Annual Republican party dinner featured guest speaker Riley Gaines
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CLYDE – The annual Republican Lincoln Day Dinner featured Riley Gaines, a women’s single-sex space advocate who is a rising star on the conservative speakers' circuit.
Formally called the Lincoln Reagan Hayes Day Dinner, the annual joint Sandusky and Seneca County event took place on Wednesday. The popular main event took place in the Frankart Barn and Octagon House and Farm in Clyde, with 450 attending.
Introducing Gaines was State Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickery, whose House Bill 68 was passed when the Ohio House and Senate voted to overrule Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of the bill on transgender healthcare and sports. The passage includes the Save Women’s Sports Act and The SAFE (Saving Adolescents from Experimentation) Act. An ACLU lawsuit has resulted in a temporary pause being placed on HB 68, the SAFE Act and Save Women’s’ Sports Act by a Franklin County Common Pleas Court judge.
Gaines has risen to fame through her decorated collegiate swimming career at the University of Kentucky. The school’s website notes that she is the most decorated swimmer in the program’s history. At the 2022 NCAA Women’s Championships 200 freestyle final she tied with the University of Pennsylvania’s openly transgender athlete Lia Thomas, sharing their trophy.
Gaines talked about her swimming career, advocacy for women’s sports and privacy issues.
Gaines spent time taking photos with fans, after receiving a proclamation of support from Click.
“The stance I have taken is pro-fairness. It is pro-transparency. It is pro-safety. It is pro-privacy. My stance is pro-woman,” Gaines said to an eruption of applause.
She recently testified on the issue in front of Congress.
“It is unfathomable, to me, that a 23-year-old, recent college graduate, and college swimmer, has to go to D.C., sit in front of Congress, and explain to them the men and women are different,” Gaines said. “And then to be on the other side of the table, and watch as they have these super confused looks on their faces.”
She spoke of her feelings, while looking out from the medal stand, after her race.
“We were told we had to accept this with a smile on our face. So I got to personally witness, with what I feel is an infringement, and what I call an injustice. Do I claim to speak for every single girl on that pool deck? No, but I do speak for the overwhelming majority of us,” Gaines said. “I could whole-heartedly attest to the tears that I saw, not just from the moms in the stands, watching as their daughters were obliterated in the sport that they once loved, but the tears from the girls who placed 9th and 17th and missed out from being named All-American by one place.”
In addition to addressing questions of fairness, especially related to civil rights and Title IX, she also talked about the lack of forewarning given to the women changing in the locker room at the championships.
“When we were undressing, and all of a sudden you hear a man’s voice in that locker room, and of course, it’s awkward, it’s embarrassing, it’s uncomfortable,” Gaines said. “It was an utter violation. It felt like betrayal. It truly was traumatic, not necessarily traumatic because of what we were forced to see, or how we were forcibly exploited. It was traumatic for me because of just how easy it was, for the people who created and enforced those policies to totally dismiss our rights to privacy.”
Addressing Gov. Mike DeWine’s statements and veto of HB 68, she called him a RINO, or Republican In Name Only, and “spineless,” saying “This is so much broader than women’s sports.”
She also spoke about transgender issues related to prisons, tax dollars spent on sex reassignment medical costs, and language changes.
Referring to a “nation in decline,” she appealed to feminists and parents to support their daughters.
Several elected officials and candidates followed Gaines.
Sandusky County GOP Chairman Justin Smith made introductions.
State Rep. Derek Merrin, R-Monclova, who is running against incumbent Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Toledo, as the Republican candidate for Congressional District 9, gave a quick, but impassioned, presentation with the bones of his stump speech.
“God has given us our right to freedom of speech and self-defense, but it is this document that helps us secure those rights,” Merrin said, Constitution in hand. “We are living in a time, right now, when there are many people want to act like this document doesn’t exist. As if it’s a relic, they want to misinterpret things and take away our freedoms.”
He voiced support for the re-election of Donald Trump as President, he wants to send the military to the southern border and finish Trump’s border wall. Additionally, he advocated fiscal responsibility.
He also called himself a conservative and a Christian, before being a Republican, saying “Both parties have failed us.”
Also speaking was State Sen. Bill Reineke, R-Tiffin, Robert Spague, Ohio Treasurer of State and Bill Frankart, Seneca County Commissioner.
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This article originally appeared on Fremont News-Messenger: Annual Republican party dinner featured guest speaker Riley Gaines
