Now that the election season is upon us, the Northeast Iowa Tea Party has gotten into full swing. We are currently supporting two candidates in the upcoming election. The first is Mike Klimesh, currently the mayor of Spillville, Iowa and owner of Graphic, Inc. in Calmar, Iowa who is now running for the Iowa House District 55 seat. He has been active in our group, supporting the Tea Party’s three guiding principles in his capacity as Mayor and his two simple rules to live by; one: always leave things better than you found them and two: never ask someone to do something that you are not willing to do yourself certainly fits nicely into our agenda. His does have a Facebook page if you would like more information on him. The second candidate we are supporting is Ben Lange running for the First Congressional District. Ben will bring a youthful prespective along with his firm beliefs in our principles to Washington. He is not a polished politician but he is truthful and will tell you what he believes not what he thinks you want to hear. Considering that our principles are republican by nature dating all the way back to Thomas Jefferson’s ”Republican” party and since the Winneshiek County Republican Party seems to need a little help, we have also been attending their monthly meeting and assisting them with events. We helped them man their booth at the Winneshiek County Fair the second week in July; have participated in four parades around the county supplying workers for all four and the actual float in three of them (Thanks Mike and Darrel); will be doing doorknocking starting this Saturday, 11 August, 9 a.m. in West Union(meeting in the Hardee’s parking lot); and Darrel Branhagen has even set up an unofficial Winneshiek County ”Republican” page on Facebook. We also have two members, Jeanne and Ken, who have volunteered to go through our membership list, make phone calls and update the list as to what jobs people are willing to help us with. I also recently attended a meeting of the Winneshiek County Democrats to help spread the truth of what the Tea Party really stands for. Myself and others have found that when you stick to our three principles of a smaller less intrusive government, balancing our nation’s checkbook and not destroying our free market system by letting the govenrment pick the winners and losers in the business world there is not a whole lot anyone can disagree with. A very big Thank You!! to all of you who have helped so far and hopefully we can wake more people up as time goes on and put America back on the right course. One step at a time, we are making a difference.