CELORON – Wouldn’t it be great for a major political party – particularly one in a dark-blue state – to nominate for statewide office a candidate who:

¯ Is schooled in the ideas of the American conservative movement.

¯ Can articulate those ideas both passionately and convincingly.

¯ Has a nice, engaging personality.

¯ Can move around a room with ease and is otherwise a skilled candidate.

¯ Obviously enjoys campaigning, and

¯ Is committed to taking those ideas to every corner of the state, including to places that his fellow party members sometimes don’t go enough?

Well, guess what?

That has happened in 2022 in – drum roll, please – New York.

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Meet Joe Pinion.

His name, as he says, is “Opinion without the O.”

He was the final of many speakers at an organization’s annual dinner on Aug. 4.

The organization happened to be the Chautauqua County Republican Committee, yet the identity of the organization is beyond the point.

The point is that after Pinion speaks, it’s hard not to say, “Wow.”

Or something to that effect.

Yes, Joe Pinion is that good.

He was in the unenviable position of being the final of many speakers.

Those who have ever filled that slot know they’re not just batting cleanup.

The challenge can be that everything has been said yet not everyone has said it. Plus, even when the event has been a success, as the Aug. 4 event had been, people may be tempted to start looking at their watches.

But when Pinion started speaking, it was clear not only that he would say something new but also that he would hold the audience’s attention.

When he – beginning in 2023 – speaks on the floor of the U.S. Senate, he’ll command people’s attention there as well.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Republican National Committee, the New York state GOP, and other such organizations would do well to take note and generously support someone who meets the bulleted criteria above.

Furthermore, it would be good for an organization that engages in independent spending for political speech to be involved as well. But let’s not get into the weeds of the Federal Election Campaign Act, or the unconstitutionality of limiting contributions that organizations receive for such spending.

Pinion quotes with ease both British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, and laments the demise of the United States.

He notes, for example, that “Open Sesame” policies at the southern border have opened the floodgates of despair and destruction.

What’s more, the country has spent $6 trillion fighting COVID and not solved the problem, he said. This money was spent in part in a quest for power.

A nation founded to escape the tyranny of a king has gone to the tyranny of one-party rule, and “the party of personal responsibility” must take accountability to make sure people vote, he said. Speaking metaphorically, he added it’s time to show up before the match is put to the fuse.

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According to Pinion’s campaign website, he has been an advocate, entrepreneur, and political-news commentator who “has witnessed both the power of opportunity and the pernicious impact of government driven neglect.”

Born in Yonkers, in downstate New York, he was reared by his mother and grandmother. He graduated from Horace Mann High School from which Colgate University recruited him to play football.

As a political-news commentator, he was regularly on news networks and talk shows and hosted “Saturday Agenda” on Newsmax.

Not every challenger to a long-time incumbent brings energy and excitement right out of the gate.

Joe Pinion does this and more.

Dr. Randy Elf’s speech to the 2018 New York Conservative Political Action Conference, with an introduction by Livingston County Conservative Party chairman Jason McGuire, is at https://works.bepress.com/elf/

COPYRIGHT ç 2022 BY RANDY ELF