Party secretary: best votes are local votes

Party secretary: best votes are local votesCharles Curley is working the GOP National Convention as a delegate this week in Cleveland and while he hopes he makes his county proud, the best political work, he said, is done at home.

"The most important people to vote for are those closest to you: the town council, the county commissioners and then the state legislature," he told the Independent Record in an interview on the floor of the convention center, "the federal government can create impediments or they can get out of the way. Do you want Hillary Clinton electing your BLM officers or do you want Donald Trump electing your BLM officers?"

He's no novice to politics and this is his second trip to the Republican National Convention. Four years ago, he served as an alternate delegate and this year, he's one of Wyoming's 29 delegates.

Curley grew up in the Connecticut and Vermont and then worked for years in the Northwest as a software engineer. The noise of the city began to wear on him and in 1998 he moved to Thermopolis where he works as a policy wonk for the Wyoming Liberty Group. He was attracted to Wyoming, he said, not only by its open spaces but also by its low cost of living and low taxes.

"This has been a lifelong pursuit for me. I started in politics in 1964 working for Barry Goldwater and later I met Karl Hess, and I have a lot of respect for both of them," he said.

Goldwater wrote the seminal Conscience of a Conservative in 1960, prior to an unsuccessful run for president and Hess edited the Libertarian Forum and is credited with writing the Republican platforms in 1960 and 1964. Curley's work these days, he said, is for freedom.

"If you're not free, you're not prosperous. You can't take care of your friends and family if you're not prosperous and we seem to be going toward a more centralized government," and that he said, will only serve to rein in freedom.

He was elected last April to the position of Secretary of the Wyoming Republican Party.

"I looked at it and I knew I could do the job. I was already doing a large chunk of it so I thought I might as well get some credit," he said with a chuckle.

"But all of the people I work with here, they're a good bunch of people and I hope that the folks in Hot Springs County are proud of the work we do here over the next couple of days," Curley added.