West LA Tea Party

My brother and I were at the West Los Angeles Tea Party in Westwood yesterday afternoon. The crowd was smaller than expected, but with all the huge Tea Parties since April, it wasn’t disheartening. Los Angeles Republican leaders were there, including Gary Aminoff, Jeffers Dodge, the West LA leadership, Ted Hayes, a few candidates and some great grassroots activists.

Although the numbers weren’t high, the energy was, the crowed joined in chanting “Yes” with West LA GOP Event Chairman Michael Fell showing that the GOP is not the party of “NO,” and chanted “No on 1A” with RPLAC Vice Chairman Gary Aminoff. Even Sayet, the Heritage Foundation lecturer and Laugh Factory comedian showed us both his funny and serious sides, while Ari David, candidate for the 30th CD made the case against the Gremlin of West Los Angeles Henry Waxman. Talk Show host Kevin James mentioned a statistic that I didn’t know, there are about 49,000 Republicans in West LA!…they weren’t all at the rally, but many of them honked their horns as they drove by on Wilshire. James talked about the City Attorney race, saying that it’s one of our reasons to be optimistic because on Tuesday, Jack Weiss will be booted out of elected office by Carmen Trutanich. It was great to meet Kevin James, especially because he gave the Dana Report a huge shout-out during his speech, we look forward to possibly going on his show early this summer.

The best part of Republican events in LA is the number of young people, while Ari and I seemed to be the youngest, there was a great showing from the newly founded Santa Monica Young Republicans, whose numbers swelled from 3 in February to over forty in only a few months (it might sound small, but its Santa Monica!), and a few College Republicans from around LA.

Defeating  propositions 1A-1F on Tuesday isn’t the end of the movement, it’s only the beginning. On May 19th Californians will show our Governor and Legislators that we control them, and that the overreaching has to stop. When every prop fails, we’ll make the ripples that will lead to big waves of real change by 2010. You may feel lost in the wilderness now, but it’s time for conservatives to get back in the fight… this will be an exciting year-and-a-half.