Hello reader,

My name is Matt Kauble.  My first campaign experience was walking precincts for my neighbor Bruce Barrows in his second successful run for Cerritos City Council back in the late 1990's.  I was involved as a researcher and precinct walker in both of Tim Escobar's campaigns against Linda Sanchez (Loretta's kid sister), focusing my research mostly on issues and the second time around her Congressional record.  I walked Santa Fe Springs and parts of Buena Park, Cerritos, Norwalk and Whittier for Grace Hu is her run against Tony Mendoza in 2006, as well as being the campaign's liason to RPLAC.  I walked for Cathy Warner in her successful April 2004 Whittier city council race while volunteering for Tim Escobar and managed Bruce Barrows successful March of 2007 Cerritos City Council campaign by tracking voter responses and using that information effectively.

I also used to be a Democrat, up until just after the 2003 recall.  It that journey that the rest of this post will focus. 

I grew up in a household where both of my parents were school teachers (my dad with Norwalk-La Mirada Unified for over 30 years as a band director/music teacher at schools such as Lampton, Nottingham and Nuffer Elementary and Los Alisos Middle School, my mom with ABC Unified as a substitute teacher then with a private elementary school as a 3rd grade then 1st grade teacher, while being a piano teacher). Both of my parents come from long lines of registered Democrats. We regularly attend church, my parents always getting involved in children's ministry.  I was educated in public schools from elementary to college, going through ABC Unified and then the University of California at Irvine.  My initial registration was with the party of my parents, the Democrat Party.  I considered as political heroes Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Sam Nunn, and Zell Miller.

Like with religion, a change in political affiliation is a deeply personal decision that comes only from an estrangement from the larger organization.  My estrangement started with the change in party affiliation of one of my uncles, he is a nice guy and a Christian, but at family gatherings he would get a ribbing like no other.  But it didn't start to crystalize until I entered college. 

In college, I voted in my first Presidential election looking at whether to vote for Bill Clinton or Ross Perot, having as a Democrat already ruled out George Bush, Sr.  I chose to vote for Ross Perot, mostly because he was as far as I was concerned the only one of the candidates calling attention to how we spent the money we were taking in and how if things continued as they were going without change, we would need to either not pay benefits or raise taxes. 

My next step down the road to switching parties came when I became involved with Campus Crusade for Christ in more than just the surface meeting.  Two neighbors of mine in the dorm invited me to a Bible study which lead me to a deeper study of the scriptures and the evidence outside the scriptures that point to the veracity of the Bible. However, even in that activity my spiritual life amounted to more knowledge than practice.  My focus was on sports and whatever I was working on and not much else, except the occasional church activity.

This step was followed by my first paycheck, where I received my first introduction to our tax code and realized that money was being taken from my checks, money I had earned. However this shock evenly departed from me as I slipped back into my economic liberalism.  It was not until I became a bookkeeper for a small business and was tasked with filling out government compliance forms that I started noticing the destructive nature of the state government and how they would create laws that prohibited one thing, then taxed you on it based on the number of employees working on site as if it was not prohibited and finally while requiring competant legal counsel gave a hoop filled avenue to get out of paying the tax.  I looked into who was in charge of the legislature when all of these sorts of laws were passed and to my shock it was the party of my parents the Democrats who have run both sides of the California legislature with only a two year respite at least since the 1980's.

As I became more involved in my current church I was made aware of the attacks the Democrats were making on the moral foundation of our nation.  I was educated by some knowledgable members on how the leadership of Democrat Party were in through legislation seeking to impose their belief that sexual sins are normal behavior on the rest of society.

However, being naive, I believed I could reason with the leadership of the Democrat party. I thought I could reason with a leadership that on that issue they had been co-opted by the Homosexual lobby, the Pornography Industry and anti-all business forces.  I believed that maybe if I stayed the force of logic could get them back on the straight and narrow.  I was wrong.

After a few years of beating my head against that wall, my friend Tim Escobar told me he was running to unseat Linda Sanchez in the California 39th Congressional District and he asked for my signature.  The only problem was I needed to be a Republican to sign his signature petition to get on the ballot. But since my estrangement with the Democrat party was full, it was no big deal for me and I decided to switch to help my friend Tim with a signature and switch to a party with which I found I had more in common.  It was during that campaign I became the liason to the Cerritos Republican Club while Tim was bouncing around the district speaking to groups who did not know who he was and collecting checks from campaign donors.  It was also during that campaign I was first introduced to the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, having never heard of it before that campaign. After the campaign I kept coming and became a member of the Cerritos Republican Club.  

Since my change my mother and sister have followed me in exiting the Democrat party and my dad has become more estranged from the Democrats in their pursuit of controlling the world "for our own good" voting for Republicans regularly, almost exclusively, even though he is still registered as a Democrat.

So what does my story tell us about attracting Democrats and Independents to switch to the Republican Party?

1. For someone to switch Political Parties they have to be unhappy with the direction their current party is going.

2. For someone to switch Political Parties their switch has to be made easy for them.

3. For someone to switch Political Parties they must have several friends other the party they would be switching to, although this is not always necessary it sure helps.

So what do we as Republicans need to do?

1. Make friends of Democrats, I know this may not be an easy thing to do but it is necessary to keep our party viable.

2. Gently educate them by using reason. Do the mental gymnastics it will take to help them see the issue as you see it. If they stump you admit ignorance and return later on that topic and re-engage after doing copious research and contemplation. 

3. Have voter registration forms at the ready just in case.

4. Connect them with other strong Republicans with whom they can relate to and interact with.

Remember political party affiliation is about as strong as religious affiliation.  Only by treating this sort of activism as a type of missionary work can we keep the party viable for years to come.