Matt Wyatt, Ph.D., of Lebanon, Oregon in rural Linn County is an interesting, multi-faceted individual, and Education Reporter is privileged to tell his story. A veterinarian by education, he served as a public health officer in the U.S. Air Force for 23 years. Returning to his hometown following retirement in 2016, Dr. Wyatt was dismayed to witness the transition of his state from independent red to deep blue.

As a concerned citizen, he began engaging in local politics. "Liberals and the progressive agenda emanating from Oregon's population center, Portland, combined with failed leadership to silence conservative voices and common-sense values in Oregon," Wyatt told Education Reporter. "Like some other western states, one liberal population center controls the entire state. Rural Oregonians pay a lot in taxes but lack representation or voice at the state or national level—it's frustrating.

"Unfortunately, Oregon conservatives and Republicans are sometimes their own worst enemies with a history of non-engagement, risk aversion, and middle-of-the-road attitudes," Wyatt explains. "They can lack unity on critical issues and often splinter at the first sign of controversy or intimidation. For example, state Republicans provided key votes to establish Oregon as the nation's first sanctuary state and also voted to allow exclusive vote by mail in the late 1990s." Second- and third-order consequences were both predictable and disastrous.

Wyatt continues: "Oregon Republicans have not won the governorship since and all legislative and judicial bodies are now controlled by liberal Democrats. California and Washington soon followed with similar results. Now, it appears liberal Democrats are trying to institute the Oregon model nationally to consolidate one-party rule as they have successfully done here on the West Coast."

According to Dr. Wyatt, liberal overreach extends deep into conservative rural Oregon as well. "School districts have been inculcating leftist ideologies for years with critical race theory, school-based health clinics, sex education and sexual orientation, omission bias in teaching curricula, intrusive family questionnaires, and much more. Typically, these are implemented by liberal state officials as mandates and many are just pass-throughs of curricula developed by far-left education ideologues, liberal foundations, and teachers unions—funded by taxpayers."

He adds that communities in favor of traditional values simply want their children to learn how to read, write, do mathematics, understand history and science, think critically, and become informed citizens. "They want their children educated, not indoctrinated", he says. "Legally, school boards in Oregon have a lot of local control, but threats by state agencies to withhold funds or pursue legal action if mandates aren't followed, and intimidation by union officials and liberal superintendents result in school board members giving in rather than sticking together and fighting back. It takes leadership and courage to stand against these forces." He concedes that change is slow, but that parental awareness and support is growing and some notable school boards in Oregon are making progress.

With these considerable and complex issues as a backdrop, several things stood out for Dr. Wyatt as he engaged party officials and interacted with community members. The first thing he noticed was a lack of strategic, operational, or tactical planning to unify and consolidate state and county level operations to achieve common goals. To use Wyatt's military parlance, there is no unity of command or unity of effort between state and local party officials. "It will be very difficult for Oregon Republicans to win at the state or national level without solid strategic and operational planning, a unified tactical statewide effort, and great candidates," he explains.

Secondly, he noticed a high level of frustration and discontent in the community over the political climate. "The local party structure is an executive committee giving top-down, one-on-one directives, so there was no clear way to engage and energize the citizenry," he describes. To its credit, however, the executive committee in Linn County was receptive to Dr. Wyatt and his colleagues' ideas about creating a committee based organizational structure.

Wyatt relates that "basic committees such as budget and finance, human resources, communications, and candidate identification and support are basic, but subcommittees like fundraising, social media, newsletter, meet and greets, precinct committee person (PCP) operations, etc. are easily developed as subcommittees under these four major committees. This structure allows party members and others access to the system and empowers them to engage their talents, time, and energy to do their part."

Enter the Candidate Identification and Support Committee (CISC)

Dr. Wyatt's community outreach led him to discover that many good people were so frustrated by what was happening locally and nationally that they became willing to run for office, which gave rise to his Candidate Identification and Support Committee (CISC). "Historically, the local party would give them a pat on the back, a go get'em, maybe some money for signs, and it ended there," he says. "Good candidates naturally faded away."

The CISC team correctly surmised that the reason these candidates wouldn't actually file for office was because running for public office is a daunting process. There are strict campaign finance and reporting rules and numerous tasks to accomplish with countless levels of detail, deadlines, and support required to succeed. "Without help," Dr. Wyatt explains, "novice candidates won't even realize what they need to know until it's too late and they're in trouble. Candidates—especially new candidates—should not have to reinvent the wheel just because they want to run for office. It's a predictable process."

To remedy the situation, Wyatt and his team molded the CISC to facilitate and provide support for these candidates. Tapping into his 23 years of military service developing and implementing plans, programs, and operations, his first order of business was to create a charter to define the intellectual framework: vision, mission, and objectives upon which the committee would focus. The charter fills just one page, but provides the blueprint to identify, recruit, and support candidates and get them elected.

The vision statement is simple: "Identify, empower, support and elect quality candidates who will govern in accordance with conservative principles and uphold traditional values."

The mission statement expands the vision but establishes with clarity and simplicity the CISC mission: "Get Republicans and conservatives elected to office. That is the only reason for the Republican Party to exist." With this statement, Wyatt reflects his Air Force roots: "On an Air Force base, you have finance, logistics, maintenance, personnel, ammo, medical, and many other areas, but they all have just one mission and one reason to exist—keep pilots healthy and planes flying so they can fight and win wars. Everyone else supports that end goal. The same is true for political parties, their only mission is to get their people into office. Every committee, fundraiser, gala, political function, and communications effort should be directed to that end; otherwise, they are simply another community social group."

CISC's three main objectives provide the building blocks to accomplish the mission. First, the committee determines which positions are coming open in the election cycle and pinpoints the election and filing timelines. Second, the members identify or recruit candidates and provide them with the tools they need to be successful, such as education, financial support, and human resource support. Third, CISC offers post-election contact and assistance as needed, including "reach back," which might encompass issue-specific education, topic research, or other strategies to enable post-election success.

Finally, the charter includes a strategic planning and execution summary that outlines the steps in an election cycle, including cyclical strategic campaign documents with coherent action items, defined tasks, timelines, and measures of success that embody the campaign-specific strategic, operational, and tactical planning elements and documents unique to each election cycle.

Executing the process

Driving the CISC's penchant for organization and attention to detail is probably Wyatt's military background. Even so, he explains, "as I delved more into political science and campaign strategy and finance, it's apparent the CISC is a grassroots conservative version of similar processes that unions and leftist organizations have used for years. Ideology and initiatives are on our side, we're just late to the game and need to catch up."

Wyatt says Republicans and conservatives are also waking up to the fact that if they don't get involved, they will lose their country and their children will continue being indoctrinated by government schools. "However," he concedes, "being independently minded and not prone to groupthink means candidates may need encouragement to step up and run. We assure them that they will not be going it alone; we will stand behind them with whatever assistance they need to understand and overcome the obstacles of engaging in a political campaign. CISC makes clear it's a partnership; candidates must do their part financially and put in the hours and effort necessary for success."

So far, the CISC has only been involved in two election cycles, having just been formed in late September of 2020 and not fully organized in time to engage in the November 2020 election. Nonetheless, Wyatt reports that CISC precinct committee persons identified and coordinated candidates for several vacant write-in city council seats and was successful in getting them all elected. "The first full test of the CISC committee's influence was the special election in May of this year, when 14 out of 15 CISC candidates won their school board seats. Citizens in two districts voted out five liberal incumbents in favor of conservative CISC candidates and flipped those school boards from majority blue to red." As a direct result of the CISC efforts, all seven Linn County school districts are now majority red.

With all CISC's early success, Wyatt admits there's more work to do. "CISC members attend school board meetings and engage with community members angered by city and school issues," he describes. "Mask and vaccine mandates, curriculum concerns, and standing up to liberal superintendents are typical issues that come up. Local school boards have legal authority to adjudicate issues in the community's best interest but as previously noted, they too often fall in line with directives and shrink in the face of intimidation by state and predominantly liberal union officials and superintendents. "So far, very few school board members have shown the courage needed to stand up and lead, fearing potential repercussions," Wyatt admits. "Liberal state education bureaucrats collude with like-minded state agencies, union officials, and liberal superintendents on a daily basis to drive their agendas. Conversely, school board members show up a few hours every month and work from a meeting packet created for them by the superintendent. It's an uphill battle."

The CISC is using lessons learned to improve their processes as they begin engagement for the November 2022 election. According to Dr. Wyatt, the largest growth area is likely candidate education. "We can get candidates elected, but once in office we want them to be leaders and decision makers for conservative values and we're not seeing enough of that."

Beyond candidate skills and election orientation courses, classes in leadership, legal issues, communications, including risk communications, writing skills, problem solving, conservative principles, budget and financial analysis are needed, with background information on specific issues, local concerns, and much more.

"The CISC's first effort at post-election education was a great success," states Dr. Wyatt. "Titled, School Board Power Seminar—Know Your Power; Empower Your Board, it brought speakers from around the state and the country together to inform Linn County school board members about the state laws at their disposal, as well as the power they have to effect the changes parents and their communities want." He added that the seminar also included "lectures on how liberal education elites develop and integrate their agenda through our public-school system using taxpayer money."

"Informed citizens watch the news," Dr. Wyatt observes. "Every day, they see images of illegals flooding across the border, leftists burning down cities, crime and inflation rising, the constant push to integrate Marxist controls and one-party rule, and a steady stream of horrendous decisions by dysfunctional Democrat-controlled government at all levels. They ask, 'but what can I do?'"

Dr. Wyatt asserts: "The CISC provides the answer with assistance and tools. Get involved locally with a deliberate, calculated plan and a systematic methodology to take back your community one school board seat, one city council seat, one county commissioner, one state representative at a time. To paraphrase an old hippie meme—act locally, think nationally." Dr. Wyatt concludes. "It would be great to see 10,000 conservative CISC committees popping up across the country. Counties across America hoping to restore liberty to the people by reclaiming their conservative roots could benefit from the efforts of an organization like this."

Let's hope they listen and take heed.

Want to be notified of new Education Reporter content?
Your information will NOT be sold or shared and will ONLY be used to notify you of new content.
Click Here

Return to Home PageEducation Reporter Online - November 2021