Republican youth speakers at the February meeting
Austin Smith
Jenna Ridgeway
February’s meeting was full of excitement due to presentations from young representatives of Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action. The meeting began with Arizona House Representative Austin Smith, who is a member of the AZ Freedom Caucus. He informed us about his bill HCR 24, updated us on the border crisis, and explained the ballot curing process.
He then introduced Haley Anderson and National Field Representative Allegra Maloney with the Vote and Live project of Turning Point USA. Allegra informed us that they are working to get high school students to register to vote and that they have more than 1,500 high school members engaged in the process in Arizona.
Matthew Martinez, a young statistician from Turning Point Action, gave a rousing presentation on “Chase the Vote.” He applied all he learned from working on Kari Lake’s campaign trail to “Chase the Vote” data. His premise is that if each of us went to 10 registered Republicans who had not voted in the past two elections, we could encourage them to vote. Matthew said the need is to get Republicans in the East and West Valley to become engaged. Leading the team of “Chase the Vote” includes Matthew Martinez, Ben Larabee, Chris Chavez, and Austin Smith, who are focusing on battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin.