America First Republican Club
By Hope Horning
LW contributor
The LW America First Republican Club will meet Wednesday, July 15, in Clubhouse 3, Room 2, with social time beginning at 4:30 p.m. and the business meeting at 5. There will be a guest speaker from the Pacific Justice Institute discussing current cases and clarifying some of the propositions on the November General Election ballot. Members are asked to bring their favorite hors d’oeuvres or high quality treats to share.
The club’s mission is to educate, engage and activate members in their duty as citizens, including working to elect like-minded candidates to local, state, and federal offices.
At publication time, the tentative results at the Secretary of State website indicate that the following American First Republican Club approved candidates will be advancing to the general election in November:
• Steve Hilton for governor
• Michael Gates for attorney general
• Tony Strickland for State Senate District 36
• Gracey Van Der Mark for State Assembly District 72 Leisure World voters can vote for all of these candidates. The club’s information booth will be open on Monday, July 13, and Wednesday, July 15, outside Clubhouse 6 from 9-11 a.m. Club volunteers are eager to answer questions and provide information about the club’s ongoing activities. Visitors can also register folks to vote, update or correct a voting address, and change their party affiliation.
The agenda for the meeting on July 15 includes a discussion about the propositions that will be on the ballot in the November general election, like the Save Prop. 13 Initiative. The anti-tax coalition led by Howard Jarvis Taxpayers’ Association and Carl DeMaio’s Reform California are responsible for the placement of the initiative on the ballot.
If passed, the initiative will become a state constitutional amendment that makes it harder to raise local taxes by restoring the two-thirds vote on local tax hikes and capping property taxes in excess of limits imposed by the original 1978 Prop. 13. DeMaio says, “California Democrats and tax-raising special interests will vigorously oppose this initiative, but Reform California and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association are standing firm in this fight and are committed and ready to mount an aggressive campaign to pass it in November.”
The Voter ID Proposition will also be discussed. It too will result in a state constitutional amendment that requires voter ID for casting a ballot in each election and holds state election officials accountable to verify the citizenship of registered voters and to keep accurate voter rolls.
