The committees of the Republican Liberty Caucus are the backbone of our organization. People from all over the country with specialized skills in many areas come together to keep the RLC moving forward and successful. However, we are always looking for a new perspective from our members. Committee volunteers are needed all year round.
Republican Liberty Caucus Committees include:
Candidate Committee
This committee tracks our current legislators in Washington, DC to evaluate how the align with the RLC ideals and principles. The Candidate Committee is also tasked with finding candidates throughout the country that align with the RLC principles and all RLC endorsements.
Communications Committee
The Communications Committee handles all communications for the RLC. This would include social media volunteers, article writers for the newsletter and website, website management, press release writing and email creation.
Convention Committee
This committee overseas and organizes the bi-annual National Republican Liberty Caucus Convention. Members could be tasked with volunteer coordination at the convention, tasks during the convention operation and planning.
Fundraising Committee
The Fundraising Committee looks for new opportunities or events that would help bring in donations for the Republican Liberty Caucus.
Membership Committee
This Committee Implements new ideas for membership growth and management of the RLC database.
If you feel you have skills to help any of our committees, please contact the Operations Director, Danielle Snitker at Danielle@RLC.org
2018 was a great year for the Republican Liberty Caucus. A flurry of new activity saw states all over the country reorganizing and building. States like South Carolina and Ohio held largely successful conventions bringing in new members and leadership while other states like Missouri and Louisiana who had become less active reorganized.
Our membership and supporters have grown to over 30,000 strong and 2019 is already beginning with new organizational meetings to keep building on the momentum of the past year.
This month organizational meetings will be held for 4 states:
The RLC of Kansas will be held on January 8th
The RLC of Nevada will be held on January 10th
The RLC of Massachusetts will be held on January 16th
The RLC of Arkansas will be held on January 17th
This is only the beginning with many more states looking to expand. These meetings will be held by the Republican Liberty Caucus’ national executive director, Alex Snitker and will go over information on how the National Republican Liberty Caucus can help our state charters be successful. These organizational meetings helped many of our states become not only more active but hold incredible influence on the political landscape in their states.
If you would like more information on how to help reorganize the charter in your state contact Alex@RLC.org
Call your system phone number.
If you have a menu with a custom greeting, press star (*) then enter your extension number.
or
Once you have reached a voicemail box press star (*).
Enter your password.
Press 1 to check voicemail.
Downloading messages as mp3 files
To download a message as an mp3 file, in the Messages table simply click the download icon ()for the message you wish to download. You will be prompted by your browser as to where to save the file.
Recording your outgoing message
When making a recording be sure to use a high-quality phone in a quiet room for a better quality sounding message. Background noise and a poor phone will only contribute to your message sounding unprofessional. Write your message down and practice it before starting to record. If you make a mistake or are unhappy with your recording, you can rerecord it at any time.
Call your system phone number.
If you have a menu with a custom greeting, press star (*) then enter your extension number.
or
Once you have reached a voicemail box press star (*).
Enter your password.
Press 3 and follow the voice prompt instructions.
Add “vmnotify@phone.com to your address book
If you have selected to receive notifications via email and/or SMS, make sure to add “vmnotify@phone.com” to your address book to avoid messages being sent to your Spam folder.
Incumbent Chairman Rick Lacey defeated challenger Matt Nye 95-59 in last night’s closed Brevard Republican Executive Committee meeting. Josiah Gattle, a previously announced candidate for Chairman, dropped and threw his support behind Nye.
The Executive Board of the BREC is now:
Chairman: Rick Lacey*
Vice Chair: Mark Hutchins
Secretary: Paul Oddo*
Treasurer: Sharon Rose
District 1 Chair: Cindy Roberts*
District 2 Chair: John Weiler
District 3 Chair: Joanne Solley-Hansen
District 4 Chair: Susan Hammerling-Hodgers
District 5 Chair: Patricia Fowler
State Committeeman: Mike Thomas**
State Committeewoman: Cheryl Lankes**
*Re-elected
**Not up for re-election until 2020
Vice Chairman Nick Tomboulides attempted to raise a point of order at the beginning of the meeting regarding last minute additions and removals to the membership roster, but was ruled out of order by Chairman Lacey. Forty-five members were removed and eight were added just five days before the elections.
With less than six days to go before the December meeting at which the Brevard Republican Party elects its officers, candidates for the positions still don’t know which members are eligible to vote.
The last roster submitted to the supervisor of elections office was dated 9/29/18, but members and candidates have been told it isn’t the final roster, and some have been notified as recently as earlier this week they are no longer members because they’ve had three or more consecutive unexcused absences.
“When a member is unable to attend a scheduled meeting, the member must write, fax, text, or e-mail an excuse to the Secretary or District Chair prior to the meeting. A member can request an excuse by telephone. A telephone excuse must be documented by either the District Chair or the Secretary stating the name of the member, the date of the telephone request, the meeting for which the excuse is requested and the reason for the excuse. The excuses will be forwarded to the Chairman for disposition.”
Chairman Lacey’s unilateral decision to purge members from the rolls is troubling for the following reasons:
Chairman Lacey has provided no documentation to purged members they did not attend three consecutive meetings and/or did not request excuses in writing or by phone.
Under BREC bylaws it is the District Chair or Secretary’s obligation to document phone absence requests. It appears no such documentation occurred so it is impossible to prove that individuals did not request excused absences.
Per BREC bylaws, Chairman Lacey should have been notifying and removing members upon their third missed meeting all along. This would have given anyone that believed they had been unfairly removed the opportunity to contest the removal at the next meeting. It is simply not proper for the Chair to do a mass purge like this just days from the election.
Amongst members, speculation for a reason for the purge is twofold:
The members were kept on the roster even though they weren’t attending because Chairman Lacey has promoted the “growth” of the organization as a testament to his leadership skills.
The “clean up” is being done to eliminate members who might vote against the sitting Chairman in Wednesday’s upcoming elections. At least one member removed was a vocal critic of Chairman Lacey’s.
Lacey has two challengers in the Chairman’s race: Josiah Gattle, a 26-year-old attorney that was part of the paid Republican staff that put up some of the best numbers in the state in the last election cycle, and local grassroots leader Matt Nye, a 47-year-old entrepreneur that organized the Brevard Tea Parties and currently serves as the National Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus.
Local grassroots leader and former candidate for State House District 52 Matt Nye announced his candidacy for Chairman of the Republican Party of Brevard Monday. Nye, who lives in Suntree, is a Committeeman for Precinct 421 and has been an active member of BREC since 2007.
Nye sent the following email on Tuesday:
Dear fellow BREC Member,
For more than a decade I’ve worked as a grassroots volunteer and leader to promote the core Republican ideals of individual rights, limited government, lower taxes, and free markets.
I’ve been a Precinct Committeeman for the Republican Party of Brevard since 2007. Over the years I’ve helped to organize numerous Lincoln Day Dinners and Candidate Picnics for the party.
In 2008 I founded one of the most successful local political organizations in the history of Brevard County. In 2009 I organized Tea Parties with as many as 4,000 attendees.
I’ve worked my way up to the position of National Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus. I’ve served as Treasurer for my local Rotary Club. And I’ve run for office and experienced the challenges only other candidates can truly understand.
To say I have “experience” building and managing grassroots volunteer organizations would be an understatement.
Now I want to put that experience to work for the Republican Party of Brevard. After careful consideration and at the urging of dozens of friends and several elected officials, I am declaring my candidacy for Chairman of the Republican Party of Brevard.
The next meeting of the Brevard Republican Executive Committee – the group that steers the local Republican Party – is Wednesday, December 12th.
If you want to take the local party to the next level, I urge you to attend and vote for me as Chairman.
Between now and the election I will be rolling out some ideas I have on how to take our organization to the next level, but one of the very first things I will do when elected is to ask the board to make the new website I created for the party here official.
Precinct 417 Committeeman Shane Norcross has announced his candidacy for BREC Treasurer. Norcross has been a BREC member since 2012. He is an Army Veteran and currently works as a Regulatory Compliance Analyst at Northrup Grumman.
Experience
14 years with Northrop Grumman
Regulatory Compliance Analyst
Financial Analyst
Project (Cost Account) Management
Earned Value Management
Board Experience
Florida Space Coast Chapter of APICS
Marketing VP (2015 – present)
Brevard County (Alternate Board Member)
Precinct Committeeman Josiah Gattle declared his candidacy for the BREC Chairmanship with the following email to fellow BREC Committee Members on Monday, November 12th:
Hello,
I am writing to you regarding the upcoming election for the leader of Brevard Republican Executive Committee. I know that you and several others have mentioned that there is a need to replace the current leadership of the BREC and keep the county Republican. I was initially skeptical, but after completing the campaign as the Field Organizer for the RPOF, I have become deeply concerned about the direction of the BREC.
Under the leadership of the current Chair, Rick Lacey, we seem to have relegated our legal responsibility of providing poll watchers or support for a candidate, while simultaneously creating deep rifts in the fabric of our party across Brevard. It was mentioned to me by several people during this campaign cycle that I should run for the chairmanship of BREC and that there was a movement afoot to bring the BREC back to functionality and leadership in the state. After serving in this campaign and seeing the need first hand, I feel compelled to offer myself to lead the committee.
Growing up in Brevard, I served on my first campaign in 2008 at age 16 stuffing envelopes for the soon to be Congressmen Bill Posey. I was happy to support a man who would be stepping into the shoes of Dave Weldon and continuing the legacy of conservative leadership in Brevard County. In 2010, I served as an intern working with Charles Steen and the RPOF thirty-five hours a week and while being a fulltime college student in order to help Marco Rubio and Rick Scott win their first terms. After the campaign, I joined the BREC and worked to improve my precinct and district becoming District 4 Vice Chair. During the 2012 campaign, I served on the campaign for Dave Weldon, my childhood hero, helping him run one of the most cost-effective campaigns in history. Later that year I was privileged to join the Texas Delegation at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Throughout my time in law school in Georgia, I continued to support conservative causes establishing a Young Americans for Liberty Club, being elected as Treasurer of the Republicans on campus, and serving as my class representative for 2 terms in the Student Bar Association. In August after returning to Florida, I gave Margaret Goudelock, RPOF Regional Field Director, a call and have worked every moment of every day for 4 months to see our party succeed in this election. Through this process, I remembered what I have always loved and desired to do which is help put good leaders in positions to succeed. Through this process, I built teams of youth who knocked on over 83,000 doors in our county and personally contacted over 20,000 voters through both phone calls and door knocking on our way to sweeping Brevard County. Our hard work paid off in achieving a 75.8% turnout among Republicans this year and thus guaranteeing victory for our Brevard Republican slate across the board.
Through this process, Rick Lacey was notably absent. Every time we needed him, he was nowhere to be found. Every time there was a photo op, there were not enough cameras to be chased. Rick Lacey was happy to tell others to phone bank, not doing so himself. Rick Lacey was happy to tell others to door knock but left after the photo op to rub elbows with the next group. Rick Lacey loved the concept of being chair, but when opportunities came dressed in overalls and looked like work, he was nowhere to be found. In recent days, he has stooped to canceling the November meeting to thwart challengers and retain the chair for himself. Throughout these final days of his term, there have been uncoordinated calls to action and last-minute emails to be able to say he did something, but the truth remains that when we have needed his leadership, Rick Lacey was nowhere to be found. Due to this void of leadership and the obstruction of normal election proceedings I am contacting you directly to offer my candidacy for Chair.
I know that I am young, but I have been doing the work in Brevard for Republicans and the conservative movement for 10 years. I am answering the call for leadership to restore the Party in Brevard. I will continue to do the work, so our elected officials and candidates can finally feel the support that they deserve from our party in Brevard County. I want to build this party and enable our candidates to succeed. I would like to ask for your support in running for the chairmanship of the Brevard Republican Executive Committee to do the work of being Chairman, building others and positioning our party for success both in the off year and in 2020.
Migrants and refugees flooding into Europe have presented European leaders and policymakers with their greatest challenge since the debt crisis. The International Organization for Migration calls Europe the most dangerous destination for irregular migration in the world, and the Mediterranean the world’s most dangerous border crossing.
Distinguishing migrants from asylum seekers and refugees is not always a clear-cut process, yet it is a crucial designation because these groups are entitled to different levels of assistance and protection under international law.
An asylum seeker is defined as a person fleeing persecution or conflict, and therefore seeking international protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention on the Status of Refugees; a refugee is an asylum seeker whose claim has been approved. However, the UN considers migrants fleeing war or persecution to be refugees, even before they officially receive asylum. (Syrian and Eritrean nationals, for example, enjoy prima facie refugee status.) An economic migrant, by contrast, is person whose primary motivation for leaving his or her home country is economic gain. The term migrant is seen as an umbrella term for all three groups. Said another way: all refugees are migrants, but not all migrants are refugees.
Both the burden and the sharing are in the eye of the beholder. I don’t know if any EU country will ever find the equity that is being sought
Migrant detention centers across the continent, including in France, Greece, and Italy have all invited charges of abuse and neglect over the years. Many rights groups contend that a number of these detention centers violate Article III (PDF) of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits inhuman or degrading treatment.
In contrast, migrants in the richer north and west find comparatively well-run asylum centers and generous resettlement policies. But these harder-to-reach countries often cater to migrants who have the wherewithal to navigate entry-point states with safe air passage with the assistance of smugglers.
These countries still remain inaccessible to many migrants seeking international protection. As with the sovereign debt crisis, national interests have consistently trumped a common European response to this migrant influx.
Some experts say the block’s increasingly polarized political climate, in which many nationalist, anti-immigrant parties are gaining traction, is partially to blame for the muted humanitarian response from some states. France and Denmark have also cited security concerns as justification for their reluctance in accepting migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, particularly in the wake of the Paris and Copenhagen terrorist shootings.
The backdrop is the difficulty that many European countries have in integrating minorities into the social mainstream”
Underscoring this point, leaders of eastern European states like Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic have all recently expressed a strong preference for non-Muslim migrants. In August 2015, Slovakia announced that it would only accept Christian refugees from Syria. While selecting migrants based on religion is in clear violation of the EU’s non-discrimination laws, these leaders have defended their policies by pointing to their own constituencies discomfort with growing Muslim communities.
The recent economic crisis has also spurred a demographic shift across the continent, with citizens of crisis-hit member states migrating to the north and west in record numbers in search of work. Some experts say Germany and Sweden’s open immigration policies also make economic sense, given Europe’s demographic trajectory (PDF) of declining birth rates and ageing populations. Migrants, they argue, could boost Europe’s economies as workers, taxpayers, and consumers, and help shore up its famed social safety nets.
In August 2015, Germany announced that it was suspending Dublin for Syrian asylum seekers, which effectively stopped deportations of Syrians back to their European country of entry. This move by the block’s largest and wealthiest member country was seen as an important gesture of solidarity with entry-point states. However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel also warned that the future of Schengen was at risk unless all EU member states did their part to find a more equitable distribution of migrants.
Germany reinstated temporary border controls along its border with Austria in September 2015, after receiving an estimated forty thousand migrants over one weekend. Implemented on the eve of an emergency migration summit, this move was seen by many experts as a signal to other member states about the pressing need for an EU-wide quota system. Austria, the Netherlands, and Slovakia soon followed with their own border controls. These developments have been called the greatest blow to Schengen in its twenty-year existence.
In September 2015, the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced plans to revisit a migrant quota system for the block’s twenty-two participating members.
Some policymakers have called for asylum centers to be built in North Africa and the Middle East to enable refugees to apply for asylum without undertaking perilous journeys across the Mediterranean, as well as cutting down on the number of irregular migrants arriving on European shores. However, critics of this plan argue that the sheer number of applicants expected at such hot spots could further destabilize already fragile states.
Other policies floated by the European Commission include drawing up a common safe-countries list that would help countries expedite asylum applications and, where needed, deportations. Most vulnerable to this procedural change are migrants from the Balkans, which lodged 40 percent of the total asylum applications received by Germany in the first six months of 2015. However, some human rights groups have questioned the methodology used by several countries in drawing up these lists and, more critically, cautioned that such lists could violate asylum seekers rights.
Local grassroots leader and former candidate for State House District 52 Matt Nye announced his candidacy for Chairman of the Republican Party of Brevard Monday. Nye, who lives in Suntree, is a Committeeman for Precinct 421 and has been an active member of BREC since 2007.
