District Annual Reports to GFRW

GEORGIA FEDERATION OF REPUBLICAN WOMEN’S ELEVENTH DISTRICT CLUB’S ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR OF 2006 by Tonya C. Boga, District Director boga@belawgroup.com   Jan. 19-20, 2007 GFRW Winter Board Meeting   The Eleventh District consists of four clubs in four counties: Bartow, Carroll, Cobb, and Floyd.  Each club has had an outstanding year and shares with you some of its highlights below:   Bartow: The Bartow Republican Women’s club enjoyed its first year as a chartered club. I feel for our first year we reached out to the community as much as possible and look forward to more in the future. We held monthly meetings except for December. January– first official group meeting February– met and discussed speaker for next meeting, also discussed press re lease on Women’s History month. March– Had speaker on the Public effects of autism, mercury in vaccinations, and the future National impact. Sent press release on Women’s history, but was unpublished. April– All of primary election discussion. May– Had a speaker on the Meth problem and how this effects the entire Community. June- Finalized the 4th of July plans, and geared up for Governor visit. July– We took part in the 4th of July parade. We handed out Dog treats, in bags, we had business cards attached with our web address that read if your dog could vote they would Vote Republican. We also had a booth at the 4th of July Festival that we shared with the county GOP! August– We had a visit from the Governor’s campaign which many of the Ladies worked, and Sent photos to the local paper September– We finalized our plans for a community town hall meeting. We also approved a flyer to get out for election day with an issue that was going to be on our ballot to flyer the community. October- We hosted a Stem Cell researcher and Congressman Phil Gingrey at the Chamber of Commerce. We had 40 in attendance, plus were able to give all who attended material on all the candidates and issues. November– We had a big push the weekend before the election, door to door, and flyers and sign waving. Our end of the month meeting was an unwind time and look to 2007. December– Off, we meet the last Thursday of the month, December was time with family January 2007– We are planning on doing a press release before the Anniversary of Roe v Wade, to give an award to Congressman Gingrey for his continued work and stand on the Sanctity of Life, we plan this to be an annual award. We are also working on having a town Hall meeting with a speaker on Immigration. The BCRW is small, but we have allot of interest and already have new members for 2007. We have a website. I was the Re-Election Chair for the 11th Congressional District, so MANY weekly hours in the Governor’s campaign, plus many of the Ladies joined in who had not in the past. We post our monthly meetings in the local paper each month, plus ads when we have a special speaker. We are working with another county that is interested in beginning a Women’s Republican chapter soon. Our newsletter has just been finished and gone out, so we are going to have this quarterly. We had a member run for office, and even though she did not win her bid the group worked to help her. We are excited about how our 2006 went and look forward to more and growing in 2007! Mindie Glidewell, President     Carroll County Regional Republican Women’s   1.     Organizational meeting held Thursday, September 21, 2006 at Fairfield Plantation Country Club, Villa Rica, Georgia at 7:00 p.m., twelve women in attendance.  Vote taken to form a club, write By-Laws, determine meeting date(s), time, location, and the following officers were elected:   President-Debra Jo Steele 1st V.P.-Laura Johnson (also Chair of Literacy Com.) 2nd V.P.-Jennifer Miller (also Webmaster) Treasurer-Sharon Gedert (later resigned position, but Membership Chair)(currently open position) Recording Secretary-Angela Crohn.   2.     Worked with the local Carroll County Republican Party as volunteers “phone banking” during the months of  September, October, and November. 3.     President meet with Executive Board members of the Carroll County Republican Party to discuss amending their By-Laws to give the President of CCRRW a position of the Executive Board with voting privileges. 4.     CCRRW membership volunteered in the campaign offices of Karen Handel and Governor Perdue, and supported Perry McGuire fundraiser here in Carrollton. 5.     President attended GFRW Fall Board meeting in St. Simons Island where CCRRW Club was officially chartered on the 6th of October.  Also had a very successful Candidate Bus Tour along the golden isle for our slate of State Candidates and participated in a parade in St. Mary’s. 6.     First Community Service Event was our Flu Shot Clinic held on two consecutive Saturdays, October 21st and October 28th from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the ReMax Office and co-sponsored by Kroger and the loan of their pharmacist (Jim Johnson) to give the inoculations.  So successful (served approx. 84 citizens, at $10.00 less per shot than other local venues, and free to Medicaid recipients) that we will make this an annual event. 7.     October 24, 2006 was first official meeting.  GFRW President Millie Rogers and President Susan Roberts attended, with Millie “swearing in” our officers.  Director of LIFT (Literacy is for Today & Tomorrow), Laura Miller introduced her literacy program and brought one of her graduates, County Sheriff’s officer Charlene Caldwell who shared her incredible success story. Voted to support LIFT. Fund Raiser: raffled off Ann Coulter’s autographed book “Godless - The Church of Liberalism.” 8.     November 2nd, CCRRW filled two front rows at “The Governor’s Breakfast at the Mansion” here in Carroll County.  Both Governor Perdue and U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson recognized CCRRW, thanked President Debra Jo Steele for forming the club and encouraged everyone to join and lend their support. 9.     Small contingent attended the Election night party at the Wingate Hotel at Perimeter Mall and watched the election results come in.  What a great evening for Republicans! 10. November 27th, Recording Secretary, Angela Crohn and Representative Tim Bearden spoke on WLLB 1330 a.m. radio to discuss Illegal Immigration and CCRRW, since our guest the next evening would be D.A. King, an authority on the problems of illegal immigration.  Retrieved a copy of the tape for our club history. 11. November 28th was our second meeting, which we opened up to the entire community, and rented the WPA building downtown to accommodate as many people as possible.  D.A. King did a wonderful job of educating our community, county commissioner, county sheriff, and elected officials on how we can stem the tide of illegal immigration.  Overwhelming success and we will have this speaker back in 2007 (along with his offer to give special classes to our City and County Commissioners). Fund Raiser: Raffled off signed copy (by author and CCRRW Executive Board, and elected officials attending the meeting) of Bill O’Reilly’s book, “Culture Warrior.” 12. November 30th, CCRRW participated in the Carroll County Christmas parade.  Our theme was to remember our soldiers. 13. November 30th, President Debra Jo Steele was invited to speak on a ½ hour radio program with Ken Childs, WLLB 1330 a.m. and shared with our community CCRRW, GFRW, and NFRW  philosophy, structure, and service. 14. Second V.P., Jennifer Miller, is in the process of ordering Republican pens and jewelry to raise money for our club. 15. Last meeting of 2007 was December 22nd at Ryan’s Steak House.  We now have a meeting time and place which is off of Fairfield Plantation in the hopes it will help our club to grow.  It was also our CCRRW Christmas party.  Our guest speaker was Commander Eddie Sudduth of the Carroll County VFW and his second in command, Michael O’Bryon who taught us proper flay etiquette and distributed pamphlets.  They also gave us permission to post this information on our website: www.ccrrw.org.   We are looking forward to the new year.  We’ve already partnered with Carroll County Republican membership and Haralson Republican Party membership to join us at our first meeting of 2007 (Jan.15th, we now meet every 3rd Monday of the month) and our guest speaker is Sue Everhart, who is running for the Chairmanship of the State GOP.  We will also have our VFW friends back for another short lesson on flag etiquette.  Also, the VFW is starting a new program they want to share with us regarding “adopting a unit of American soldiers in Iraq.”  We are very interested in learning more about this program.  The President and 1st Vice President, along with their husbands, will be attending the Inaugural events on Monday, January 8, 2007.  We are also looking forward to attending the GFRW Winter meeting from Jan. 19-20, 2007.   I’ve got some fundraising ideas to put before my membership for 2007.  One would be a golf tournament at Fairfield Plantation; the other is for our Soldiers.  I’d like to partner with the local VFW post to hold a BINGO night with all proceeds raised to support our soldiers, i.e., phone cards, and care packages.    Respectfully submitted this 5th day of January 2007, Debra Jo Steele, President-CCRRW     Cobb County Republican Women Club ccrwc.org 770-285-2522     This year started out very exciting for Cobb County Republican Women with Governor Purdue as our speaker in February. We had great attendance of 160 people to hear him map out his plan for his upcoming election. It was very enlightening and also motivating. Our Caring for America charity was The Shield Foundation that provides educational scholarships for the public safety employees, like policemen and firemen, and to provide catastrophic assistance to them and their families. We raised $500. We are also donating a book, signed by our speakers, to our partner in education Brumby Elementary School.  In March, we had a representative of the legislature fill us in on what happened in the 2006 General Assembly Session. And in April, Vernadette Broyles spoke about the New Face of the Supreme Court.    We had to reschedule our seminar by past President Linda Beggs, How to Sell an Elephant. She will take you from how to deal with the media to how what you wear affects what people hear you say. It will be at a later date due to an illness in the family. That will be an informative day you won’t want to miss. We are updating our directory and it will be out this month. Every other month we have a great raffle to help raise money on the months we don’t have a Caring for America Project. And our Ways and Means Chairman, Mary Van Brink is doing a fantastic job of finding the right things to sell for our meetings, from Republican scarves, pins, books, flags etc.   We are also excited Governor Perdue will be kicking off his campaign in Cobb County on May 1st.  We all will be working hard to get him re-elected. At this time CCRWC has 218 members and 117 Associate members for a total of 335. We meet the 4th Friday of every month at the Marietta Conference Center, at11:45. We are planning our upcoming Forums, on Cobb Channel 23 in June, and our Get-Out-The-Vote Rally on July 13th.  June We had 2 Forums for state wide and local candidates, at our Commissioners Board room and were televised on our local cable channel.  It was a good opportunity to educate our voters about our Republican candidates for the primary election. Our luncheon that month was a Forum for Secretary of State candidates; Charlie Bailey, Karen Handel and Bill Stephens.   July We had the Get-Out-the-Vote Rally on July 13th. We had several hundred people in attendance. And, most of the local and statewide candidates were able to attend. Another great way to get there message out to Cobb County voters and let their volunteers partake in some free food and desserts. We were glad to have our Past Commission Chairman, Bill Byrne speak about what it means to be A Proud Conservative at the July luncheon.   August National Committeewoman, Linda Herron reported back to us after attending the RNC summer meeting. She did a great job of letting us know how much Washington is doing for us, considering that is not what we hear about in the news. We are excited to report about our Caring for America project for August.  Cobb Street Ministries help the needs of homeless and hurting pregnant women and women with small children. We raised over $600 with another $200 in items collected for the shelter.   September D.A. King, an illegal immigration activist spoke to us about what are the consequences of unsecured borders and illegal immigration. We continue to donate books, signed by our speakers, to our partner in education, Brumby elementary school. And we have established for the first time, a $1000 scholarship to a freshman or sophomore in college who has worked hard for a Teen, College or Young Republican group in our county.     We will also be donating $100 to a Teen Republican Group in the county.   October We were honored to help host a Ladies Tea for Mary Perdue at State Representative Judy Manning’s home on October 14th with about 150 ladies attending. It was a great opportunity for Mary to spread her message about her husband to Cobb County women. Aside from working hard to help with campaigns, we also had our 4th Annual Veteran’s Celebration Day Brunch on October 28th. Wes Sarginson, anchor for 11 Alive News, was the Master of Ceremonies and our Keynote Speaker Termite Watkins spoke of Honoring Service to our Nation. He also spoke of the good things happening over in Iraq and how well a job our servicemen are doing there.  It was a very moving program.   November What an exciting campaign year.  Our state held on to our Red State status and we even sent both of our Congressmen back to Washington. We waved signs, walked in parades and helped with the statewide rallies for all of our candidates. At our last general meeting, our speaker was Senator Johnny Isakson. He spoke of the upcoming climate in Washington and what they hope to accomplish. The new officers were voted on and they will be installed at our January 28th meeting. Our awards will be handed out at the January meeting also. We voted on the Sue Everhart New Member Award, Mary Aven  Award for 5 years of service to CCRWC, Women of the Year, and the Trumpet Award for an elected official that has supported us the most during the year.   December We had our board meeting Christmas party at the Marietta Conference Center’s restaurant, Hamilton’s. It was a nice way to end the year and my Presidency. The last order of business was picking the 1st recipient of our $1000 Babe Atkins-Byrne Scholarship.  She is a very deserving young lady, and I’m sure she will help many Republicans get elected as well as herself one day.   PRESIDENT, Susan Roberts     FLOYD.   The state of the Floyd County Republican Women's Club is solvent.  After a grueling five months of campaigning, Floyd County women have worked at three large events.  Two of these were attended by three and four hundred people.  The third was a fund raiser for newly elected State Representative Katie Dempsey, District 13, first time republican in that position and first time for a female.  That event was attended by two hundred guests.  For all three events, we played integral parts to organizing and setting up for the festivities.  Many days and hours were volunteered  to get the job done.  These ladies continue to amaze our thankful elected officials.  All our Floyd County candidates were elected and re-elected. Our efforts to reach out to the community continue to be strong.  Adopting the children's Open Door Home as a project was our treasurer's great idea.  Allana Mathis makes sure these fifty young girls are equipped for school, receive Christmas gifts, and sent to the circus when it is in town.  They were also treated to a Sonny Perdue BBQ that one of our members paid for.    In conclusion, we here in Floyd are thriving and grateful for all the well equipped candidates who continue to step up to the plate.  Respectfully submitted, Cookie Wozniak Chairman, FCRW