Along with husband Lou Barnett, Jane has been an active volunteer for conservative Republican campaigns going back to Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial races in 1966 and '70. Jane and Lou Barnett were "movers and shakers" in the conservative California Republican Assembly volunteer group.
 
She has been a volunteer in the Burbank Glendale community for over two decades, fundraising for non-profit charities, working in the California State Assembly and Senate as a caseworker, secretary and legislative aide, and raising a family of seven children.
 
While home raising her children for 18 years Jane was actively fundraising for Holy Family Grammar School, Girl's High School and Bellarmine Jefferson High School as well as volunteering for the Glendale Assistance League. When the youngest child reached school age she became convention manager for the California Republican Party, performed casework for her local legislator and then planned events for a dignitaries such as king, a queen, a supreme court justice and a president as Program Coordinator for the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.

 

Jane worked in the state legislature as secretary and legislative aide for members of the Assembly and Senate, including Pat Nolan and Jim Rogan. She served Governor Pete Wilson as Chairman of the Acupuncture Committee of the Medical Board of California - a position which required Senate confirmation. Jane's experience crossed the street in Sacramento to the third house where she was executive assistant to three lobbyists.

Moving to Washington DC for her husband's new assignment, Jane raised funds for The Leadership Institute - a non-profit whose mission is to train our country's next generation of leaders. She assisted JC Watts in jumpstarting GOPAC and then worked for several years at Freedom Alliance, chaired by Lt. Col. Oliver North. She was director of donor relations and handled various events for the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund, which is a trust fund for children of our fallen heroes.

Returning to Burbank in 2006 to be 'home' again and near her seven grandchildren, Jane opened a family business in early 2007.  In late 2007 she was recruited to run for State Assembly in the assembly seat held in the 1990s by a fellow conservative whose career she helped launch: James Rogan, who rose to become a U.S. Representative (1996-2000) and was best-known as one of the Clinton impeachment managers. He is now a California Superior Court judge.
 
On May 14th of this year in a vote taken with serious deliberation, the previous board was removed by a two-thirds vote margin of the members of the various L.A. County Central Committees, after it became apparent that most of the leadership from the previous board were running up huge deficits and were not going to put the party into a position to take advantage of the then potential opportunities we now see coming to fruition, especially given the proximity to redistricting in 2011 and the role the state legislature still has in drawing Congressional seats.  She was one of three candidates nominated to replace the previous chair of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County (RPLAC), and emerged with over two-thirds of the vote.
 
Since then, she and her new board have re-negotiated contracts and reduced the debt of RPLAC, while putting together new initiatives that have given the party a much better chance of successfully taking advantage of potential opportunities. 
 
Among the initiatives she has since implemented are the following:
-Creation of the Red Team Strike Force, which is a group of volunteers who will go into targeted races to make a difference in getting Republicans elected to office.
-Brought forward a community service initiative to put our stated values into action within our communities.
-Linking the RPLAC website into Facebook and Twitter, so the county party can reach out to new volunteers in a more interactive manner.
-Tapping Cerritos Republican Club President Matt Kauble to write the Every Liberal Bit Hurts series of articles, which examines bad bills and voting records and how those things impact the daily lives of our fellow citizens.
-In September, set up a GOPAC candidate training seminar that was attended by over 80 persons
-At the October RPLAC meeting this past Thursday, set-up a Central Committee training seminar to give a common direction to how to run and operate each central committee
 
She also has a number of initiatives that are in the process of being executed, some of which she may speak on at our next meeting.

 

Thes are dark times to live through, possibly the darkest in all of our lifetimes.  In August the unemployment rate was 12.5% in Los Angeles County alone; it has continued to climb since then. With fears of more economic bubbles (commercial & other types of residential real estate financing schemes) bursting on the horizon and the fear of government taking over most if not everything, we must remember three things.

 

One it could be worse; two it is always darkest before the dawn; and three what is broken can be fixed.

 

I know that that these statements could seem like a cliche in that in our pain and fears we can sometimes lose site of the bigger picture of what is happening in the world and how our best days may still be before us.

 

Know this that since June, on the question of which party would you vote for the office of Congress the Republican Party is leading the Democrat Party.  On the issue of healthcare, the Republican Party for the first time in decades is leading the Democrat Party on the issue of who do you trust more. 

 

We have also seen the rise of the Tea Party Patriots who are regular individuals who have decided enoughs is enough and have been particularly effect in arguing for smaller and less intrusive government.  In the state legislature we are starting to see this pressure start to payoff as state legislative leaders negotiate a new water policy for the state.  That would not happen if the Tea Parties did not bring to the attention of the nation and state the government created drought in the Central Valley where California's once plantiful bread basket of orchards and grains has been killed off for the year.

 

And while the Tax Reform that the Governor's Blue Ribbon Panel hashed out is unlikely to work and get passed, the issue of the burden of high taxes is now sitting out there as a top priority of the legislature.

 

Can we rest on our laurels confident that everything will turn out alright? Nope, but neither should we wallow in despair, but instead we should work for the reform needed both in this state and in this nation. 

 

By volunteering on a campaign and applying pressure to our locally elected officials we might just provide the irritant that will get them moving in the right direction.  If they don't move in that direction, the ground conditions may just be such that we might just pick off a few of those seats not to long ago deemed safe.

 
Yours truly,

Matt Kauble,

President of the Cerritos Republican Club

 

P.S.  If you are reading this and are not a member of the Cerritos Republican Club you can join by contacting Barbara Lockwood, our membership chair by email at barbie562@aol.com or calling her at 562-926-7069.  To join you must be a Registered Republican in good standing.

 

On the club website www.cerritos-republican.org we have under Past Club Events, excerpts from the most recent Cerritos Republican Club meeting where we asked the candidates who could attend various questions.  ABC School Board candidate and club member David Shaffer and Cerritos College Trustee Bob Epple both responded to our invites telling us they could not make it for that evening, we received no response Cerritos College Candidate from Tom Chavez. Our Communications Chair Jim Yee has does a tremendous job in taping and then separating out the answers to the questions so that if you do not have time to go through the entire candidate forum , you can listen and see how candidates running for a similar office answered the same question(s). 

The Cerritos Republican Club Board has decided that we will have a canned food and dry non-perishable box food drive for the Long Beach Mission at the November Meeting.  At the December Dinner we plan to collect new unwrapped toys for a charity that we will determine probably in October or early November. Both of these actions are not just for public relations, but are one way where we can put our policy of private charity and our smaller government values to work in our local community.

 

Last announcement the 56th AD Republican Central Committee is in the process of putting together our precinct operations.  If interested in participating please contact either myself (email: mskauble@hotmail.com; phone 562-743-1855) or Roger Garrett (email: mrupac@aol.com; phone: 562-843-1251).