In 1966 John MacIver appointed me to take charge of the Knowles campaign in West Allis. Soon after we added Wauwatosa. I was in charge of a party with only 29 members of which only eight were really active.
So, what did we do?
First we decided to take the 1964 Knowles record, identify Republicans who agreed with it in the West Allis area and get them to club meetings with good speakers, free beer etc.
We found places in all five wards and held meetings. We had people call all known GOP members and supporters and asked them to come and got kids to distribute Literature announcing the speakers.
It worked! At the end of 1970 we had nearly 400 members at $2 each. Every other month we had a group at our local fish fry, where we made a dollar per person. We had great fun.
Fast forward to the 1980 Reagan campaign. During the primary, we had managed to identify veterans and sportsman throughout the south side. We reached them by phone, lit drops and then mounted the most important political rally in Wisconsin History at Serb Hall. This also led to the founding of the “Reagan Democrats”.
Craig Shirley, in his book about the Reagan election had a whole chapter in there dedicated to the Serb hall rally that eventually changed the world.
Just Google ‘Reagan Democrats’ and it all comes up.
A few years ago, we were asked to kelp Mary Lazich in her race for State Senate. She was faced with a tough opponent and polling showed they were tied.
So, we got the list of people buying the Sportsmen licenses in Wisconsin and we mailed 18,000 letters and called them on phone. We focused on how Lazich was for Sportsmen. Then, our phone team went to work on yard signs. By the third week in September, the Democrats polled district and Mary was 20 points ahead. Here Democrat opponent received no money from the state Democrats.
Now, we want too build a team for Trump in 2020 so we can continue to provide Conservative programs for working people.
Building a team for elections:
How do we do it from scratch? The GOP does not have many members in Milwaukee County at all. Even though he won Wisconsin in 2016 the Trump people did not build a team for the future.
The only thing we did was to fight Sykes and company, and the other “never Trumpers” who plagued the state Republican Party.
We founded the ‘Judas Goats’, to describe those that claimed to be Conservative but now wanted to elect Hillary. They were trying to get people to vote for some character named McMuffin from Utah. That was nuts.
Charlie threatened to sue me several times. My attorney salivated at the thought of that trial, so I nailed those as Judas goats across the state. No, Charlie did not sue, but the ‘Judas goats’ made the NY TIMES, the Post and the London Guardian.
A few years back we took the Digest online and built up our base of emails and also our Facebook presence.
We zeroed in on the Conservatives throughout the state, most of whom will not join a political party but are still motivated. We added the tea party groups, Sportsmen and vets.
Our strategy paid off, when Brian Hagedorn was in political danger and many ‘influential conservatives’ were writing him off, we jumped in to motivate the base.
When the dastardly RJ and company condemned Hagedorn for the ‘audacity’ of starting a Christian school, we went to work appealing to Christians, gun rights advocates, etc across state.
Yeah! We won and doubled our team in size.
Now we need to build a big team on email, Facebook and other social media.
We must ID all the groups that are in the Republican, right of center, and yes, even like minded ‘Reagan Democrats’ that the left hates: Vets, Troops, Sportsmen, Conservatives, Trump people, Businessmen.
Matt Batzel suggested we go back to call on the Tea party people, they had big movement 7 years ago, but the GOP ignored them, while we did not.
That is where all those foot solders that hated Obama are? They’re still there but are still being ignored by the party. So I said to Matt; let us locate them and go after them. We need to tell them about the Trump policies and how they have helped the whole country.
We founded the Trumps’s New tea party of Facebook and now have over 400 plus who joined in just a few short weeks.
This is great, but we want those to become thousands. We are pushing Facebook, Emails and others. We are appealing to those on radio to ask them to come back and work with us to change the world, once again.
We are double in size and will continue speaking to and leading Conservatives in the state, ask them to help continue to advance the Conservative movement.
We asked people to help elect Judge Hagedorn, Sen. Andre Jacque and finally Glenn Grothmann. Now, with Social media we can separate all of the things and people we want to find.
We can find people who are Vets, sportsmen, GOP, Conservative, Tea Party and more They’re still here and many are interested, but no one is asking them to help. We will do that in every election.
We do know that the Left will not be able to have a large effect in any of those groups. Gun owners, etc, number in the millions in this state. They are our people and we need to ask them to help.
So please help us in order to buy Facebook ads, run our free events and work on social media. You can make a donation right here on our site or at this link: DONATE
Also, please make sure to subscribe to our emails, Forward our emails and share our social media posts.
For those of you who would like to help with grassroots efforts to Keep America Great, please fill out the VOLUNTEER FORM
Bob and Jean Dohnal
