Dear reader,
As the calendar turns on a new year, it is my job to tell you all about the one we have just finished and all that Lone Conservative has accomplished in it. We did a whole lot.
Our contributors wrote just under 300 of their own pieces of commentary for our website alone. They were also featured in major national outlets like the Washington Examiner, National Review, and Townhall!
Our contributors broke major news stories, sent Nancy Pelosi bumbling for words in response to a question about whether an unborn life is a life, and even recorded a podcast with former vice president Mike Pence.
We attended conferences to hear the best speakers in the conservative movement. From the National Review Institute’s Communicator’s Conference to YAF conferences in Miami, Houston, Virginia, and California. Also through YAF, contributors Catriona Fee and Gabrielle Dankanich from the Catholic University of America hosted Michael Knowles and Senator Ted Cruz for a recording of their top-ranked podcast “Verdict”.
Over the summer we flocked to DC as interns. Those of us interested in journalism worked at the National Journalism Center, the Media Research Center, and Accuracy in Media. Others of us who are more policy-minded worked at nonprofits like the American Enterprise Institute, the Federalist Society, Stand for America, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, and others. There were also plenty of us in the trenches working on political campaigns and serving as interns to state and federal officeholders.
Tanner Mann is in charge of the columnist team. This year he added several new ones whose work is a joy to read on our website. Dace Potas, Kyle Schmidbauer, Erin Van Natta, Matt Convard, and Jack Shields all joined that team this year.
LoCo said goodbye to our founder and first president, Kassy Dillon, and gave the reigns to Joe Chalfant from Texas State University. Patrick Hauf, our former VP also bid LoCo a fond farewell and took a job as a staff writer at the Washington Free Beacon. His place was filled by Taylor Hunt, a longtime contributor and columnist who studies agriculture at Washington State University.
I have the tremendous honor of playing a small part in this organization as Editor in Chief. I’d like to send a special thanks to my editing team - all of whom, like myself, just started in their roles this year. Jon Voos, Dace Potas, Ben Snead, and Jack Shields are the first sets of eyes that see our final product. They are absolutely essential to our success. Neither our articles nor these newsletters would be possible without their help.
All of these people, and so many more I haven’t mentioned, put many volunteer hours into making what Lone Conservative is today, and what it will be for years to come.
From campus to Capitol Hill, Lone Conservative contributors are a force that the Left is hard-pressed to reckon with. May it be so through 2022 and beyond.
On behalf of Lone Conservative, Happy New Year!
Nate Gorman
Highlights from 2021 in photos