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Title: Spotlight on Kurt O'Keefe

Original CoS Document (slug): [[https://conventionofstates.com/spotlight-on-kurt-o-keefe|spotlight-on-kurt-o-keefe]]

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Created: 2022-04-07 12:04:55

Updated: 2022-04-14 03:00:00

Published: 2022-04-07 00:00:00

Converted: 2025-04-14T21:16:34.119718817


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//The following was written by Convention of States Michigan Legislative Liaison Kurt O'Keefe.//

My interest in politics goes back to fixing, I should say, fixating, on the goal of being President.

I was 11 or 12 years old.\\
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This was no passing fancy. At age nine, I was inside on a nice summer day watching the credentials committee hearing of the 1964 Democrat National Convention on a small black and white TV.\\
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Who does that?\\
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My father had been a precinct delegate so I knew the process. With 18 year-olds getting the vote 29 days after I turned 18, I ran for delegate.\\
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May 16 will be the 50th anniversary of the first time I voted and the first time I was elected precinct delegate. Back then there was only PD one per precinct and I won a three way contest.\\
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I attended every Michigan GOP state convention from 1972 through 1976. I went to the National Convention in Miami in 1972 as a YVP. (Young Voters for the President)\\
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In 1976, I went to Kansas City with the Michiganders for Reagan. As Ford was President, this was like signing your death warrant in the state party.\\
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So by 1980, I am a purist Libertarian and that party’s candidate for a U of M Regent slot, even though the convention is in Detroit and nominating Reagan.\\
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You can see these moves were not in my own self-interest.\\
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I came to see that the political class consists of both parties. After years of Republicans screaming "vote for me or the deficit will be out of control!" and then going to Lansing or D.C. and doing the opposite, I became interested in structural reforms as the only way to get back to the system given us by the divinely inspired Founders.\\
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I jumped in for Term Limits here and have stayed with that group for over a quarter century.\\
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I was spokesperson for the 2006 Tax Limitation petition which needed 317,000 signatures and they credited us with 311,000 after some shenanigans by ACORN spoiled some of our valid signatures.\\
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That is politics in America.\\
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In March of 2016, I awoke from a nightmare at 3:00 a.m. with my (still) unborn grandchildren asking me what I did the year Trump ran against Clinton.\\
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I had no answer.\\
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Not being able to live with that and thinking Hillary would beat DJT, I dove back in full throttle on the Cruz campaign.\\
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I was unknowingly selected for the 14th district Cruz delegate slot after our first choice had to pull out a week before the caucus.\\
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Lost by one vote.\\
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Then the Treasurer of the Cruz super PAC stepped over the line and had to be replaced. Through my national connections (okay, my brother Eric) I became Treasurer of that PAC.\\
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A month after DJT was nominated, I received an email asking if I would like to be a delegate to the Simulated Convention of States.\\
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Would I! \\
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When people tell me, “When we get the right people, all the good things will happen.” \\
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Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. It ain’t happening. Until we the people become the self-governing citizens our Founders told us would be necessary to sustain the republic, the train will accelerate toward the cliff.\\
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COS is not just a solution as big as the problem. It is the //only// solution as big as the problem.\\
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I urge everyone to watch Dr. Tom Coburn’s talk with Mark Meckler at the COS Leadership Summit. He--and many watching--knew the cancer he had fought courageously for so many years was going to win this time.\\
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And soon.\\
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When Mark asked him why he continued to go full throttle across the country for COS, he said simply:\\
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“What else am I gonna do?”\\
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Indeed. \\
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As is true with so many in our movement, I shuffled from slot to slot and have now landed where I belong, as Legislative Liaison.\\
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There I can use the knowledge acquired and relationships built over the last 6, make that 50, years.\\
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Instead of working for me-me-me, I am now engaged in what I and almost all of the national, regional, local COS leaders also believe, doing God’s will for me here on earth.\\
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I can only exert my maximum efforts along those lines. The results are in God’s hands.\\
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Nassim Taleb states the only successful life is living an honorable life. The only way I can do that is to do every last thing I can for the larger mission of Citizens for Self-Governance and the current goal of a COS.\\
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I hope that you will all pray for discernment. If you get the same answer I did, we shall surely meet somewhere as we join forces in this great cause.\\
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What else am I gonna do?

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