In December 2017, after Ross Leone III stepped down as County Chair of the Libertarian Party of Guadalupe County, a major decision had to be made for the county party. After a serious discussion took place between the three members who attended the meeting to elect a new county chair until the County Convention the coming year, I was voted in as the new County Chair.
I knew I had a big job in front of me, and I went straight to work to not just prep for the upcoming conventions, but to also grow the party. After getting advice from several of my Libertarian friends from the neighboring counties as well as attending several social events, I was able to meet and welcome a good handful of new members to the party. After several meetings together before the conventions, we went to work on setting up our plans and goals for the 2018 election year. Soon, when the conventions came that year, I was re-elected as County Chair by both our old and new members for the 2018-2020 term.
We worked ourselves to the fullest during the 2018 election year to where we were able to participate in the Fourth of July parade (like we did since 2016) and even had our first Libertarian Town Hall at Texas Lutheran University with several of our State and Federal candidates (Mark Tippetts, Neal Dikeman, Ben Sanders, and our own Anthony Cristo) in attendance. On election night, we got together at one of our fellow members’ house for an election watch night when we celebrated not just the records we broke but the hard work we did for our party.
We still remained pretty active the following year as we continued on with our meetings and plans for this election year. Several of us made our announcements to run for certain offices or positions for the party.
We had our share of happiness for our Vice Chair, Jason Ubernosky, who became a father during the 2018 year, and now, both him and his wife are expecting their second child. We also had our share of loss when one of our members, Robert “Mick” Stevens, passed away early last year. This affected our entire party since we all were more like family than a political party. I even wrote a tribute column dedicated to Mick’s advocacy with both the Libertarian Party and the Cannabis Open Carry movement, which Shawna had told me that she still reads every now and then to this day to help her cope with the loss of her father.
Personally, as County Chair, I didn’t think I’ve done all that much, but my fellow Guadalupe County Libertarians have assured me that I have done an amazing job as County Chair.
At the time of this column’s release, we would have wrapped our Precinct Convention yesterday evening, and now, we are getting prepped for our County Convention this Saturday. I announced late last year that I would not be running for another term as County Chair as I will be focused on my run for one of the two seats representing Texas State District 21 on the State Libertarian Executive Committee (SLEC).
With that being said, I would like to thank the people who have supported me as County Chair, especially my fellow members of the GCLP, for all the love and support for these past couple of years.
I really appreciate it.