Davidson County Republican Party Chairman Lonnie Spivak joined Friday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss the return of the Reagan Day dinner scheduled for January 25, 2024.
Spivak shares details about the event to be held at the prestigious Cordell, and the event will feature Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs as the keynote speaker and hints at potential surprise guests.
Spivak offered listeners a peek behind the scenes of party political operations to mention one of the initiatives underway to mobilize Republicans who only vote in presidential elections with the roundtable of in-studio guests including author Roger Simon and original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael.
TRANSCRIPT
Michael Patrick Leahy: And welcome back to The Tennessee Star Report. I’m Michael Patrick Leahy. We’re broadcasting live from our studios in downtown Nashville. We are having a party in-studio with all-star panelists galore.
All-star panelist Roger Simon in studio, original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael, and now all-star panelist and chairman of the Davidson County Republican Party, Lonnie Spivak.
Lonnie, welcome to our new studios.
Lonnie Spivak: You know – and I’ll get to say that for the first time since I’ve been doing your show: Good afternoon, Michael.
Michael Patrick Leahy: You love that.
Lonnie Spivak: It’s been very early in the morning and now we get 12 o’clock start.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Yeah, you often would come by the studio like at 5:30, 5:45 in the morning.
Lonnie Spivak: I’m an early bird anyway, so–
Michael Patrick Leahy: And you usually brought me waffles from Waffle House, which I love. Thank you very much for that. But you know, it’s 12:06 p.m.
So, you have some news – an event coming up for the Davidson County Republican Party.
And by the way, all our listeners out there, look, this is the only America First News talk radio station in Nashville, so I can tell you I’m here. We got Stephen K Bannon; we got John Fredericks on here, we got me. This is where all of the MAGA activists are starting to listen, and they need to go beyond just listening and we’ve got some action for them – “Action, action, action!”
Lonnie Spivak: Well, for the first time in a long time, the Davidson County Republican Party is bringing back a Reagan Day dinner.
We have it scheduled for January 25th – it’s a Thursday. And we’re going to be right down the street from your palatial studios at the Cordell at 45 Linsley Avenue.
The VIP reception will start at five, and the dinner will start at six, and we’ll go till nine. We’ll have Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs will be our keynote speaker and several other surprise guests.
It’s going to be a great event.
Michael Patrick Leahy: So that’s Thursday, January 25th.
Thursday, January 25th, 6 p.m.
Michael Patrick Leahy: At the Cordell
Lonnie Spivak: At the Cordell, which is a nice venue. We’ll have the VIP reception upstairs. We have the whole building reserved. It’ll be just a great, great time. There’s street parking – very safe area of town.
It should be great.
Michael Patrick Leahy: I know the Cordell. It’s a great venue for weddings and like my daughter was married there and they were fabulous. It’s a very Nashville now kind of venue, isn’t it?
Lonnie Spivak: Yeah. And, you know, we need it someplace where we could fit, you know, about 200 people, but nothing that was too, too big.
And it’s a quaint venue. When is it again? Thursday, January 25th.
Michael Patrick Leahy: And you see, you can go to gopnashville.org and you can buy tickets. There’s a range of ticket prices.
Lonnie Spivak: Well, we’ve got sponsors, and we have ticket prices. So you could be, you could, I mean, you could be our presidential sponsor and, and really help us fund the event.
Lots of zeros on that one. There are a few zeros on it. I mean, it’s $7,500 for the presidential sponsor. It’s, but you know, the things that help us support candidates is this event – it’s money.
Michael Patrick Leahy: And money, as former California State Treasurer in the 1960s Jesse Unruh said, ‘Money is the mother’s milk of politics.’
Lonnie Spivak: Yeah. Right. It’s gonna take the support of people. This will be a big election year. We’re going to do a presidential straw poll and maybe straw poll some of the congressional races. And it’ll really be a great time. There’ll be a VIP section for those, who get those tickets and, you know, be up close and personal with.
The WWE superstar and possible gubernatorial candidate, Glenn Jacobs, and it’s really going to be a great event.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Now, what’s interesting about this is you have also this VIP event before that, right? Well, you get to talk to him personally.
Lonnie Spivak: Yeah. That there’ll be the VIP and we’ll have, we’ll have some other special guests there.
You’ll get to have your picture taken with Mr. Jacobs. You’ll get to, you know, mingle with me and some of the other board members.
Michael Patrick Leahy: That’s worth $7,500 bucks to mingle with Lonnie Spivak.
Lonnie Spivak: I mean, I tell you what, we’re, it’s really going to be a great time.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Now you dropped a little hint there about Glenn Jacobs.
Potential gubernatorial candidate.
Lonnie Spivak: Well, I don’t think it’s a secret that he’s exploring running for governor.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Well, that’s it. And look, he’s a fascinating guy. He’s what? 6 foot 10. Yeah.
Lonnie Spivak: He’s a big man.
Michael Patrick Leahy: He’s a big guy. Yeah. Six foot 10. Very, very good.
Okay. Oh, will there be any book signings at the event?
Lonnie Spivak: Well, haven’t worked that out with his team–
Michael Patrick Leahy: You know, there are some other people who have books that are relevant that might be interested. Like, oh, I don’t know; Roger Simon, author of American Refugees.
Lonnie Spivak: I’d love to have him there. Well, there you go. Roger, if it would, would you be available?
Roger Simon: I believe so because, you know, the shameless truth of the world is, when you have a, even if it’s your 14th book, as it is in my case, you know, you’ll go, you’ll go everywhere to sell it. So that’s, yeah, I’m going to D.C. and New York and everywhere.
Lonnie Spivak: And let me just say, all the tickets are not $7,500; we have just tickets, they’re $125.
They’re a little more than they’ve been in the past, but everything costs more.
Michael Patrick Leahy: And look, what is it that you’re doing here with the money? Well, you’re supporting the Davidson County Republican Party.
Lonnie Spivak: You know, we’re going to be, we’re going to be registering voters.
And really, part of the money is going to be used for my initiative to get the people out to vote who are only voting in presidential races.
The last election cycle really showed me that we weren’t going to spontaneously grow enough Republicans in Nashville. There are not going to be enough transplants, there’s not going to be that many walkaways to really swing many, any races in Davidson County. And we’ve identified about 45,000 Republicans who are only voting in the presidential election–
Michael Patrick Leahy: And don’t vote in the local and they don’t vote locally. And if they did, we might have a chance–
Lonnie Spivak: When you look at races like Jeff Eslick, he won by 49 votes.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Forty-nine votes out of like 3,000 cast. Maybe more than that.
Lonnie Spivak: And so, if we get, if we can get 4-5 percent of that 45,000 out to vote in the local elections, we will swing some of those close races. I think we probably could have swung two of the districts in the last race, including the DeVette Blaylock race.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Now, Roger Simon, when you moved here from California to Tennessee, which you write about in your book, American Refugees. It’s all about moving from blue states to red states. You had a certain idea about what Tennessee was like.
I’m thinking one of the surprises is how blue Davidson County has been.
Roger Simon: Oh, absolutely. I mean you know, I was totally naive about it. I mean, I figured, I figured that Davidson County/Nashville would be purple.
Michael Patrick Leahy: It’s not purple.
Roger Simon: No.
Michael Patrick Leahy: It’s blue, blue, blue.
Crom Carmichael, the original all-star panelist. By the way, just for those of you who are listening to this fun party that we’re having four of us are around the table in our studio and we only have three microphones.
So we’re sharing one of the microphones.
Roger Simon: I think you better upgrade here.
Michael Patrick Leahy: We need to upgrade, folks.
Crom Carmichael, your comment.
Crom Carmichael: You know, Roger, I think one of the reasons that Nashville is so blue is the same reason I would say virtually all state capitals in the U.S. are very blue for their own cities.
And that’s because, that’s because the state capitals have a large number of federal employees; they have a large number of state employees; and then of course they have the same number of city employees that a city its size would have if it were not the state capital.
Roger Simon: Absolutely true, and it’s the same as Washington D.C., same thing.
Crom Carmichael: Yes.
Even worse there.
There it’s even worse. That’s all they do in Washington D. C. is government.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Well, you know, it’s funny you talk about that. I cannot think of a state capital as a city that’s not blue. Can you, Lonnie?
Lonnie Spivak: Not off the top of my head, no,
Roger Simon: But, you know, Sacramento, California is less blue than San Francisco and Los Angeles. It’s blue.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Yeah, it’s blue.
Even Cheyenne, Wyoming. Even Cheyenne. That’s incredible. It is, it is. Maybe it’s purple-y. Yeah. But I don’t think, I don’t think it’s red. How about that?
Lonnie Spivak: Well, we need to work on that.
And, so, I mean, we’re going to be targeting, if you’re one of those people who are only voting in the presidential election. Expect to be hearing from us very soon.
Michael Patrick Leahy: That is “action, action, action,” as our friend Stephen K. Bannon says. Very smart.
All right, when we come back, we want to talk about the school board races and education and the prospects for Governor Bill Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship legislation.
We’ll be back after this.
This is The Tennessee Star Report.
I’m Michael Patrick Leahy with Lonnie Spivak, Crom Carmichael, and Roger Simon.
Back after this.
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Listen to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy from 11am to 1pm weekdays on WENO AM760 The Flame.
Photo “Lonnie Spivak” by Lonnie Spivak. Background Photo “Davidson County Courthouse” by euthman. CC BY-SA 2.0.
