I knew Terri Land way back when she was a relatively low-level staffer and I was a regular volunteer for the Kent County Republican Party, where my father had been executive director before turning down a job in the Ford White House and instead moving to Lansing to work for the state-level party.
I was not an evangelical when I worked alongside Terri Land, and therefore wasn't looking for the same things I would look for today in a political leader. Also, I've radically changed since the 1980s (conversion does those things) and I would never want people to evaluate me based on long-ago statements and actions that don't reflect what I believe today.
What I will say about Terri Land is that I saw her as a hard worker. I saw her as a loyal and committed Republican. (That's a compliment, not a negative, and said in a pre-Tea Party context when this massive “anti-GOP-elite” mindset wasn't anywhere near as powerful as it is today — lots of people I knew back then were much more interested in their business than in supporting the Republican Party, but Terri Land believed in using the Republican Party to make a difference.)
But perhaps of most interest to Freepers is something I saw of her years ago when we were both delegates to the state Republican convention and the group we would now call “GOP-e” was trying to get rid of a certain incumbent perceived as “too radical.” I think it was an attempt to dump an incumbent member of the University of Michigan board, but I am not absolutely sure. At the state convention, Terri Land voted against the effort. I asked her why later, and her response was that she didn't think anyone had made a good case that he was so bad that he needed to be removed. What stuck with me was her comment that if the party leadership could do it to him, they could do it to anyone, and she didn't think that was right.
That probably speaks well of her to Freeper and Tea Party circles — i.e., she's willing to stand up and say “no” to party leaders, even though she definitely is one herself, if she thinks the party leadership is acting in heavyhanded ways and not documenting good reasons for its actions.
Hope those comments about Terri Land are helpful. But keep in mind the last time I saw her face-to-face was back in the late 1990s when I visited Grand Rapids to get some documents I needed (she was at the time the county clerk). She recognized me on my way in, and personally took me to the right place to get what I needed. The biggest thing that does is show that she has a good memory for someone she hadn't seen in years. I was at that point working in a Christian nonprofit organization and had largely left politics.
People do change, but their core values usually don't, and I have no reason to believe what I saw of Terri at that long-ago state convention was different from what she'd do today if she saw party leaders harassing an outspoken conservative.
Like Dave Agema, Terri Land was elected to the RNC by a coalition of tea partiers, libertarians, and GOP conservatives working together to get the old guard out.
From what I know of her she appears to be a lot like our current Secretary of state in the fact that she pulls a fair bit of old school democrat support for the right reasons.