GOP women discuss youth outreach during OKC workshop Saturday

About 100 Republican women from around the United States attended a workshop Saturday afternoon in downtown Oklahoma City's Convention Center to discuss ideas on how to better reach young demographics and expand future membership of the party.

The National Federation of Republican Women held its 42nd Biennial Convention during the final weekend of September, a three-day event that organizers said is among the largest meetings of Republicans for the 2024 political season.

The workshop was facilitated by Maria Sofia, the federation's youth outreach chair, who introduced and asked questions of the two guest speakers, Julie Hartman, host of the podcast "Timeless with Julie Hartman;" and Rep. Joe Mitchell (R-Iowa), founder of the nonprofit Run GenZ.

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A common perception of the Republican Party held by young adults and teenagers across the country, speakers said, is that the GOP is racist and out-of-touch with modern sensibilities and issues. The speakers said the party needed to counteract this misperception and retain young conservative members by implementing different messaging strategies and avoiding certain types of rhetoric.

Mitchell, the youngest member ever to be elected to the Iowa House, said he won his seat in 2018 by increased door-to-door canvassing and developing strategic partnerships. He said he founded his organization Run GenZ to recruit, prepare, and support college-aged Republicans to run for public office.

"I'm not someone that wants to be selfish and keep this title of the youngest state rep," Mitchell told the attendees. "It's frankly disappointing if I continue to keep this title through the next election cycle. We need to be able to build this bench and build this farm team for years to come."

Hartman studied history at Harvard University but said she became disillusioned with progressivism in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic-related shutdowns and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. She said discovering the radio show and writings of Dennis Prager, a leading conservative talk show host, further caused her to reevaluate her beliefs. Hartman said she cultivated a mentorship with Prager that eventually led to her starting a show of her own.

She told the workshop audience that the Republican Party would be more effective if they shifted their brand messaging and "avoided certain words," noting that a hardline stance and rhetoric on certain issues was off-putting to young people.

"The point of this discussion is to talk about efficacy, so, if we want to be effective, whether we like it or not, we do have to be careful in some ways," Hartman said.

Examples she gave to avoid included the phrase "illegal alien," which she said would sound dismissive and insulting of migrants who die crossing the border while trying to flee violence in other countries, and the slogan "abortion is a sin," which she said would not matter to a person who was not raised in a religious household.

Instead, Hartman suggested messaging that would not immediately self-identify a conservative viewpoint but would "point out some of the contradictions in the logic" of liberals and progressives, such as what she described as hypocrisy when it came to environmental concerns about fossil fuels but not electric car batteries, or a push to acknowledge the nation's complex history while also calling for the removal of Confederate statues.

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A consistent theme during Hartman's remarks was the current "culture war" around gender identity and queer theory, which she described as "the immediate life-and-death consequences of wokeism." She believes the Democratic Party cannot be feminist "while saying there's no such thing as a woman," criticizing the movement for transgender rights.

"Being on the left, you're a feminist, but also, you allow people who are men to dress up as women and take women's trophies. How is that feminist?" Hartman said. "It's triggering for kids to hear conservative speakers, but it's not too triggering to have them get permanent gender surgeries. How does that make sense?"

The criticisms reflect a growing trend in the Republican Party to use the topics of gender reassignment surgeries and transgender athletes as fodder for campaigns and legislative efforts. Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt used similar arguments during an earlier address at the convention, and Oklahoma State Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters frequently describes LGBTQ+ issues as evidence of "woke ideology" degrading to youth.

In early September, Walters announced a partnership between the Oklahoma State Department of Education and PragerU to use its contents in public schools. PragerU, a conservative nonprofit known for its informational "5-minute videos," was co-founded by Dennis Prager, and Hartman recommended her mentor's platform to workshop attendees as a favorite to follow.

More: Why Oklahoma teachers, school districts not interested in PragerU's cartoon version of history

Once questioned by attendees on how to better use social media to actually reach younger demographics, neither Hartman nor Mitchell had much to say about the topic, admitting they don't often use social media. When one mother asked about the effectiveness of using Discord, a social media app popular among teens and especially video gamers, as a platform for debate, Mitchell said it was his first time hearing of the app.

The women attending the session skewed older and were mostly white, the exact issues the workshop was meant to address.

Angela Dye, a 38-year-old activist from the state of Washington, said she was the youngest member in her Republican organization back home and works hard to foster a conservative pride in her children while living in a state that has been a Democratic stronghold for decades. She said she'd felt she was "running out of ideas" on how to bolster engagement from young people, but told The Oklahoman she felt encouraged after Saturday's workshop.

"Avoiding the buzzwords was helpful," Dye said of Hartman's advice. "But this is still very difficult because we have a lot of stagnant old people, and then me and a few other younger people that want to do other stuff. We're still working on trying to get more people, but I don't think we can do things just one way. I think we can embrace our differences."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: GOP women discuss youth outreach during OKC workshop Saturday