Stories part 2

Rather than post as a comment, I wanted to post this as a blog post. It was too long for a comment on the "Stories" blog post earlier. Unfortunately I did not got to posting this in a a timely manner so the link at the end of the story will go to a general donation to the LP National. ... Chris Ganiere, 2023 LPOC Chair I am Michael Pruznick, new member of OCLP. I don't know where I'm from. My mom's side says they came over on a debtor prison ship around the time of the Mayflower, but I've never seen any proof or related records. My dad's side says various things, Ukrainian, Hungarian, other, but then his side was illiterate when they came over and my last name is made up by the government. It was a period of Cold War, so it was easy for me. My ancestors fled tyranny and oppression for the land of opportunity and I would say thanks by being American.

My wife and I have been together for longer than I can count, thirty some years. We have two adult daughters, one in the Air Force, the other an elementary school teacher (was law enforcement).

My education is in Engineering with emphases in History and Political Science.

My career background includes Mission Critical Systems, Downside Risk Management, and Optimization, including flying on a NASA Research Aircraft and writing Air Traffic Control Software for the FAA.

I got an opportunity to be an early founder at a Linux startup and caught the business bug. Eventually, the timing was right, I went out on my own, and I've never looked back. That in turn created the opportunity to become politically active. From watching the archived videos, to attending silently in the back of the room, to submitting written comments, to giving verbal comments at open public meetings, to applying for boards, and running for office, and even receiving appointments at the city, county, and state level, and serving as an elected official.

Politically, I started as a republican, but left in 2013 because they chose to hurt Americans with a shutdown instead of accepting their ACA loss. At the time, the democrat message was one of protecting the people, so I went there and got a lot of good work done, was even a state caucus delegate. However, after President Trump won, they too could not accept their loss and went WOKE, not just to fight MAGA, but to hurt, to cancel those, such as myself, that were not WOKE enough. So I moved on. At a town hall, then CO CD2 REP Polis (now CO governor Polis) said that if the unaffiliated wanted representation, they should join a major party. So I took his advise and back to the republicans. Got a lot of good things done, but eventually, the truth came out, I wasn't MAGA enough, and it was time to move on again.

I went to an OCLP meeting. Had a great time meeting and talking with people and sharing views. Found a group very much open to diversity of thoughts and ideas and accepting of multiple ways to approach the challenges the party is facing. Most importantly, I found the non-extremist attitude very refreshing. My wife and I discussed it on the way home and began the process of making our change of registration official a few days later.

I am currently working on a project called ROLE, Restoring Our Liberty for Everyone. ROLE is a nonpartisan effort to identity the compromises that empower moderates. The goal is to bring representation to the plurality of unaffiliated Americans and the majority of Americans not represented by the WOKE and MAGA extremes.

As a libertarian, ROLE is about offering the middle the liberties they are ready for now, without forcing them to also accept the liberties they are not ready for. To bring them to the libertarian party. To make libertarians the third major party. To win the seats needed to start rebuilding the foundations of liberty. To baby step our way to the ideal goals of the official platform.

To help achieve these goals, I submitted ROLE to the LNC theme contest. It is currently in third place and with your support could win the theme contest and elevate the party locally and nationally. https://my.lp.org/civicrm/contribute/transact/?id=398