About 60-70 leaders from various statewide tea party member organizations met on a sunny Saturday in downtown Richmond at the Crowne Plaza Hotel to listen to various speakers and share information/strategy. New for this meeting was that we had a live broadcast of BlogTalkRadio by Craig “the Hatchet Man” Johnson, with a couple live interviews of meeting attendees! We heard about topics like:
- Engaging Millennials from Elliot Harding
- Legislative update/CoLA committee report on the 2017 General Assembly session from Carol Stopps
- The need to remain unafraid and speak truth from Craig Johnson
- Many tea party victory stories from across the Commonwealth from several group leaders
- A fantastic presentation on The (liberty!) Philosophy Behind the Republican Creed from state delegate Nick Freitas
We also conducted our private business meeting to give operational updates and to discuss some go-forward strategy items. Of note is that we identified a new volunteer to fill the much-needed events chairman position.
One of the items discussed was how to stay abreast of Federation happenings/stay informed. Here’s a recap of the various methods all TP member groups and supporters should activate:
- Get subscribed to our newsletter…this is a primary communication method: SUBSCRIBE NOW!
- Like our page on Facebook: FRIEND US
- Follow us on Twitter (@VTPederation): FOLLOW US
- Watch our website: MAIN WEBSITE LINK
We’d like to thank our gracious exhibitor table sponsors FreedomWorks and the Ed Gillespie and Corey Stewart campaigns for helping to make the event possible. If you weren’t there…you missed a good one! Stay tuned to our communications to plan to attend the next summit meeting!
Additionally, we are sponsoring a Candidate Forum on April 22nd at Goochland County High School …be sure check out the event calendar for more details!
Event Pictures can be found on Flickr.
We want to inform all our former Tea Party associates that the two remaining Tea Parties on the Northern Neck are now defunct. The 99th District Tea Party and the Montross Tea Party are no more.
99th District Tea Party
The 99th District Tea Party formerly met monthly in Lively. We are now defunct — our website is down, our Facebook page was last updated in April 2015, and we are no longer meeting. Attendance at meetings started declining in mid-2015.
A watershed event occurred in October 2015 when we held a candidates’ forum for local candidates where our then-president Don Johnson was emcee. Don acted his usual self — a horse’s ass — shutting down the candidates he didn’t like as well as shutting down audience questions he didn’t like.
Another event was in early 2016 when our guest speaker was a wackdoodle named John Guandolo. Released by the Marine Corps and fired from the FBI, he set himself up as an expert on “radical Islam.” In his appearance, he announced that President Obama and former CIA head John Brennan were “closet Muslims.” The local press destroyed him and the 99th District Tea Party lost the last shred of credibility.
The 99th tried to re-from itself as the “First District Freedom Coalition,” however, this fledgling organization never held a first meeting. The FDFC has scheduled another anti-Muslim “expert” for their first meeting. However, the church where the meeting was to be held threw them out, the meeting was cancelled, and the FDFC faded.
Montross Tea Party
The Montross Tea Party Facebook page is still somewhat active, with posts about every six weeks from one die-hard member. However, meetings attract no more than 6-8 people. Their “patriotic” events — reading the Constitution in the town square, July 4 celebrations, and the like — draw no one, not even members.
We have not met since October 2016 and no meetings are currently scheduled.
Signs
In the case of both the 99th and Montross Tea Parties: We erected 4X8 bright yellow signs along highways in Westmoreland, Northumberland, and Lancaster counties that are still standing. We planned to remove them but cannot find any volunteers to take down the signs.