Month: January 2025

Every four years, after the presidential election, the Warren County GOP elects a new Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, Treasurer and Youth Chair (18-40 years old). Each position serves a four-year term.

What Are the Roles and Responsibilities of Party Officers?

Chair – Voting Member of the Republican Party State Central Committee. Serves as the CEO of the County Party and oversees an annual plan that reflects the County’s goals and priorities.

Vice-Chair – Voting member of the Republican Party State Central Committee. Assists and supports the Chairman in carrying out important tasks and acts as a go-between for the Chairman and other key stakeholders as needed. While this is one of the most undefined roles, it plays a critical role in maintaining the relationship between the State and County.

Treasurer – The lead officer responsible for the financial compliance of the County Republican Party and ensures proper adherence to all reporting rules and regulations.

Secretary – Keeps and is responsible for the minutes and records, including correspondence, of all County Party meetings.

Youth Chair – Encourages party engagement among young voters. They should design and implement programs that will build engagement among young voters throughout the county and share with the District and State Youth Chair to build coordination throughout the state.

Who Can Vote in the Selection of Party Officers?

Precinct Officers

What is a Precinct Officer?

Precinct officers are registered Republican voters who serve as the elected representatives for a voting precinct. There are 53 voting precincts in Warren County. Each precinct has a Chair, Co-chair and a Youth Chair.

How Do You Become a Precinct Officer?

Attend the Warren County Republican Party Reorganization in Bowling Green and volunteer to serve as a Chair, Co-chair or Youth Chair for your voting precinct. If there are more volunteers than positions in a precinct, an election is held and representatives are selected by majority vote.

When will the Warren County Reorganization Be Held?

The date and location has not been announced. The Warren County GOP is required to announce the reorganization date by January 25. If you are interested in serving as a County Officer or Precinct Officer, contact Warren County GOP Chairman John Williams.

Precinct captains are the backbone of the Republican Party and leaders in the community. Warren County has 53 precincts and each must be filled with strong leaders so that we continue to elect Republicans to office.  Every precinct has a Captain, Co-Captain and Youth Chair.

Most precincts have 1800-2400 Republican voters.

Duties & Responsibilities:

*Precinct Captain & Co-Captain: These are volunteer grassroots roles that play a vital part in building relationships within the community and or precincts, sharing information from both the party and the community, and supporting election campaigns. Responsibilities also include facilitating voter registration and absentee ballot access, leading get-out-the-vote efforts, distributing campaign materials, promoting our party, and addressing voter concerns.

*Precinct Youth Captain: As a Precinct Youth Captain, you’ll energize young voters in your community and engage them in county and party events. This is your chance to design dynamic programs that spark interest in politics! Lead fun initiatives and discussions that resonate with the youth of Warren County. Join us on this exciting journey to cultivate a vibrant future for our party—one enthusiastic young voter at a time (must be under the age of 40).

Grassroots volunteers play the most important role in the Republican Party. They bring in energy and fresh new ideas. Inspiration for this role may be drawn from Lawrence Tribble’s poem “Awaken” written in 1750, prior to the American Revolution.

“Awaken”

One man awake,

 Awakens another.

The second awakens

His next door brother.

The three awake can rouse

A town

By turning the whole place

Upside down

The many awake

Can cause such a fuss

It finally awakens the

Rest of us.

One man up

With dawn in his eyes
Surely then

Multiplies.

By Chip Ford

The Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center recently imposed a new security policy that deprives patrons of their right to carry a weapon for personal protection, even if they possess a permit. But this policy actual makes SKyPAC customers less safe.

I’m sure the authors of the new SKyPAC policy were well-intentioned. They’re probably confident all risks have been mitigated if not eliminated through their TSA-like security screening impositions. But nothing can ensure total safety, despite sincere assurances to the contrary – especially not against obsessed evil.

On July 20, 2012, about 400 patrons filled a Cinemark multiplex theater in Aurora, Colorado, for a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises. Among them was 24-year-old James Eagan Holmes.

Holmes bought his ticket, went into the theater, and sat in the front row, according to the police report. About 20 minutes into the film, he slipped outside the darkened theater through an emergency exit door alongside the screen, which opened to a rear parking lot where he’d left his car. On his way out, he propped the door open a crack. Ten minutes later, he returned through that unsecured door and opened fire on the audience – 76 shots from his tactical shotgun, a semi-automatic rifle with a 100-round drum, and a .40-caliber pistol. Twelve people were killed, including a 6-year-old girl; 70 were injured.

Three years later, Holmes was convicted of all 165 counts against him. He was sentenced to 12 life imprisonment sentences without parole and a maximum of 3,318 additional years on attempted murder.

In 2016, a not-liable verdict was returned against Cinemark Cinemas in a civil trial, denying victims and their families damages compensation. Their lawsuit alleged the theater had lacked adequate security. Nobody was held accountable for the theater’s “gun-free zone” invitation.

In a 2012 analysis of the Aurora theater massacre, Dr. John R. Lott, Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, noted that, of the seven area theaters showing The Dark Knight Rises on that night of July 20th within a 20-minute drive of the targeted theater, six allowed permitted concealed handguns and only one prohibited them: Cinemark Theater had “no weapons” signs prominently posted.

Lott posited: “So why would a mass shooter pick a place that bans guns? The answer should be obvious … disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks. Gun-free zones are a magnet for those who want to kill many people quickly. Even the most ardent gun control advocate would never put ‘Gun-Free Zone’ signs on their home. Let’s stop finally putting them elsewhere.”

As a quasi-private, taxpayer-subsidized enterprise, SKyPAC is perhaps within its rights to impose this misguided policy. Regardless, that disastrous 2012 “gun-free” theater policy, and the unsuccessful 2016 civil lawsuit by the victims against the theater, left 12 helpless patrons dead, 70 injured, and nobody held responsible but an opportunistic, deranged killer.

Personally, I would not be caught dead (perhaps literally) patronizing any venue which strips away my right of lawful self-defense against the potential mayhem of evil.

I suspect I’m not alone.

— Chip Ford of Bowling Green is a member of Warren County Conservatives and of the Green River Gun Club.

Article published in the Bowling Green Daily News November 9, 2022

Keeping in mind that many active duty servicemen and women are unable to celebrate the holidays at home, and as a tribute to veterans for their service, Warren County Conservatives dedicated a parade float in their honor. The float will debut Saturday, December 7 at the Bowling Green KY Jaycees Christmas Parade.