Senator Orrin Hatch’s, both of whom received the barest of applause. Senator Bennett said he could stand and be a cheerleader - or he could tell the truth (basically, the same speech as Friday night). He then said the crowd had already had the cheerleading (from Congressman Chaffetz), so now he was going to tell the truth. Senator Hatch spent his time talking about the bad things that can happen when someone runs more conservative than a moderate Republican Senator and warned against throwing the election to the Democrats by supporting a young, conservative “hot shot”. Hmmm. Running for re-election by offending the conservative block of the second-largest county in the state....is that wise?

At the end of the day, my friend Lynn won by the biggest margin of any candidate, my platform amendement was approved, then ratified by the entire body and I came in 26th out of 52 - but only 20 got on. Morgan's race goes until mid-June....