Guest Speaker: Richard Harris, MBA

Richard Harris represents the Neighborhood Outreach Group (NOG), a grassroots program to unify our precincts, county, and the voting community. Richard will discuss the application & success of NOG in organizing local constituents as we move into the next election cycle.

Tarrant County Democratic Party Sustaining Membership Fundraiser

MCD will host a sign-up table for enrollment as a sustaining member within TCDP as a joint fundraiser. Participants that signup (or re-sign) as sustaining members will be eligible to win one of 10 seats that MCD is sponsoring at the annual TCDP “Party on the Plaza” fish fry on June 15th.

MCD Vice President Update

Congratulations to Clancy Cummings of Colleyville on being our newly elected VP of MCD. We look forward to his continued energy and interest in making MCD an effect force within our local political community.

H-E-B Democrats City Group Update

H-E-B City Group Facebook page, please “Like” it – http://www.facebook.com/MCDHEB

HEB will be on a 3rd Tuesday of each month with scheduled speakers and other local organizing activities. On this May event, the group will recap the exciting victories that we all collectively achieved in the area with our recommended candidates for Euless City Council and H-E-B ISD School Board. Linda Eilenfeldt, MCD member and newly elected Euless City Council member, will be at our meeting to thank everyone for our dedicated support and to preview what’s going on in Euless.

CGS Democrats City Group Update

We’ve had some GREAT feedback on members looking to take the reigns of the Colleyille-Grapevine-Southlake Democrats city group. Contact Clancy Cummings at clancifer@gmail.com to find out more information.

WELCOME PRECINCT CHAIRS!

A big Mid-Cities Welcome to all our Precinct Chairs, and to our NEW Precinct Chairs a BIG Thank You as well!

Things are heating up, so let’s keep the pressure going with our INCREDIBLE team of Democrats!

Democratically yours,

Mike Patino, President
Mid-Cities Democrats

Mid-Cities Democrats Monthly Meeting
Thursday, April 25th – 7:00PM
Los Jimadores Tequila Factory
3314 Harwood Road, Bedford TX 76021 (map)

Guest Speaker: Dr. Jerry Burkett

Dr. Burkett is currently working with a documentary filmmaker who is producing a film about Texas public schools and the school finance crisis. Dr. Burkett and his wife are featured in the film, and his film crew wanted to take footage of his speech with our group. This is a great opportunity to hear of an important issue, plus get some great press for MCD!

TCDP Chair Election This Saturday, April 20th @ 9:30 am

TCDP Precinct Chairs are meeting at the UNT Science Bldg. off Montgomery St. and Camp Bowie Blvd. in Ft. Worth to vote on an Interim TCDP Chairperson.

Current MCD members were polled regarding an official endorsement for this election. A majority of our voting members opted to not have MCD give an official endorsement for a candidate. Thank you for your participation!

By the time of our meeting on April 25th, we’ll have the winner of this interim election.

Closing Nominations for Vice President

We’ll be closing the nominations for the Vice President role within MCD. The election is scheduled for our May meeting.

H-E-B Democrats City Group Update

New H-E-B City Group Facebook page, please “Like” it – http://www.facebook.com/MCDHEB

At our H-E-B City Group kick off event on April 16, we raised $2k (including donations and matching funds) for Linda Eilenfeldt, a candidate for Euless city council. The event and funds will help propel Linda to victory over Tea Party challengers to the Euless seats.

Next H-E-B City Group meeting is May 21st, 6:30 pm at the Pizza Garden in Bedford. Details are on the Facebook page. HEB will be on a 3rd Tuesday of each month schedule with speakers and other local organizing activities.

Arbor Daze city festival in Euless is April 27-28. We will have a Democratic booth, promoting MCD, HEB City Group, and ReadyForHillary. The Right to Life and Tea Party people will also be there, so we need to REPRESENT. If you want to help work the booth, please contact John Schleeter at johnschleeter@gmail.com

CGS Democrats City Group Update

Wanted: Someone with energy, determination, and a willingness to make a difference! We need someone to take the reigns of the CGS Democrats group and lead it to success in those cities! Contact Clancy Cummings or Mike Patino
for more information.

Adopt-A-Highway Cleanup

On Saturday, April 6th, a group of MCD members met to collect trash inside our MCD section of Highway 26. We collected nearly 15 bags of trash from our beautiful Texas roads! We’ll keep everyone apprised of our next cleanup event, and we hope to see you all there for some fun, well-appreciated work.

WELCOME PRECINCT CHAIRS!

A big Mid-Cities Welcome to all our Precinct Chairs, and to our NEW Precinct Chairs a BIG Thank You as well!

Let’s kick into spring with a another GREAT MCD meeting!

Democratically yours,

Mike Patino, President
Mid-Cities Democrats

Mid-Cities Democrats Monthly Meeting

Thursday, February 28th – 7:00PM
Los Jimadores Tequila Factory
3314 Harwood Road, Bedford TX 76021

Welcome Candidates for Tarrant County Democratic Party Chair!

We wish to welcome all candidates running for Chair of the Tarrant County Democratic Party to come by and introduce yourselves to our members and guests…many who are Precinct Chairs!
Please RSVP with Mike Patino.

FEATURED GUEST SPEAKER:  BUD KENNEDY

Our featured guest speaker for February is Bud Kennedy.
Mr Kennedy is a homegrown Fort Worth guy who started out covering high school football here when he was 16.  He went away to the Fort Worth Press, and newspapers in Austin and Dallas before returning to Fort Worth in 1981.
Since 1987, he has written more than 1,000 weekly dining columns and more than 3,000 news and politics columns.
If you don’t like what he says about politics, read him on barbecue!
E-mail: bud@budkennedy.com Follow @budkennedy on Twitter
During our meeting, we’ll also focus on projects aligned to the TCDP as well as Wendell Dorsey’s Neighborhood Outreach Group (NOG) project.

Nominations for MCD President

As a reminder, nominations for the March MCD President election will close this Thursday during our meeting.

WELCOME PRECINCT CHAIRS!

A big Mid-Cities Welcome to all our Precinct Chairs and to our NEW Precinct Chairs a BIG Thank You as well!
We’re looking forward to another awesome meeting with our many like-minded Democrats!

Democratically yours,
Mike Patino
Mid-Cities Democrats

When: 7:00PM, Thursday, January 24th
Where: Los Jimadores Tequila Factory
3314 Harwood Road
Bedford TX 76021 (map)

At this meeting, we will pay tribute to our group president, Byron Sibbett, who passed away from us suddenly last week. We will miss Byron’s gentle spirit, his dedication to our cause, and his commitment to Mid-Cities. Please join us in remembering Byron.

We will also feature a guest speaker, John Woods. If you watched the news in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, you may have seen coverage of John Woods, a University of Texas at Austin PhD student along with other friends and family of gun violence victims at Capitol Hill speaking to national leaders.

Woods is a 2007 Virginia Tech alum turned campus safety activist after campus carry bills were introduced in the Texas Legislature shortly after his move to Austin. Steering the small and tireless group at Students for Gun-Free Schools (Austin Chronicle’s “Best of Austin” 2009 award), Woods succeeded in stopping campus carry.

The 83rd Legislative Session is underway and a number of bills concerning firearms have been filed. To date, none dealing with campus carry or campus safety, though the issue is expected to be revisited.

Woods won the reader-decided Austin Chronicle’s “Best Activist” 2011 award (http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Awards/BestOfAustin?Award=1250813) and is the subject of the short documentary “Her Name was Max” (http://vimeo.com/37680779).

So join us on the 24th at Los Jimadores. Come early to eat; the meeting starts at 7 PM.

Democratically yours,
Mike Patino
Vice President
Mid-Cities Democrats

As a guest speaker, Mike Patino, Mid-Cities Democrats Vice President, gave us an update on a county-wide effort to further involve our precinct leaders, and CGS will be at the fore-front of this effort. Mike, we thank you for your support and look forward to being involved with your efforts.

We’ve yet to see a few precinct chairpersons at either CGS or Mid-Cities, and I personally implore them to get involved with our local groups. We’re moving in right direction, and we need need everyone on-board to make it successful. Don’t get left behind!

For February, CGS is reviewing the meeting date and location as the regularly scheduled event would fall on Valentine’s Day, and while we do love you all, we know many of you would have more important plans than politics!

We are also looking at having a fundraising event in coordination with the State of the Union speech. More details to come!

Again, thank you all who made the effort and joined us last night. Let’s keep the momentum going!

For this meeting, we are extending a special invite to all C-G-S precinct chairs as part of a team building and brainstorming session as we collaborate on the direction for our group in this off-election year. As you may know, the precinct chair is one of the most powerful and important positions within our party, as they have a direct influence on voters and issues, and, as the saying goes, all politics is local. We still have several C-G-S open precinct chair positions, and those interested can begin the fulfilment process by joining us on at Mimis.

Meeting details:

January 10, 6:30 to 8 PM @ Mimi’s Cafe
1449 Texas 114 Grapevine, TX 76051

You’ll find Mimi’s in the parking lot of the Target at 114 & 26 in Grapevine. We’ll meet in the banquet room — just ask the hostess for CGS Democrats. We are looking forward to seeing plenty of familiar and new faces!

Clancy Cummings & Shelley Morales
Co-Chairs, CGS Democrats

President – Byron Sibbet

Vice President – Mike Patino

Secretary – Shelley Morales

Treasurer – Sean Hayward

Fundraising Coordinator – Chris Hilbert

These new MCD Officers will do a great job in the coming year, but they need YOUR help, too.

Please stay tuned to see what YOU can do to help lay the groundwork for 2014 by working hard in 2013.