2013 Conservative Leadership Conference | Eastern North Carolina Now

   WHEN:     March 1-2, 2013

   WHERE:     Raleigh Marriott Crabtree Valley

   WHO:     Michelle Malkin and other great speakers

    WHY:     for a better future for North Carolina!

    At the only statewide conservative conference in North Carolina, speakers, workshops, and special events will educate and empower conservatives on how we can restore our state to greatness.

    Thanks to favorable election results in November, conservatives have an opportunity to put North Carolina on the course to prosperity after years of liberal policies that disabled our economy and weakened our culture. We hope our state will soon serve as a national beacon for the freedom movement. With your help, we can lead the way in presenting conservative policy solutions that encourage free enterprise, enhance personal freedom, and promote the ideas of our nation’s founders.

    In addition to Michelle Malkin, we have invited other prominent conservative leaders to join us. The conference will also feature presenters from the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, the Leadership Institute, and many more leading organizations plus national and local radio personalities.

    Last year’s conference saw our largest crowd yet and inspired hundreds of individuals to advance conservatism and support free enterprise-minded candidates. Now, with more North Carolinians active in the conservative movement than ever, this year’s event will attract even more attendees. Your presence will help ensure the most successful conference to date!


    Michelle Malkin

    Michelle is a blogger, syndicated columnist, author, and Fox News Channel contributor. She started her newspaper journalism career at the Los Angeles Daily News in 1992, moved to the Seattle Times in 1995, and has been penning nationally syndicated newspaper columns for Creators Syndicate since 1999. She has written four books: Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores; In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror; Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild; and Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies. She is a Philly-born, South Jersey-raised alumna of Holy Spirit HS and Oberlin College, and lives with her husband and two children in the Colorado Springs, Col., area.


    Jason Lewis

    Jason Lewis has returned to the Twin Cities and is on KTLK-FM weekdays 4-7 p.m. He was on the air at WBT in Charlotte, N.C. While in Charlotte, he was listed as one of "The Heavy Hundred 2005″ by Talkers Magazine. He has been named by the magazine as one of the top 100 most important talk show hosts in the nation.

    Prior to WBT, Jason spent ten years at Hubbard Broadcasting in Minneapolis, where he was rated number one.

    Lewis earned his Masters of Arts Degree in Political Science at the University of Colorado-Denver and his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Education/Business at the University of Northern Iowa. He also completed the Series 7 General Securities Examination requirement from the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD). In 1990, he was the Republican nominee for the United States Congress from Colorado's Second District.

    Lewis has been twice featured in ABC Radio's "The Year in Talk" and has also been a substitute host for Rush Limbaugh. He's been quoted in the Washington Post and has written editorials for newspapers throughout the country, including the Wall Street Journal. Lewis has also appeared on such nationally broadcast television programs as NBC's Today Show, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC and CNBC.


    Ed Feulner

    Edwin J. Feulner's leadership as President of The Heritage Foundation has transformed the think tank from a small policy shop into America's powerhouse of conservative ideas and what the New York Times calls "the Parthenon of the conservative metropolis." Under Feulner, Heritage's presence in Washington grew from a nine-member staff working out of a rented office on Capitol Hill in 1977 to a 275-person organization occupying three office buildings near the U.S. Capitol today.

    Feulner's leadership has been internationally recognized. The Daily Telegraph (UK) named him one of the 100 most influential conservatives in America in 2007 and 2010. In a 2009 Forbes magazine article, Karl Rove ranked Feulner the 6th most powerful conservative in Washington. That same year, he was featured by the Fox News Channel on Fox News Sunday as host Chris Wallace's "Power Player of the Week." In July 2010, he was included in Townhall magazine's list of "the 100 Americans the Left hates most."

    He is the former President and current Treasurer of the Mont Pelerin Society; he has served as a Trustee and former Chairman of the Board of ISI; a Board Member of the National Chamber Foundation; a Board Member of the Institut d' Etudes Politiques; a member of the Board of Trustees of Regis University in Denver; and President of the Philadelphia Society, of which he is a Distinguished Member. Feulner is a member of the Advisory Board of the Public Diplomacy Collaborative at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He is past Director of the Sequoia Bank, the Council for National Policy, the Acton Institute, the International Republican Institute, the American Council on Germany, the Lehrman Institute, and George Mason University. He is a longtime officer and director of three grant-making foundations: the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Aequus Institute, and the Thomas A. Roe Foundation.

    He served as the Public Member (Ambassador) of the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations Second Special Session on Disarmament in New York, as a consultant for domestic policy to President Reagan, and as an adviser to several government departments and agencies.

    He graduated from Regis University with a bachelor's degree in English, and received an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business in 1964. He later attended Georgetown University and the London School of Economics, and then earned a doctorate degree at the University of Edinburgh in 1981.

    Feulner is the author of eight books: The American Spirit (2012), Getting America Right (2006), Leadership for America (2000), Intellectual Pilgrims (1999), The March of Freedom (1998), Conservatives Stalk the House (1983), Looking Back (1981) and Trading with the Communists (1968).

    Feulner also pens a weekly column that appears regularly in dozens of newspapers and Web sites across the country. He and his wife, Linda, have two grown children, Edwin J. Feulner III and Emily V. Lown, and three grandchildren. They live in Alexandria, Va.


    Daniel Garza

    Daniel Garza has more than two decades of both public and private sector experience managing media and public relations, directing corporate projects, and working at all levels of government. He currently serves as the Executive Director of The LIBRE Initiative, a national organization dedicated to informing and mobilizing Hispanics in the effort to restore economic freedom and reign in counterproductive government intervention.

    Mr. Garza is a former White House staffer who served in the Bush Administration and also worked as co-producer and host of Agenda Washington, a Spanish language news/interview weekly television program that covered state, economic, political and social issues impacting the U.S. Hispanic community. In addition, Daniel served as a former Congressional Staff Assistant for U.S. Congressman Richard "Doc" Hastings before he was elected as Councilman for the City of Toppenish, Washington in 1996. Daniel was appointed in 2001 by the Bush Administration to serve as Deputy Director of External and Intergovernmental Affairs in the Office of the Secretary at the Department of the Interior. In 2004, he was appointed as Associate Director of the Office of Public Liaison in the White House before moving on to work for Televisa in 2006, as President of HISPANIC and PODER Group where he oversaw the editorial, commercial, and promotional aspects of HISPANIC, Hispanic Trends, PODER and Tu Dinero magazines.

    Born in the Central Valley of California, Daniel's family would migrate annually from his ancestral hometown of Garza Gonzales, Nuevo Leon in Mexico throughout California, Nebraska and the State of Washington as they followed the crop season as farm workers. He currently resides in McAllen, TX with his wife and three children.


Mike Gonzalez

    Mike Gonzalez, vice president of communications for The Heritage Foundation, spent close to 20 years as a journalist, 15 of them reporting from Europe and Asia. He left journalism to join the administration of President George W. Bush, where he helped explain fiscal and foreign policy to U.S. and overseas audiences, first at the Securities and Exchange Commission and then at the State Department.

    Gonzalez, who joined Heritage as communications chief in March 2009, is responsible for day-to-day messaging and media relations across domestic and foreign policy fronts, as well as for internal communications. He oversees four divisions that comprise the three mass media of the 21st century: print, broadcast and digital, as well as an investigative reporting center.

    Gonzalez holds a bachelor's degree in communications from Boston's Emerson College and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Fluent in Spanish and French, he reads Italian and Portuguese. He and his wife, Siobhan, live in Bethesda with their three children.


    John Lott

    John R. Lott, Jr. is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice and was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988 and 1989. He has published over 100 articles in academic journals. He also is the author of seven books including three editions of "More Guns, Less Crime," "Freedomnomics," and "The Bias Against Guns." Lott is a FoxNews.com contributor and a weekly columnist for them. Opinion pieces by Lott have appeared in such places as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, USA Today, and The Chicago Tribune. He has appeared on such television programs as the ABC and NBC National Evening News broadcasts, Fox News, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and the Today Show. He received his Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1984.


    Karin Agness

    Karin Agness is the director of academic programs at the American Enterprise Institute. In that capacity, she works to connect college students across the country with the public policy research and expertise of AEI scholars. Prior to joining AEI, she practiced law at Wiley Rein LLP in Washington, D.C. In 2011, she was selected for the Forbes 30 under 30 list for Law and Policy.







    Hans Von Spakovsky

    Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation's Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Spakovsky researches and writes about aspects of election law such as campaign finance, voter fraud and voter identification as well as registration and equipment issues. He is the co-author with John Fund of the new book "Who's Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk" (Encounter Books, 2012).

    Before joining Heritage in 2008, von Spakovsky served two years as a member of the Federal Election Commission, the authority charged with enforcing campaign finance laws for congressional and presidential elections, including public funding. Previously, von Spakovsky worked at the Justice Department as counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights.

    A former litigator, in-house counsel and senior corporate officer in the insurance industry, von Spakovsky worked on tort reform and civil justice issues there for more than a decade. He has served on the Board of Advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and on the Fulton County (Ga.) Board of Registrations and Elections. He is vice chairman of the Fairfax County (Va.) Electoral Board and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Board to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.


    Chris Doss

    Chris Doss' political work has taken him across the nation and to nearly twenty countries where he's met and worked with heads of state and members of national and regional parliaments. He's drafted free-market laws enacted in Virginia and other states, and he's worked in over a "gazillion" campaigns since starting in middle school, including local, state, and federal races. His political interests began when he accompanied his parents to the polls at age four, and he hasn't yet gotten it out of his system.

    He's been an adjunct lecturer and presenter at 38 college campuses, as well as at think tanks and public affairs institutions - both in the U.S. and abroad. Chris served as the U.S. representative on the Executive Board of the International Young Democratic Union, the international organization for conservative and libertarian political parties.

    As Executive Director, Chris managed start-up operations for a policy think-tank in Virginia, and, prior to that, he served in the administrations of three governors and worked for members of state legislatures and Congress. He was the first Executive Director for a newly created state agency initiating internet-based services for citizens, the Virginia Information Providers Network Authority. He also served as Director of Policy in the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and Director of Planning and Evaluation in the Department of Juvenile Justice.


    Tim Daughtry

    Before starting his consulting career, Dr. Daughtry worked as a clinical psychologist and later as an executive in clinical organizations. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1971, Dr. Daughtry earned his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1979.

    Tim has a long history in conservative politics as a volunteer and official in his local Republican Party. Recently, he has served as a speaker and trainer for conservative groups around the country as well as for elected officials at the local, state, and federal levels. He has been a guest on Fox and Friends and on nationally syndicated radio shows such as those hosted by Dennis Miller, Monica Crowley, Jason Lewis, Mike Huckabee, Steve Deace, and others. His opinion pieces have appeared in Townhall, Breitbart, The Blaze, American Thinker, wnd.com, Lucianne.com, Whistleblower Magazine, and the Washington Times.

    In March, 2010, he founded Concord Bridge Consulting along with Dr. Gary Casselman as a resource for mainstream Americans who are attempting to restore legitimate constitutional government in the United States. Their book, Waking the Sleeping Giant: How Mainstream Americans Can Beat Liberals at Their Own Game, published in March 2012, offers practical guidance and methods to help to the growing grassroots conservative movement.


    Terence Grado

    Terence Grado is the Director of National and State Policy at Generation Opportunity, a national, non-partisan organization advocating for Millennials ages 18-29. Before joining Generation Opportunity, Grado was Co-Chairman of the College Republican National Committee. He previously served as legislative aide and campaign coordinator for New Jersey Assemblywoman Nancy F. Muñoz. Grado also interned for state Senator Steven V. Oroho, the Assembly Republican Office in the New Jersey State House, and Princeton Public Affairs. He is a 2009 graduate of The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), where he double majored in Political Science and Philosophy.

    If you cannot attend and would like to support CLC, please consider a sponsorship or a donation.