Optimism About the 2022 Elections
Posted by Fred Scheibl on January 29, 2022 · Leave a Comment
Our January meeting featured our county GOP Chairman Michael Barnett, with good news on our readiness for the 2022 elections.
Referring to former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s insight that having multiple candidates on the ballot helps to get out the vote, he pointed out that we have Congressional candidates running in all 4 of the county districts, and state-wide we may pick up a seat. Lots of candidates have come forward to run at the state and local level as well, and our candidate recruitment efforts are going well.
Fundraising, locally and statewide, has gone through the roof (Lincoln Day on March 12 is about sold out), and the party has money to support all the Republicans who emerge from the primaries. (The party does not take sides in primaries).
In 2020 the party had 4 branch offices running in the county and this year we may have 5 or 6, counting the DeSantis and Mast offices. We are one of the few parties in the state with both federal and local campaign accounts, so support for the candidates for Congress as well as state and local can be intermixed in the offices.
Governor DeSantis only won by about 30,000 votes in 2018, but this year his popularity is high and he is doing great things so we expect a much better margin. The Democrats really have a weak bench (Charley Crist is a multiple times loser, and Nikki Fried is under investigation.) We cannot drop our guard however. The county DeSantis person, Natalie Fisher has opened an office at our HQ location on Palm Beach Lakes.
The Republican Executive Committee (REC) has been greatly expanded over the last year and now has 323 members, with some months seeing up to 50 new swearing-ins. The precincts have been organized with seven regional directors based on the school board districts working with vice-chairman Tami Donnally.
All in all, Michael is optimistic about our likely success this year.
Also at the meeting were candidates Peter Noble (Greenacres council), Steven Chess (CD22), and Angela Templeton spoke for Jennifer Showalter (SB6).
Next month we will have a special meeting on the March municipal elections, with participation by candidates running in the north and central county. Many of these are incumbents and need your support.