“I didn’t want to start a war. I just wanted to keep chickens.”

Bobbi Wilkey is a homeschool mom who found herself in the crosshairs of a battle with three of the four notorious Commissioners of Catoosa County who were denied a place on the Republican ballot last year due to their un-Republican behavior. 

Bobbi moved to Tunnel Hill with her husband in 2020 to escape the harmful leftist policies destroying California. They are refugees seeking a more free, simple, family-friendly life. 

Bobbi has five school-aged children. She spends her days around the kitchen table in their suburban Catoosa County home, teaching her children and feeding them nutritious food. When she is not there, she is usually by the side of birthing women, working as a doula or teaching roller skating. 

“We were super excited to live where there were lots of conservative people,” Bobbi said.

Bobbi knew nothing about the Catoosa County commissioners, and didn’t set out to be any kind of political activist or culture warrior. The war came to her – to her front door. 

On April 19th 2022 Bobbi was anxiously awaiting a violation notice from the Catoosa County government. It was 8:00 am and she had just learned from a neighbor that a zoning official was on his way to give notice of a violation to the Wilkey family regarding their backyard chickens.

Bobbi sprang into action. 

By 8:30 she had all the chickens packed up and removed from the house to a big dog kennel on a friend’s farm. Then she and her children waited in the homeschool room with bated breath, uncertain about the fate of their pets. 

Then it happened. But there was no inspection, no altercation. Just a slip of paper silently taped to the door that charged them with having “Non-domesticated animals in a residential zone” and a handwritten addition “chickens”.

“Our chickens had to be removed in 10 days or we would have a $1,000 fine for every day we kept them. But they didn’t even inspect to see if we had chickens!”

The Wilkey’s backyard looked like it belonged to the quintessential suburban family. Completely fenced off with a play set, a couple garden boxes, and a small chicken coop. It was half an acre and the property was zoned residential, but bordered a 100 acre cow pasture. 

They later learned that the violation notice was the result of one complaint email being sent to the Catoosa County zoning authorities.

“It was just one angry lady, and I had never had a bad interaction with her,” said Bobbi.

One of the children had accidentally left the door of the chicken coop ajar, and a chicken temporarily escaped the coop and was quickly returned, but not before being observed by a neighbor.

Unlike a nuisance ordinance, which requires three people to sign affidavits to warrant someone coming out to your house to give a warning, the Wilkey’s lost their chickens and got entangled in this controversy as a result of one email.

“I was completely blind-sided. Before buying chickens, we had asked all our direct neighbors if it would bother them if we got chickens. They were fine with it.”

THE COMMISSIONERS

“That’s when I went to my first Commissioners meeting.” 

Bobbi brought her family and explained that she didn’t even have chickens on her property at the time the violation was issued. Furthermore, she argued that chicken ownership is objectively good. It is not criminal or immoral. Families have raised yard fowl on their private property for thousands of years. It gives children chores by which they can contribute to the family economy, and it teaches them responsibility. It helps with pests and provides fertilizer. 

Producing your own food is a fundamental human freedom and one would think the benefits would be apparent, especially to commissioners who claimed to be Republicans. Isn’t that the party of freedom, capitalism, and family values?

“I have five small children. Inflation has hit our family so hard. Food is expensive to feed our children, and we would really love to have a few backyard chickens.”

Even Bobbi’s children spoke before the commissioners. 

Ringgold, GA — On Tuesday the Catoosa Board of Elections held a hearing to consider the illegal qualifying of four candidates who attempted to force their way onto the Republican ballot by circumventing the local GOP.

A whopping 53 Catoosa County voters filed official voter challenges to the qualifying of these four candidates and this hearing was called to consider the controversy and give those 53 voters an opportunity to speak before the board.

More than 25 patriots gathered outside the courthouse before the meeting, waving signs in favor of the GOP and the accountability rule that ultimately led to the denial of the Republican brand to four commission candidates: Steven Henry, Larry Black, Jeff Long, and Vanita Hullender.

“The only reason that we are here today is because the law has not been followed,” said Catoosa GOP member Adrianne Kittle at the hearing. “I am angry that I have to be here today all because there are four individuals who want to steal the Republican brand and strong arm their way onto the Republican primary ballot. … Each candidate voluntarily participated in the process and interview … and they did not pass because their actions while in office are the antithesis of a Republican Representative!”

More than a dozen citizens spoke to the board in protest of Judge Don W. Thompson’s order to circumvent the party and have the elections superintendent qualify the candidates as Republicans in spite of the party.

Many aspects of this Board of Elections meeting were unusual and seemed to be conducted to stack the deck against those challenging the four candidates. The public hearing was conducted more like a judicial courtroom proceeding than a standard Board of Elections hearing, where usually citizens are allowed to hold signs in the seats and record what transpires. But this Board of Elections hearing was held in the county courthouse where phones and recording devices were prohibited, which violated state law O.C.G.A. § 50-14-1(c) which states “Visual and sound recording during open meetings shall be permitted.”

Those making public comments were compelled to be “sworn in” like in a trial. “I was on the elections board for 18 months,” said Debbie Gwaltney. “During my time as a board member, not once did we ever put someone under oath to testify before the board in a public hearing. I’m flabbergasted!”

Furthermore, attorneys for the RINO candidates were allowed to bring in “witnesses” who had not filed formal complaints or voter challenges with the Board.

The attorneys for the RINO candidates even attempted to cross-examine each of the voters after their public comments! They squabbled over definitions and posed numerous leading questions to put words in the citizens’ mouths. After seeing numerous “cross examinations” of their fellow patriots, speakers began refusing to answer questions.

Another unjust aspect of the hearing was that the four attorneys for the candidates were allowed to each give “closing arguments” like in a court hearing. All four attorneys gave their own closing arguments, but not one person was allowed an equal opportunity to give closing arguments for the Catoosa GOP before the Board moved to executive session and the vote. It was as if they treated it as a judicial hearing when it benefitted the RINOs and then treated it like a normal, casual board meeting when it came to the Catoosa GOP members. All of these things just infuriated the patriots more and more.

NWGRA Member Jim Coles from Catoosa made several helpful analogies to drive home the importance of freedom of association. “Would you force the Republican Jewish Coalition to accept a Neo-Nazi member? Would you force the NAACP to accept a KKK member?” asked Coles.

The Republican Presidential Primary debates may be over, but some of the discourse from those debates continue to reverberate across the country. In one of the debates between the GOP Presidential hopefuls, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey asserted that to be consistent on parental rights, Republicans should allow for parent-initiated gender transition surgeries for minors. He proclaimed:

“I stood up every single time for parents, to be able to make the decision for their minor children… every once in a while, parents are going to make decisions that we disagree with. But the minute you start to take those rights away from parents you don’t know that slippery slope… what rights are going to be taken away next.”

Meanwhile Governor Ron Desantis of Florida maintained, “You do not as a parent have the right to abuse your kids…. This is cutting off their genitals! This is mutilating these minors. This is irreversible procedures!”

How did we know what is the appropriate jurisdiction of parental authority? The “law of nature’s God” makes it clear. Since the Founding Fathers believed all rights come from God, it makes sense that the limitations of those rights are also set by God. 

Different Spheres of Authority

The Bible teaches that Civil Government and the Family each represent a jurisdiction of authority that is separate and carries distinct responsibilities. Both are legitimate and instituted by God himself (see Gen. 2:24, Gen 9:6) Both include specific, defined responsibilities (Ephesians 6:4, Prov 8:15, et al).

Last Thursday, the Chattooga County GOP hosted a public forum for questions and respectful debate regarding the local Accountability Rule recently adopted by their organization. The meeting attracted enthusiastic attendance from no less than eight different counties and included four different GOP County chairs who came out to show their support for Chattooga GOP Chairwoman Jennifer Tudor and her team.

Attorney and GRA Chairman Alex Johnson answered questions from the crowd and moderated the discussion. The vast majority of comments and crowd feedback was overwhelmingly supportive with only a few who opposed the rule.

Jennifer Tudor read aloud from the 2023 Georgia Election Code Annotated a passage that says:

“Authority of Party to Refuse To Qualify a Candidate: The state and county executive committee of a political party have the authority to refuse to qualify a candidate upon a determination that such candidate does not meet the qualifications for nomination to a public office.”

Brian Pritchard, GA GOP 1st Vice Chairman also presented to the crowd his reasons for supporting the Chattooga team that implemented the rule. He shared how his area in rural Fannin County is overwhelmingly Republican and suffers from the same problems as counties like Chattooga where the community is roughly 75% Republican, making it nearly impossible to win an election as a Democrat. In these cases, Republican primaries can be flooded with Democrats in disguise. One woman in the crowd commented that this rule would help people like her who are “tired of having to hold their nose to vote Republican.”

“I’ve never had to hold my nose to vote Republican!” retorted one of the handful of men present who opposed the by-law change. “Never!”

One of the concerns brought forward was that the Accountability Rule might in the future be used arbitrarily by the local party against a candidate for no good reason. Alex Johnson shared how Chattooga citizens could remedy that problem if it ever arose by participating in the local party convention and show up to elect different leaders who could be trusted to be loyal to the principles of the party. One of the main goals of the GRA is educating grassroots Republicans so they know how to get involved in the convention process and in elections to replace people who abuse power with those who steward it with integrity. This is one of the reasons the GRA hosts parliamentary procedure trainings and mock conventions where patriots can practice making motions. 

Interestingly, the Chattooga County Democrat Party used a similar Accountability power to block a candidate from running as a Democrat back in 2014. The Democrat Party Chairman wrote: “When you sign the qualifying papers, it signifies that you are a Democrat. If you wish to support the opposition, then you should feel free to do so. But, do it as a member of that opposition. We must and should expect a Democratic elected official to actually be a Democrat, and to publicly conduct themselves as one. And frankly, those of us who labor for the Party and candidates like yourself as volunteers don’t feel that’s too much to ask. We must stand for something. We have a philosophy unique to our Party as all political parties do.”

Click here to watch the full video broadcast of this Chattooga GOP Meeting.