Post by outhouseking on Jun 9, 2009 6:42:02 GMT -6
Good interview Tricia!
www.myrtlebeachcompass.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=390
Myrtle Beach News : Tricia Cunningham HELPS Business
By Becky Billingsley
Tuesday, June 9, 2009, Myrtle Beach - Signing up voters isn't a new activity for Tricia Cunningham, but the people she is encouraging to register these days might be surprised to know she is a die-hard Republican.
"We're non-partisan," Tricia said on June 5 in the living room of her home in the Hunters Ridge community off Forestbrook Road. "I think I'm the only Republican in the group. We don't even discuss political party affiliations."
The "we" she refers to is a recently organized political activist group called HELP, which stands for Help Eliminate Lousy Politicians. Tricia met HELP's founder, Trevor Tarleton, the day before the Harley-Davidson 2009 spring rally began in Myrtle Beach on May 8.
Tricia Cunningham is the media spokesperson for HELP: Help Eliminate Lousy Politicians.
"We met by happenstance," Tricia said. "He said there was going to be a [HELP] meeting at the Steel Horse the next day. I loved the acronym and wanted to find out more, so I showed up for the meeting the next day. I haven't stopped working with him since."
HELP was formed in response to City of Myrtle Beach elected officials' actions to end motorcycle rallies. Tricia is now the group's media spokesperson, and is comfortable in the role. She got her first taste of media notoriety as a young child.
On March 30, 1981, Tricia was 8 years old and lived in Pennsylvania. She was recovering from an ear operation, and while sitting on her living room couch watching television, she saw President Ronald Reagan shot in an assassination attempt.
"I started crying," she said. "It affected me so much. I wrote a letter to the president in crayon. The next thing I know, he was standing outside the hospital reading my letter."
In her letter, Tricia told President Reagan she was praying for his speedy recovery. In addition to having her letter read by the president on national television, she received a hand-signed thank-you note which she has framed with the envelope bearing a return address that reads only "The White House."
"That affected me," she said. "That's why I got into politics. I am Republican, conservative."
Tricia says she has volunteered to work on "every major campaign" since she was 9 years old. In Pennsylvania, she went door to door asking people to register to vote.
Her first taste of Myrtle Beach was at age 17, when she and some girlfriends visited in September 1989. During that visit, Hurricane Hugo made landfall.
But the bad weather did not discourage her from visiting Myrtle Beach regularly after that, and Tricia says she visited the Grand Strand three or four times a year. During the 1990s Tricia married, moved to Virginia, had a couple of children, graduated from East Tennessee State University with degrees in business administration management and marketing/advertising, became a nurse, and then earned a master's degree in life coaching from the University of Sedona in Arizona.
For 15 years she has been a public policy and political analyst, but by the end of the 1990s Tricia says she weighed 300 pounds and felt she had to do something about it. After a panic attack in 1999 when she didn't eat for three days, she had an epiphany that revealed to her the logic of reversing her meals so that she would lose weight. In less than a year, after eating hearty breakfasts and lunches and light dinners, she shed half her body weight.
Six years later the weight was still off, and Tricia was making public appearances to talk about her weight loss method. During an appearance on Good Morning America, Tricia met nutritionist Heidi Skolnik. They teamed up to write The Reverse Diet, which was published in 2006.
Tricia says she lived in Myrtle Beach "off and on since '94." In 2005 she moved to the Grand Strand area again in order to write the book, which she says "launched her into celebrity status." The book has been mentioned in several national publications, and Tricia has made appearances on national television shows such as Inside Edition, Extra, 700 Club and The Today Show.
With a life centered on health, nutrition and conservative Republican politics, people may wonder why Tricia became involved in HELP.
She has an interest in the bike rallies because her first husband, Ron Johnston, was hit by a motorcycle and eventually died from his injuries. A "16-year-old kid on a crotch rocket" hit her husband on May 13, 2000, as he was a pedestrian crossing a Myrtle Beach street. He woke up from a coma seven months later, and then died in April 2001.
Since then Tricia has remarried, to Sean Cunningham, and she says her first and most important job is being a mother to her 15- and 16-year-old daughters.
The HELP mission statement vows to vote current Myrtle Beach city officials out of office. But what started as a fund-raising effort to find and support candidates to run against Myrtle Beach Mayor John Rhodes and three Myrtle Beach city council members who are up for re-election in November has turned into an effort to help Myrtle Beach businesses recover from what she says is a devastating loss of income.
HELP members say Myrtle Beach businesses lost income due to the City of Myrtle Beach declaring that the traditional two May bike rallies were officially ended. The declaration was backed up by new ordinances enacted by Myrtle Beach City Council such as requiring all motorcycle riders to wear helmets within city limits although South Carolina state law does not require them for riders ages 21 and older; and imposing a vehicular noise decibel limit of 89. Several traffic checkpoints conducted on busy thoroughfares during the Spring Harley-Davidson Bike Rally brought motorists to a halt for as much as an hour.
A response from some bikers was to vow to not spend any money within Myrtle Beach city limits. They call their effort "Not a Dime in 09 and Maybe Not Again in 2010."
Tricia says that effort only hurts business owners, and that the more practical solution is to vote elected officials out of office and replace them with politicians who will make decisions that benefit all citizens of Myrtle Beach. In addition to electing new leaders, she said, there is also a need to implement single district representation so that all areas of the city have voices, instead of one upscale area of town being overrepresented as it is now.
"We're working on the ground, talking with people affected [by the loss in revenue]. We see their kids affected. One child could not graduate at Myrtle Beach High School because they were locked out of their house [from non-payment of rent] and she could not get in the house to get her school books and turn them in. These people are having to ask, ‘Do I buy medicine, food, or let the insurance go on the car?' People are making life and death decisions at this point."
Several hundred new voters have been registered through HELP, Tricia says. The group is also bringing customers to city businesses by holding voter registration meetings three times a week: one breakfast, one lunch and one dinner.
This week's schedule is:
Breakfast:
10 a.m., Monday, June 8
The Doughnut Man
200 S. Kings Highway
Lunch:
12:30 p.m., Tuesday, June 9
Key West Grill
Broadway at the Beach
Dinner:
7 p.m., Wednesday, June 10
J. Edward's
2300 S. Kings Highway
HELP members also plan to attend a luncheon scheduled for 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday at the Myrtle Beach Train Depot. Sponsored by a group called Take Back May, the lunch is billed as a thank-you to Mayor Rhodes and city council members for "their extraordinary efforts to...improve the quality of life of the citizens of Myrtle Beach during the month of May, and to...restore the reputation of Myrtle Beach as a family vacation destination."
"HELP, ABATE (A Brotherhood Against Totalitarian Enactments) and BOOST (Business Owners Organized to Save Tourism) are all going to be at the luncheon," Tricia said. "Anybody who doesn't have to work will be there. People from the homeless shelter are going to be there. People who live in the woods are coming out to be there. It will be a very peaceful showing, but we'll definitely be there. Our purpose of being there is to show our presence. Not just words in a newspaper, but true blue collar workers out there who are suffering. It's a trickle-up effect."
""Anybody who doesn't have to work will be there. People from the homeless shelter are going to be there. People who live in the woods are coming out to be there.""
ROTFLMAO!!! Too Funny!
www.myrtlebeachcompass.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=390
Myrtle Beach News : Tricia Cunningham HELPS Business
By Becky Billingsley
Tuesday, June 9, 2009, Myrtle Beach - Signing up voters isn't a new activity for Tricia Cunningham, but the people she is encouraging to register these days might be surprised to know she is a die-hard Republican.
"We're non-partisan," Tricia said on June 5 in the living room of her home in the Hunters Ridge community off Forestbrook Road. "I think I'm the only Republican in the group. We don't even discuss political party affiliations."
The "we" she refers to is a recently organized political activist group called HELP, which stands for Help Eliminate Lousy Politicians. Tricia met HELP's founder, Trevor Tarleton, the day before the Harley-Davidson 2009 spring rally began in Myrtle Beach on May 8.
Tricia Cunningham is the media spokesperson for HELP: Help Eliminate Lousy Politicians.
"We met by happenstance," Tricia said. "He said there was going to be a [HELP] meeting at the Steel Horse the next day. I loved the acronym and wanted to find out more, so I showed up for the meeting the next day. I haven't stopped working with him since."
HELP was formed in response to City of Myrtle Beach elected officials' actions to end motorcycle rallies. Tricia is now the group's media spokesperson, and is comfortable in the role. She got her first taste of media notoriety as a young child.
On March 30, 1981, Tricia was 8 years old and lived in Pennsylvania. She was recovering from an ear operation, and while sitting on her living room couch watching television, she saw President Ronald Reagan shot in an assassination attempt.
"I started crying," she said. "It affected me so much. I wrote a letter to the president in crayon. The next thing I know, he was standing outside the hospital reading my letter."
In her letter, Tricia told President Reagan she was praying for his speedy recovery. In addition to having her letter read by the president on national television, she received a hand-signed thank-you note which she has framed with the envelope bearing a return address that reads only "The White House."
"That affected me," she said. "That's why I got into politics. I am Republican, conservative."
Tricia says she has volunteered to work on "every major campaign" since she was 9 years old. In Pennsylvania, she went door to door asking people to register to vote.
Her first taste of Myrtle Beach was at age 17, when she and some girlfriends visited in September 1989. During that visit, Hurricane Hugo made landfall.
But the bad weather did not discourage her from visiting Myrtle Beach regularly after that, and Tricia says she visited the Grand Strand three or four times a year. During the 1990s Tricia married, moved to Virginia, had a couple of children, graduated from East Tennessee State University with degrees in business administration management and marketing/advertising, became a nurse, and then earned a master's degree in life coaching from the University of Sedona in Arizona.
For 15 years she has been a public policy and political analyst, but by the end of the 1990s Tricia says she weighed 300 pounds and felt she had to do something about it. After a panic attack in 1999 when she didn't eat for three days, she had an epiphany that revealed to her the logic of reversing her meals so that she would lose weight. In less than a year, after eating hearty breakfasts and lunches and light dinners, she shed half her body weight.
Six years later the weight was still off, and Tricia was making public appearances to talk about her weight loss method. During an appearance on Good Morning America, Tricia met nutritionist Heidi Skolnik. They teamed up to write The Reverse Diet, which was published in 2006.
Tricia says she lived in Myrtle Beach "off and on since '94." In 2005 she moved to the Grand Strand area again in order to write the book, which she says "launched her into celebrity status." The book has been mentioned in several national publications, and Tricia has made appearances on national television shows such as Inside Edition, Extra, 700 Club and The Today Show.
With a life centered on health, nutrition and conservative Republican politics, people may wonder why Tricia became involved in HELP.
She has an interest in the bike rallies because her first husband, Ron Johnston, was hit by a motorcycle and eventually died from his injuries. A "16-year-old kid on a crotch rocket" hit her husband on May 13, 2000, as he was a pedestrian crossing a Myrtle Beach street. He woke up from a coma seven months later, and then died in April 2001.
Since then Tricia has remarried, to Sean Cunningham, and she says her first and most important job is being a mother to her 15- and 16-year-old daughters.
The HELP mission statement vows to vote current Myrtle Beach city officials out of office. But what started as a fund-raising effort to find and support candidates to run against Myrtle Beach Mayor John Rhodes and three Myrtle Beach city council members who are up for re-election in November has turned into an effort to help Myrtle Beach businesses recover from what she says is a devastating loss of income.
HELP members say Myrtle Beach businesses lost income due to the City of Myrtle Beach declaring that the traditional two May bike rallies were officially ended. The declaration was backed up by new ordinances enacted by Myrtle Beach City Council such as requiring all motorcycle riders to wear helmets within city limits although South Carolina state law does not require them for riders ages 21 and older; and imposing a vehicular noise decibel limit of 89. Several traffic checkpoints conducted on busy thoroughfares during the Spring Harley-Davidson Bike Rally brought motorists to a halt for as much as an hour.
A response from some bikers was to vow to not spend any money within Myrtle Beach city limits. They call their effort "Not a Dime in 09 and Maybe Not Again in 2010."
Tricia says that effort only hurts business owners, and that the more practical solution is to vote elected officials out of office and replace them with politicians who will make decisions that benefit all citizens of Myrtle Beach. In addition to electing new leaders, she said, there is also a need to implement single district representation so that all areas of the city have voices, instead of one upscale area of town being overrepresented as it is now.
"We're working on the ground, talking with people affected [by the loss in revenue]. We see their kids affected. One child could not graduate at Myrtle Beach High School because they were locked out of their house [from non-payment of rent] and she could not get in the house to get her school books and turn them in. These people are having to ask, ‘Do I buy medicine, food, or let the insurance go on the car?' People are making life and death decisions at this point."
Several hundred new voters have been registered through HELP, Tricia says. The group is also bringing customers to city businesses by holding voter registration meetings three times a week: one breakfast, one lunch and one dinner.
This week's schedule is:
Breakfast:
10 a.m., Monday, June 8
The Doughnut Man
200 S. Kings Highway
Lunch:
12:30 p.m., Tuesday, June 9
Key West Grill
Broadway at the Beach
Dinner:
7 p.m., Wednesday, June 10
J. Edward's
2300 S. Kings Highway
HELP members also plan to attend a luncheon scheduled for 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday at the Myrtle Beach Train Depot. Sponsored by a group called Take Back May, the lunch is billed as a thank-you to Mayor Rhodes and city council members for "their extraordinary efforts to...improve the quality of life of the citizens of Myrtle Beach during the month of May, and to...restore the reputation of Myrtle Beach as a family vacation destination."
"HELP, ABATE (A Brotherhood Against Totalitarian Enactments) and BOOST (Business Owners Organized to Save Tourism) are all going to be at the luncheon," Tricia said. "Anybody who doesn't have to work will be there. People from the homeless shelter are going to be there. People who live in the woods are coming out to be there. It will be a very peaceful showing, but we'll definitely be there. Our purpose of being there is to show our presence. Not just words in a newspaper, but true blue collar workers out there who are suffering. It's a trickle-up effect."
""Anybody who doesn't have to work will be there. People from the homeless shelter are going to be there. People who live in the woods are coming out to be there.""
ROTFLMAO!!! Too Funny!