Conference HighLights

April 15-16, 2005
Salt Lake City, Utah

Our thirteenth National Conference was successful with Platform Committee sessions, a Special Committee session, an evening social, state caucuses, a National Committee meeting, and a Freedom Forum.

Standing and Special Committee Meetings

We met Friday morning and part of Saturday morning proposing and considering changes to the Introduction, Preamble, Defense, and U.S. Sovereignty sections of our National Platform.  Many of the proposed changes were recommended to the National Committee for adoption.

Friday afternoon we met as a Special Committee to discuss a variety of topics.  The committee discussed fund raising, ballot access, general strategy, state organizing, membership recruiting, and miscellaneous topics.

Evening Potluck Social

Friday evening we met for an evening potluck social.  We enjoyed a dinner of catered lasagna and chicken pot pie, and potluck green salad, jello salad, chocolates, brownies, ice cream and other treats.  We enjoyed visiting with each.  And the event carried a spiritual tone as we relaxed and reviewed a number of scriptures.

State Caucuses

Part of meeting Saturday morning was devoted to state caucuses.  The Utah party used the time to hold a mini-convention.  The state party elected new state officers for a two-year term.  The new officers are Jeremy Petersen - Chair, Arnold Jones - Vice Chair, Jared Beck - Secretary, and Cathy McDonald - Treasurer.  New state Executive and National Committee members were also selected.

National Committee Meeting

The National Committee met for several hours Saturday morning and early afternoon.  We adopted virtually all of the proposed Platform changes recommended by the Platform Committee.  We also elected new national officers for a two-year term.  

The new officers are Will Christensen (CA) - National Chair, Cathy McDonald (UT) - 1st National Vice Chair, John Greenamyre (GA) 2nd National Vice Chair, and Roger Tucker (KS) - 3rd National Vice Chair.  

We also recognized the outgoing officers, Bruce Bangerter (UT) - past National Chair, Will Christensen (CA) - past 1st National Vice Chair, and Steve Alloy (IL) - past 2nd National Vice Chair.

Freedom Forum

At Saturday mid-afternoon we held our traditional Freedom Forum. Our featured speakers were Steve Farrell - NewsMax writer, Gary Van Horn - recent U.S. Senate candidate, and Will Christensen - newly elected National Chair.  We also heard briefly from several of the newly elected Utah state officers. It was a great event that concluded a great conference.  We then adjourned the National Conference until October 2005.