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Mary Petz and Trent Spry look over documents for the Cook County Republican BPOU convention while Rae Piepho and other party representatives do the same. Staff photo Brian Larsen
Cook County Republicans held their Basic Political Operating Unit (BPOU) on March 15, meeting in the upstairs of the Harbor View Apartments meeting room with about 25 in attendance.
Cook County Republican Chair Trent Spry was back from the military to lead the convention. Spry is the youngest G.O.P. chair in Cook County history, two years out of high school. Unfortunately, Trent had to return to his military duties that night but did a fine job leading the 3 ½ hour meeting. He serves as an F-16 mechanic, inspecting and repairing those aircraft. Unfortunately, he will soon be deployed to the middle east, so he won’t be able to attend the 8th Congressional District Convention on April 8 in Duluth, nor the Minnesota G.O.P. State Convention held May 13 in Rochester.
Before Delegates and alternates to the two conventions were selected, the party heard from two guest speakers.
Up first was Katherine Miller from Beaver Bay. Katherine read two letters, one from gubernatorial candidate Mike Murphy and one by Rob Wolfe, who is running against State Rep. Rob Ecklund.
Miller explained that having been brought up in Ireland, she had witnessed bombings and shootings noting her best friend had been shot–and she was seeing many of those same things now happening in the U.S. “We the people need to take the country back. I have been witnessing the slow demise of our nation. This is not the time to give up,” she said.
Congressman Pete Stauber was back in Washington D.C. working, so he couldn’t make the Cook County G.O.P. convention. So instead, Stauber sent his representative Isaac Schultz to speak on his behalf.
“Over the last four- or five weeks, Pete has been recruiting election judges,” said Shultz, “So far, he has recruited over 230 election judges.”
During the last election cycle, Minnesota Democrats had more than 30,000 election judges to under 3,000 Republican election judges, said Schultz, who encouraged the folks in attendance to learn how to become an election judge.
“Pete’s honored to be your representative,” said Shultz, adding that Stauber was working hard to protect and preserve the constitution of the United States. “We can get this ship righted, but it begins and ends with election integrity,” Shultz said. He told the audience that Stauber was fighting against the Biden proposal to have the federal government take over elections. “On a policy level, that’s what the Congressman is trying to do,” said Schultz.
Plenty of discussion was held about the 2020 elections and the use of computerized election voting machines. Rae Peipho called for a resolution to ban electronic voting machines and asked for in-person paper ballot voting (when possible), which was roundly accepted. Her resolution will be forwarded to the district and state conventions.
When it came to asking for volunteers to be Delegates or Alternates, Andrew Smith and Kim Nelson said they would like to be Delegates. Both were unanimously elected delegates to the Congressional District convention and State convention. Deidre Muggley and Cathy Johnson were elected alternates to both conventions.
A discussion was held, and a vote on resolutions was taken to send those resolutions forward, although the resolutions still needed to be “wordsmithed” and weren’t in their final form. However, it was noted that the resolutions would be changed when they were sent to the upcoming party conventions.
Mary Petz read the Treasurer’s report, saying the party had just over $1,000 in its coffers. Mary asked attendees to fill out a form to the Minnesota Political Contribution Fund (PCR) Program, which was renewed for 2022. Mary said individuals could donate $50 or couples $100 and receive a full refund from the state.
There was talk of meeting monthly to build the party ranks, but more discussion will be held so that an outline is made to ensure the program has a framework.
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