The history of Los Angeles Republican’s Coalition

My name is Jeffers Dodge. I became involved in politics in early 2004 when I joined Townhall’s Meetup.com and found a local group of likeminded people meeting once a month in the Westside. I joined the group and immediately assumed the leadership role and motivated several members to take action rather than just talk. I devised a clever scheme to annoy Democrats while promoting the reelection campaign at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, We set up a site that included tables and a 4′ by 5′ large box covered with 8″ by 11″ posters of the Protest Warrior’s genius anti liberal solgans. This was one source of my inspiration. With the help of Jeanne Miller, Glen Ratcliff and Genevieve Peters, PopUpUSA was born and I immediately created a website to document the incredible experience. It was my first blog.

When I learned about and became members of the San Fernando Valley Republican Club, The Southern California Republican Club, and The Hollywood Congress of Republicans the door was flung open for me to utilize my talents that I developed working in the Music Industry to help the Republicans get their message out.

Coming directly from the music business I immediately recognized the buzz on the streets regarding the Republicans. There was so much pent up energy from the ordinary and” lonely” Republicans we met on the promenade as well as so much enthusiasm in the Westside and the San Fernando Valley activist, (I also visited the Beach Cities Republican Club and was impressed and have a sincere admiration for James Crean and Jessamine Campbell who keeps it together down there) that I devised a plan on how to harness this energy and try to sustain it.

At every meeting I stood up and gave a report on PopUpUSA’s activities and encouraged everyone to visit our blog at PopUpUSA.com and view the comments, photographs and videos. I also encouraged everyone to start building their own personal homepages because, “The Democrats have gotten a head start on utilizing the internet to get their message out….” MoveOn.org and Howard Dean were examples I sited.”

Now some automatically interpreted my encouragement as me being an opportunist, “just into it to make money” scamming gullible republicans I suppose. I just reminded them of the oil experts in the White House, Bush and Cheney , and how glad we have them trying to put together a domestic oil policy rather than, lets say, a stock broker that has made it an art to churn his clients accounts. And of course they didn’t get it so I explained to them the part about Dick Cheney gathering all the experts in the oil industry for a secret summit on the US oil policy. I am an expert on music, video and web production — I want to help my Republican Party, but I also need to make a living.

I also started a bipartisan Blog called Media Drool, whose intent was to engage Liberals in a fair and balanced dialogue of politics. Not many Democrats wanted to participate — but the blog was a tremendous success. I posted a video I had put together of Genevieve Peters getting roughed up by some union thugs and it was downloaded 40,000 times.

After PopUpUSA and the re-election campaign I joined David Hernandez on the Save The Seal Project as well as Dick McDonald on the Social Security Project, (www.thenewsocialsecurity.com). I also started the Big Elephant Night, (www.bigelephantnight.com) with Eddie Blevins, which I envisioned to be a social night for Republicans in West Los Angeles. I also struck up a relationship with Ted Hayes (www.tedhayes.net) and am now on the Board of Directors of Dome Village. I built the San Fernando Valley Republican Club’s website (www.sfvrc.org) and consider Gary Aminoff my mentor and leader.

Linda Boyd, Chairmen of the Los Angeles County Republican Party called me and said she was impressed with my work and wanted me to bid on rebuilding the RPLAC website. Her husband loved the idea and the agreement she and I made so much that he hired me to build the Lincoln Clubs website (www.laclc.org). But the deal fell through with a lot of everyone’s time wasted. However, while I was building their websites I was also asked to work on the mayoral race (www.lessoroftwo.com) and the Governor’s special election campaign which included some graphics for flyers and attending teacher union rally’s and college graduation speeches as a professional videographer and editor.

It was at this time that I recognized that there was a lot of clubs and no real attempt at coordinating events and calendars between them all. So I started Los Angeles Republican Coalition. The name was too long for a domain name so I truncated it to www.larepublicans.com. The intent of this website is to reflect the true personality of the Republicans in Los Angeles by providing a calendar of all the different clubs and events. Also, I wanted to provide a resource for candidates as they contemplated running for office. Once I threw my hat in the ring I suspended working on the site until after the election. The website has grown and is taking shape I am very proud of it. It is partially what I was trying to build for RPLAC and I consider it, when it is fully developed and functional, a positive influence on the state of the Republican Party here in Los Angeles County.

In 2005 David Hernandez announced his candidacy for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (www.dave4la.com), which I was a political director. It was at this time that David asked me to run for State Assembly (www.votedodge.com) in my district so that I could get out the votes in the area where his 3rd Supervisory District overlaps with the 47th Assembly District.

After I was nominated I worked out a campaign plan that was unique and not expensive. It involved making a filmed documentary of my district which would include showing all the landmarks with a narrative segueing into a history of politics and an explanation of what an Assembly member does. It would end with me talking about my values, who I am and contrasting it with my opponent. This DVD would be distributed to every decline to state and moderate democrat in the district.

The problem was it was going to cost about $100,000 to execute the plan. So I decided to call in some favors from some friends of mine and Ann Coulter agreed to host my kick off Fundraiser.

For some reason no one from RPLAC offered to help with the fundraiser. I had to ask and all I got was a very old and out of date donor list. As a matter of fact some tried to contact her around my back to get her to host a fundraiser for a candidate in his favor, a white blond girl, but with no success. Ann found that very distasteful and tacky.

I went ahead with the fundraiser and after overcoming a few challenges my campaign staff, primarily made up of the PopUpTeam, pulled it off. I considered it a great success and Ann loved it. She was very enthusiastic about helping me because of our past relationship.

I am the first to admit that I was not ready to be a candidate. I had a real fear of public speaking… you know the disconnect thing. My naiveté must have been very amusing to the old pros that to my knowledge never won an election in Los Angeles. My nephew has. He was the campaign manager for two prominent assembly seats in Southern California in which he won both. He would have worked closer with me on my campaign but had a Governorship campaign in the mid west. In reality I got more help from outside Los Angeles County than from the LA Party. The CAGOP was there for me considerably more. And now I know why Los Angeles is in such dismal condition.

I did my part, I loved talking to Democrats and tricking them into agreeing with me and watching their expression when they found out I was a Republican. David Hernandez saved the day by coming in and managing the campaign. We were able to get a nice headquarters with phone banks and I moved my production facility into the very spacious back office. Met some great people, serious professionals who are compassionate about the cause and members of the entertainment business. It will be fun working with them in the next 24 months.

Whew — that was a lot of work and I am a better man for it, and Los Angels is worse off than it was since the 2004 re-election campaign.

Now that the campaign is over I can begin to phase in LARepublicans.com.

Any help would be welcome.