Scroll down past the initial section and you'll find gems like this:
“Her accent screams Long Island and she seems better suited for an episode of ‘The Real Housewives of New York City’ than the Chaparral Country Club in Bullhead City. Yet here she is, Hildy Angius, holding court with three older gentlemen who've just finished a round of golf in this retirement community in the far northwest corner of Arizona... Spotting an opening, Angius launches into the speech she delivers these days to friends and strangers alike, whether at tea party rallies, the local coffee shop or on Facebook. The upshot: Don't gripe, do something. Vote. Volunteer. Knock on doors. Do, in essence, what she's now doing: Whatever it takes to move the Republican Party, and the government, to the right... An avid Rush Limbaugh fan, she's called in to his show on any number of occasions.
Still, she acknowledges she did little more than complain until September 2008, when she realized Barack Obama was likely to win the presidency, bringing to office a far too liberal agenda that would mean the kind of changes Angius vehemently opposes. Never before a ‘joiner,’ she went online, learned about the Colorado River Republican Women, went to a meeting and found an outlet for her dismay.”
That, fellow Freepers, is a model in miniature of what we **ALL** need to be doing.
We may disagree here and there on some issues with Hildy Angius. That's fine; there's room for legitimate debate and discussion among conservatives who share the same basic principles. Internal debate is healthy so long as we keep the focus on fighting the people who want to destroy the principles on which America was built.
What we should **NOT** disagree with is her commitment to put words into actions that are effective in accomplishing what we say we believe.
Let's not minimize what Hildy Angius has accomplished or say that she's “only” a county commissioner in a small Arizona county. First, Bullhead City is not an irrelevant place in the middle of nowhere; it's a significant community with an economic engine of local commerce that could launch successful local officials into state-level positions.
But more importantly, let's not forget that while Tip O'Neill was wrong about many things, he definitely was **NOT** wrong to say that all politics are local.
The average person's life can be significantly affected for good or for bad by decisions of local officials, and for most people, their only face-to-face contact with government is going to be at the level of school boards, city councils, township boards, and county commissions.
Not only may we never minimize the impact local officials have, we need to understand that experience in local office is the best training for higher office.
There are obvious exceptions; for example, George W. Bush and Mitt Romney leveraged their family ties and their success in private business into successful campaigns to become state governors, and used the governorships to became national political figures. (For those who consider Bush and Romney to be insufficiently conservative, remember that Ronald Reagan followed a somewhat similar path via the film industry, but without the benefit of a famous father.) It's true that success outside of politics sometimes gives people the skills needed to serve effectively in elected office, but that's not always true. The skills needed to successfully be the boss of a private business are not necessarily those needed to be the elected representative of hundreds, thousands, or millions of people who the elected official must consider to be his (or her) “boss,” not the other way around.
The more common path, however, is for local elected officials who are successful to be sought out as qualified candidates for state office, and for state officials to run for federal office.
There was a day that Sarah Palin was a minor elected official in the small Alaskan town of Wasilla. On the other side of the spectrum, there was a day that Barack Obama was a minor Illinois state legislator.
I'm not sure how many people live in Hildy Angius’ district, but I think she probably represents more people today than Palin did when she first entered politics.
We'll see how well Commissioner Hildy Angius does as a Navaho County Commissioner from Bullhead City. She's defeated an incumbent; she now needs to learn how to put her conservative principles into practice as an elected official, and that is not easy.
I wish her the best.
But most of all, I hope other Freepers take inspiration from her example. I also want to congratulate all of the many other Freeper elected officials who cannot use their real names (quite possibly for good reason) who are being sworn into office about this same time. She's far from the only Freeper in elected office; she's one of the people willing to openly and publicly use her real name on Free Republic and we can compliment her for things she's doing while there are others here to whom we can't give compliments because we don't know who they are in their offline life.
You worked hard for your title and you deserve to have me get the title correct in a post intended to compliment you on your success.
Mohave County is the fifth largest County area wise in the US and I will be overseeing a budget of over $250Million.