Due to conflicts with the rescheduled caucuses, the dinner at The Bootlegger has been cancelled and our 2012 tribute to President Reagan will be during our First Friday Happy Hour on February 3, 2012, from 5pm to 7pm at The Swingers Club inside The Plaza Hotel and Casino, at 1 Main Street, in downtown Las Vegas.

We hope you’ll join us there to celebrate what would have been the Gipper’s 101st birthday!

See you there!

Photos from the event may be viewed on our Flickr page.  Just click here.

Listen in at 9:30 to hear Craig featured on the “State of Nevada” radio show on 88.9 FM!

They’ve already named an airport, an aircraft carrier, a courthouse, a medical center, at least two post offices, several schools and more than two dozen roads for him. A McDonald’s in Alabama where he once ate even boasts a bust of him.

Yet that’s not enough for the most devout supporters of Ronald Reagan.

“We decided to aim for the biggest possible thing, which is a mountain,” said Karri Bragg, 24, who heads up an effort in the Silver State being dubbed the Reagan Legacy Project and will kick off the formal effort at a Reagan birthday celebration at a Las Vegas casino.

Bragg has learned that the namings can get tangled in local politics.

She was surprised to realize upon leaving Norquist’s organization to work in Las Vegas for the advocacy organization Citizens Outreach that nothing there had yet been named for Reagan despite the Silver State’s prominent role in the former California governor’s presidency.

Yet despite the construction of more than 200 schools in once-burgeoning Las Vegas since the 1980s, none has been named for Reagan. So Bragg said she’s looking for a mountain to name for Reagan somewhere other than in the Democratic stronghold of Clark County, which contains Las Vegas.

“We’re trying to find a peak that’s in a place where people in that community would be supportive of it,” she said, specifying rural northern Nevada as a likely target. “We’re not planning to drop it in a town where the people just reject it.”
Read the entire article here!

The VIP keynote speaker will be Craig Shirley, author of Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America which was published last October.

Shirley is President and CEO of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, the public relations, marketing, and government affairs firm he originally founded in 1984.

The firm has become internationally recognized over the years among public opinion leaders and the national media with clients such as the Allied Pilots Association, Crown Publishing, Northpoint Technology, Simon and Schuster Publishing, Westinghouse, the Orphan Foundation of America, Freedom Alliance, Center for Individual Freedom, defense contractors, utility companies, and a host of other corporate, trade and issue concerns.

Mr. Shirley has been professionally involved in American politics and government for almost three decades. He has worked in government and on campaigns at the congressional, gubernatorial, and presidential levels.

A graduate of Springfield College, Mr. Shirley’s fields of specialization include strategic public relations, crisis management, marketing, and government affairs, as well as political consulting and government affairs. He was honored as the school’s “Outstanding Alumnus of 2005.”

Mr. Shirley is also the bestselling author of Reagan’s Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All.  The book, which analyzes Ronald Reagan’s pivotal 1976 presidential campaign, was released by Nelson Current Publishing in January 2005.

Favorable reviews of the book appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, and The Weekly Standard among dozens of others. Reagan’s Revolution also scored a spot on The Washington Post’s bestsellers list. A documentary based on the book is currently in production.

In Rendezvous with Destiny, Shirley tells the tale of Reagan’s triumph. By tracing the path from Reagan’s defeat on the convention floor in 1976 to his ultimate victory on election night in 1980, Shirley shows in gripping detail how Reagan’s unshakeable hopefulness and conservative convictions led to a most unlikely presidency.

Shirley explores the Gipper’s underreported wilderness years (1976–79) and follows him as Reagan hones his message, assembles his team, and launches his bid for the White House amid the inflation crisis, the Panama Canal fight, and Jimmy Carter’s era of malaise.

In 1987, Mr. Shirley and David Keene formed Keene, Shirley & Associates, Inc. During the five year association, he tripled the billings for Keene, Shirley & Associates, ran a major advertising and public relations campaign supporting President Bush and Operation Desert Storm, successfully represented the Embassy of the State of Kuwait, and was placed in charge of public relations for an international conference on democracy hosted in Prague by President Vaclav Havel of then Czechoslovakia.

In 1992, Mr. Shirley re-opened Craig Shirley & Associates. In addition to working with a host of political, corporate, and trade concerns, Mr. Shirley served as an informal advisor to the 1996 campaign of Republican Presidential nominee Sen. Bob Dole.

In 2000, the firm provided in-kind support to the presidential campaign of then Governor George W. Bush as well as the Florida recount. In that same year, Craig Shirley & Associates became Shirley & Banister Public Affairs with the promotion of Diana Banister from vice president to partner.

Mr. Shirley’s past efforts include the Fund for America’s Future, the political action committee of Vice President George Bush. Mr. Shirley worked closely with the future President George W. Bush, organizing conservative support for his father’s 1988 presidential bid.

During the 1984 campaign, he was the Director of Communications for the National Conservative Political Action Committee, America’s largest independent political committee, which spent over $14 million on behalf of President Reagan’s re-election.

As Communications Advisor to the Republican National Committee in 1982, Mr. Shirley traveled across the country advising dozens of campaigns and state committees on public relations, political advertising, and campaign strategy.

In 198l, Shirley served as an account executive with a major New York advertising firm. There he managed and supervised agency programs for the New York Racing Association and other high profile clients.

In 1980, he directed the Fund for a Conservative Majority’s $750,000 independent expenditure campaign in support of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign.

In 1978, Mr. Shirley served as press secretary to U.S. Senator Gordon Humphrey on his upset win in New Hampshire and came with the Senator to Washington, D.C. to serve on his Capitol Hill staff.

Mr. Shirley is a frequently sought-after commentator and speaker by the national media on politics, ideology, and Washington and has appeared on national television including C-SPAN, CNBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, FOX News Channel and others.  Mr. Shirley also lectures at various seminars and has contributed articles to numerous publications including The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Times, USA Weekend, Campaigns and Elections, The Weekly Standard, Conservative Digest, and Insight Magazine.

Tickets to the February 6 Ronald Reagan Birthday Party & Reception at the M with Mr. Shirley are $99 per person.  To purchase tickets online or get additional information, go to www.ReaganLegacyProject.com

For a bio on Mr. Shirley, please visit his website: http://www.rendezvouswithdestiny.org/author.html

For more information about his latest book, please visit: http://www.rendezvouswithdestiny.org/about.html