11/30/2024
I'm in a reflective mood, almost exactly five years ago I got involved with the MarinGOP as an alternate. Over the past four years I've stuck out the bad days. And there have been a lot of bad days. Remember the 2020 election? Remember years of struggling to find a venue for any event for more than sixty people was borderline impossible? Remember that week even the MarinGOP received more than FORTY DEATH THREATS? Remember the 2022 "RedWave" that didn't happen? Remember in the post 2020 election period when Parler was cancelled and "rightwing" social media --aka any type of social media that didn't automatically shadowban even a milquetoast Republican like me-- started to disappear? I was there. I wasn't just there, I was plugging away, with no budget, trying to frame and promote any message my elders and betters wanted me to promote on behalf of the MarinGOP leadership.
My very first blogpost for the MarinGOP was back in February of 2020. (Remember the good old pre Covid days? When people didn't think it was normal to pay top dollar to socially distance dine in a parking lot?) I actually laboriously hammered out my very first MarinGOP blog post like a college essay and forwarded it as an attachment to Dan & Tom who had the codes to maintain the website. I'd have probably continued in a lackadaisical, part-time volunteer, not-too-in-to-it, barely needed, alternate role for the MarinGOP for years if Covid hadn't changed things.
It has barely been five years, but 2019 feels like a different world. In California, the world was radically different five years ago. Now, staring down Thanksgiving 2024, I still see people proudly mask-signaling at the supermarket. Mass retail vacancies have become the norm. And a lot of our friends and neighbors have relocated out of state to live the American dream that was normal back in 1999, but seems impossible in shut-down era California.
I remember the early winter of 2020. I'd drive down to Corte Madera once a month (usually in the rain) to cluelessly make notes once a month during what seemed like dull-as-dish-water MarinGOP meetings. No one bothered to explain anything to me. But, I figured it didn't really matter because I was just a placeholder anyway. (Since then I've been lucky enough to meet the kind of Republican men who call me a "dolt" and the kind of "true conservative" women who scream curses at me so... in retrospect a part of me wishes I'd never learned more.) But, a bigger part of me is grateful for the learning experience of the past few years. It has been an education.
Remember the whole "two weeks to stop the spread" thing on St. Patrick's day of 2020? I'm still a little outraged I spent St. Patrick's Day of 2020 in a lonely panic attempting to scan all my tax documents for my accountant --usually I'd just drop an envelope off in person, but in 2020 people were serious about social distancing. My CPA was serious about social distancing --hey, Covid-19 was supposed to be the next Spanish Flu. I wrote this piece about how I felt about being an unlikely Millennial Republican as the new, horrible, Covid norm set in. (You can click here to read it. Feel free to email me and complain if it aged like milk, or you think I'm just too young, or too old, to know anything.)
Then my so-called, unpaid, Republican career went into overdrive.
Dan Barringer, then the youngest full member of the MarinGOP --you can click here to read one of his original blog posts from the early days of Covid-- realized his life would be a lot better in Florida and, like a lot of my friends my age, moved. (A lot of my friends moved out of California in 2020.) Sometimes I wish I'd followed Dan to Florida, or Micah to Georgia, or Lisa to Las Vegas, or anyone anywhere. If I had known people would still be wearing masks in 2024 in Marin, I'd have hopped in the car and driven away too.
Dan wasn't the only MarinGOP member to cut ties with California in 2020. The member I was an alternate for moved out of state as well. We "lost" a lot of members. And, our Marin loss was an actual "gain" for a lot of states that needed new, committed, Republican voters committed to not letting their new states go the way of California.
So... I went from being an alternate to being a full member of the committee in the era of zoom meetings. Next thing I knew... I was running the MarinGOP blog. Next thing I knew I was on the executive committee. Not a lot of prestige, a huge amount of stress, work I mainly made for myself. And I was mainly there because everyone assumed that, because I was young, I understood the social media thing.
2020 was a tough year. Early 2021 we dealt with a media desperate to pile on to Republicans. Oh yes, there were death threats too. And... still the impact of endless "shutdown."
Along the way my local Novato library acquired a multi year semi-permanent homeless encampment on the lawn. Downtown San Rafael started to look downright dystopian. (You can click here to see vintage pictures I took roaming the streets of San Rafael sad because my yoga class was cancelled because... social distancing.)
I took pictures, I segued from writing collegiate type pieces about America, the Constitution, and American history, to trying to commit the kind of journalism our local journalists weren't interested in. Riots? Racism? Education issues? Homeless encampments? Trump flotilla? With no budget, minimal help, and a fairly constant stream of criticism, I did my best. And got guilt tripped for not doing more.
Something kind of crazy started to happen around 2023, I started to get fan mail. Yes, I got hatemail. (A lot of really disturbing antisemitic hatemail from this septuagenarian Democrat.) But, I got a lot more fanmail than hatemail. Which was weird. Because, in the cynical world of local Republican politics, we traditionally refer to the hatemail we receive as "fanmail." I remember the first time I tried to explain to the ex comm that the MarinGOP was getting actual fanmail, you know, from people who liked our message, or liked the fact that I was trying to be a public Republican instead of a closeted Republican?
Along the way we've had a lot of people move on beyond the world of the MarinGOP. Before my time Andrea Widburg was wandering Marin County, trying to explain her Republican values to non Republicans and Republicans alike. Hey, my good friend Thomas Montgomery frequently repeats the story of Andrea trying to explain to him why 1950s country club mores of some --some, not all-- Republicans is perpetually off putting to politically Republican leaning Jews who are old enough to remember the very real discrimination that was the norm in the world of country clubs back in the 1950s. I'm not old enough to remember "exclusive and restricted" clubs. My parents both are old to remember those signs. Dad still holds grudges, My mother invented the side-eye before the side-eye was a thing and prefers to pay no attention to people she finds dull. (So... she ignores a lot of people.) Andrea has long since fled to a "Red State" where she is an editor for American Thinker. You can click here to read some of Ms. Widburg's pieces. If you don't read American Thinker, and you like outside the box Republican leaning news sources, you should probably check out American Thinker. They have a lot of interesting pieces about politics in the United States, Canada, the UK & Europe as well as Israel. Also before my time, the ever fascinating Sally Zelikovsky, roamed through Marin. I mainly know her through her blogposts and media appearances. She's on Substack now. Of all the people who've left the MarinGOP for greener --or politically "redder"-- pastures I, personally, miss Dr. Michael Hartnett the most. Dr. Hartnett has style, humor, brains, and a deep commitment to thinking about issues instead of just shouting about them.
Like a lot of Republicans, Dr. Hartnett looked at the proverbial writing on the wall, saw stack and pack coming to his beloved Marin County, had his car stolen --from his carport-- and realized that he could have a better quality of life somewhere else. Luckily, Dr. Hartnett still writes, is still tormenting newspaper editors who aren't as bright as he is with his excellent letters to the editor, and has a substack. I, personally, went through the irritating process of signing up for substack --I had a substack subscription, but lost my password because...-- just so I could read Dr. Hartnett's blog. It is worth it. Want to read smart, insightful, non traditional Republican takes on the big issues? Read Dr. Mike. Better yet... subscribe. I'll be leaving the MarinGOP soon. This was my last election with the MarinGOP. This will be my last Thanksgiving balancing volunteer work with pies. You can click here to read my first Covid-era Thanksgiving piece --I actually got heartfelt weepy lonely fanmail over that, too many people were trapped alone that year-- or click here to read about my battles with trolls while baking pies.
I'll miss most of you, but I'm thrilled about the November election. And, I suspect I'll find something interesting to do in my post MarinGOP future.
~Sarah Nagle
Soon to be ex Secretary, MarinGOP
P.s. What a difference four years makes. The video above was made (with my help) by my good friend Bob McIntosh back in 2020. It was the day we met. His wife laughed hilariously a couple of years later when he told us both over a bottle of wine that I was the weirdest looking chick on the boat dock... and then we got to talking and never stopped. Weirdly, maybe the fact that I'm an ex Democrat who really doesn't fit in too well may be the reason why I was willing to vote for Donald Trump six times. I saw something and someone who didn't fit into the sad old same old scripted norm. I saw someone dancing into the future. It's been a rough four years. I'm planning on making the next four years amazing. We're Americans, with hard work and luck we can do anything.
