By: Fred Propheter, President – Frederick County Conservative Club
At the February meeting of The Frederick County Conservative Club we empaneled four leaders from different walks of the political sphere to discuss “A Path Forward” heading into the 2021-2022 election cycles. It was an evening of strategies and ideas on growing our base, refining our messaging and bringing voters back to a Constitution centered community, state and country.
2021 brings us Frederick city elections, consisting of five Aldermen and Mayor. As of this date, I am only aware of one candidate to challenge incumbent Mayor Michael O’Connor. That’s it. The five Alderman seats remain unchallenged.
People moan and complain about the leadership of our communities, especially after living through a year of the Wuhan Red Death lockdowns, forcing business closures, online learning and quarantining of our elders. Yet today with a 77% decrease in positive Covid-19 tests, we remain in various levels of confinement.
We cannot expect change if we do not change our so-called ‘leaders.’ Today we face another virus, a plague of sorts. Not one that will kill us physically, not one that will even cause a runny nose. However, it will stifle our freedom, our ability to regain the liberties we have lost and continue to lose. This virus has crumbled empires and given rise to tyrannical leaders. It is called apathy.
Yes, apathy runs rampant and uncontrolled, and it will be the ruin of our community first and our country last.
I have spoken to far too many former candidates who when asked about getting back ‘into the ring’, all too often their reply is “I want a race I can win.…” Honestly, I can understand that. Who the heck plans on losing? However, we will never win if we have no one in the race to begin with.
Just look at the last Board of Education race. Our side failed to put up a single candidate. Yes, there was a latecomer write-in candidate, though well-funded, failed to gain any traction. That said, the BoE does not need another teacher voting on their funding and pay raises. We need mothers and fathers deciding the direction of our children’s future, not education bureaucrats deciding the level of indoctrination of our children.
2022 brings us not only the afore mentioned BoE race with four seats to challenge, but we also have seven County Council seats and County Executive up for grabs. Quite frankly, this writer only sees one, maybe two on the council worth keeping. Where are our candidates going to come from? Though our Charter is barely a decade old, it is archaic in its rule that the County Executive cannot operate a business during their tenure, therefore eliminating a wealth of talented businessmen and women.
We baby boomers have done our damage, we worked hard to provide ‘a better life’ for our progeny but, at the same time we also made life too easy and too complacent for them. They fail to see the urgency of the situation we face today. Or if they do see it, they are far too willing to sit back and let someone else do it. There is no doubt that someone else will do it but, at what cost to the livelihoods of those we love and this great Republic?
This is our Event Horizon, the precipice of success or failure. To exist in their dystopia or to restore our shining city on the hill, as Ronald Reagan once said. We have a responsibility to sit down with our adult children, our peers and pillars of our communities, people in our church congregations and co-workers. We can convince them they are the change needed to ‘right this ship’ and set course to regain the Freedom & Liberty that generations before sacrificed life and blood to save this great experiment we call America.
I leave you today with the words of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”
