WCRC meeting – June 2014

It was perhaps one of the more uneventful WCRC meetings in some time, because we chose not to feature a speaker and not much business transpired. Sure, we had the usual Lord’s Prayer, Pledge of Allegiance, and Treasurer’s Report, but most of the time was given to those final appeals from all the candidates in the room.

However, we were introduced to two bright and talented young Republicans, as Shadi Jahelka of Mardela High School and Elizabeth Mills from Delmar High School were introduced as our Wicomico County Republican Club scholarship winners. Jahelka plans to continue her studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art, while Mills will be attending Potomac State College in West Virginia.

In a brief President’s Report, Jackie Wellfonder noted we were still looking for a headquarters. And “headquarters is a mess,” said Dave Parker to open his Central Committee report. A couple places we were interested in have fallen through, so we could have to move off the Route 13 corridor we’ve been on for several cycles.

In better news, Parker attended the state Red, White, and Blue Dinner with a mixture of people from Wicomico and Worcester counties. He also pointed out that he had tickets to the Tawes Crab and Clam Bake next month.

Dave also put in his plug for Circuit Court Judge candidate M.J. Caldwell, correctly pointing out “the difference is experience.”

At that point, we made the rounds of over twenty candidates and representatives, who we gave just 2 minutes to make their case. Many of them were those sharing the ballot with me for Central Committee, so let me take this opportunity to wish them good luck. Mark McIver said it best in his remarks: “I can’t say enough about how well our committee ran,” adding it was considered by others to be “very functional.”

Representing David Craig’s campaign, Joe Schanno made an important plea himself: “After tomorrow, we’re all on the same team.”

Essentially the only other business was the announcement by Joe Ollinger that he had tickets for the WCRC Crab Feast September 6 and was looking for volunteers to help out, and a point I brought up about integrating social media into our solicitations for help for upcoming events such as the Farm and Home Show, Good Beer Festival, and Autumn Wine Festival.

In fact, we were done in less than an hour, although many stayed around to work on distributing signs for tomorrow’s election. There are 31 polling places in Wicomico County, so the goal was to cover all of them with the appropriate signs.

We have five weeks until our next meeting, which will be on July 28.