By Diane Earnest.
Way to go FairTaxers! Our first FairTax Advocacy Day was a big success! Those under the “Gold Dome” knew we were there.
Representative Tom Kirby held a press conference to announce that he had submitted the bill. Before the press conference, he briefed the FairTax volunteers in our meeting room on the bill and the process to get the bill passed.
Linda Menk, Dan Egington, and Jim Duffie discuss the FairTax with Representative Steve Tarvin.
Our “Buy Your Legislator Lunch” fund raiser was a huge success! The Legislators who visited us on Wednesday, February 4th, were very touched that they had constituents who purchased a lunch for them. Each Legislator was given the names of the constituents in his or her district who purchased the lunch. Some legislators even asked for contact information so that they could thank their constituents. Of course, we couldn’t have done it without those of you who contributed to our fund raiser by buying their Legislators lunch.
27 Legislators visited us during the event. Although that may not sound like a lot, there were at least 5 or 6 lunch meetings being held at the same time as our event, so the effort of those 27 to stop by demonstrated their support for our cause. Their message was thank you for what we are doing, and don’t give up. The following Legislators attended the event:
Senator John Albers, Rep. Tonya Anderson, Rep. Mandi Ballinger, Rep. Beth Beskin, Rep. Tyrone Brooks, Rep. Wesley Cantrell, Rep. Joyce Chandler, Rep. David Clark, Senator Bill Cowert, Rep. Harry Geisinger, Rep. Brett Harrell, Senator Hunter Hill, Senator Judson Hill, Rep. Mike Jacobs, Rep. Jeff Jones, Rep. Tom Kirby, Senator P. K. Martin, Rep. B. J. Pak, Rep. Tom Rice, Rep. Richard Smith, Rep. Steve Tarvin, Rep. Horacena Tate, Senator Curt Thompson (staff), Senator Renee Unterman, Rep. Andrew Welch, Senator John Wilkinson, Senator Michael Williams, and Rep. Bruce Williamson.
Bill Fogarty discusses the FairTax with Representative Joyce Chandler.
There are a lot of Legislators still to convince but this is a great start. We even had a couple of non-believers stop by and although they may not have joined us just yet, we were able to get them to think about the positive results possible with a FairTax.
We were able to have some very impressive materials created telling our story for this event. Thanks to Jay Franks for loaning us his brother-in-law, a graphic artist, who formatted our banner designs so they would print properly.
Our last minute hero was Glenn Cowart who printed posters for us with quotes supporting the FairTax from Laurence “Bubba” McDonald, Georgia Public Service Commission; Sam Norton, business owner and community leader in Dahlonega; Senator David Perdue; and Congressman Rob Woodall. We also created posters showing the number of FairTax supporters by district. Thank you Tom Brown for gathering those statistics for us.
Thank you notes on behalf of GFFT were distributed to those Legislators who attended our event. If your Legislator visited us, this is the perfect time to thank him or her for their support.
Representative Kirby addresses the volunteers.
Thank you to all of the volunteers who showed up to make our event a success. We couldn’t have done it without each of you: Al Abrash, Rodney Arnold, Steve Arnold, Tom Brown, Lisa Chambers, Brian Chaney, Glenn Cowart, Jim Duffie, Diane Earnest, Melissa Earnest, Dan Eginton, Bill Fogarty, Jim Garcia, Mark Garmon, Dudney Harris, Phil Hinson, Gene Key, Kathleen Christoph, Marvin Lefebvre, Linda Menk, Padraig O’dea, Chip Spradey, Lisa Thurston, Tina Trent, Carroll Simpson, Jack Shulin, and Rich Simon.
