New Jersey Legislative District 20-23 met on Tuesday Feb 27, 2024, in Basking Ridge. It was a rainy night, but we had an unusually great turnout of 18 people, including six NEW VISITORS, with one person signing the Convention of States (COS) Petition.
On our agenda were the basics: Our COS Mission, our goal, our core values and our National COS grassroots engagement in all the states.
We highlighted our state leaders meeting in January 2024 with one of our two sponsors in the NJ Assembly, Erik Peterson from Legislative District (LD) 23. Two of his staff members are now attending our meetings regularly after learning about COS at the Assemblyman’s office visit.
Our Central West (CW) team has a meeting scheduled in March with two of our 16 co-sponsors: Assemblywoman Michele Matsikoudis of LD21 and Assemblyman John DiMaio of LD23.
One of our NJ District Captains (DC) in LD 9, Sheila Marie Molloy, gave us a wonderful idea to give small gifts to people for bringing petitions. This Regional Captain (RC) started a reward system at our January 2024 Regional meeting. This incentive has resulted in an additional 15 new petitions for the CW Region that we wouldn’t have otherwise had!!
Jo Cicero, one of our Volunteer Activists LD 21, who also does TelePatriot Outreach, shared about setting up a meeting with the mayor of Berkeley Heights to inform her about Convention of States. She went solo. This RC is very proud of her efforts as she truly prepared herself as much as possible to be ready for any questions the mayor may have. She has become very educated in our COS Mission and communicates our work very well!
Great job, Jo!!
The most important part of the evening was discussing what we can expect in June 2024 when our team visits the state capital in Trenton. Bruce Nelson, DC/LD21, gave us some important feedback on his experience at the last visit there pre-Covid.
We closed out the end of our evening breaking up into districts.
Bruce Nelson led the District 21 table discussion with quite a few attendees. This RC led a combined table of D20 & D23 folks to discuss how we can solidify a meeting space for both districts. Both districts have potential meetings spaces to be locked in place.
We want to give special thanks to Mary Lindewirth DC Team LD21 for helping with numerous administrative responsibilities! Separate thanks to Bruce Nelson and Mary Lindewirth for helping to put a good portion of the agenda together!
No doubt about it…we are growing in the CW Region of NJ!
