Well, we all had a great time at the parade. Democrats apparently were disgruntled that their near monopoly of the parade was broken. But even Tim Wood, editor of the Chronicle, said politicians have a right to be seen and heard, particularly on a day when we WANT to see them all expressing their love and admiration for the country they serve or hope to serve.

As we have mentioned, the Chatham Republican Town Committee is going to have a series of events to make people aware of the excellent Republican candidates we have to vote for this year.

In June the town committee sponsored the first debate between Eric Steinhilber and Jim Crocker, Jr., the two candidates for the Republican nomination for the Cape & Island state senate seat.

This coming Monday we will have a chance to meet two candidates. Ray Kasperowicz is one of the four candidates seeking the Republican nomination for the 10th Congressional House of Representatives seat. Since it’s an open seat, this is a great chance to break the one-party Democratic Massachusetts representation in the House. The Republican who wins the September 14th primary can be to the House what Scott Brown was to the Senate. Kasperowicz is a CPA, a small businessman from Cohasset, who knows what it means to meet a payroll and deal with the overburden of government regulation, direct and indirect taxes.

Sandwich state representative Jeff Perry, former state treasurer Joe Malone and state utility lawyer Bob Hayden are the other three candidates. Jeff and Joe are the best known. Only Jeff is from the Cape.

Ray will be with us Monday, but we are currently negotiating to bring all four back to Chatham for a debate in August. So far, three of the four candidates have agreed to debate in Chatham and we will get Kasperowicz’s answer Monday if not before. The big question is whether we can get a date all will agree to. (Since Joe and Jeff were both in the parade, we had a chance to get their personal commitment at that time to do a Lower Cape debate in Chatham.)

The other candidate Kamal Jain is contesting with Mary Zarilli Connaughton, the candidate for State Auditor endorsed by the Republican State Convention. Mary received just over 85% of the vote and Jain failed to qualify for the primary ballot by not getting 15% of the vote. After some delegates pleaded to give him a chance, a few votes shifted to put him on the September ballot.

Both Connaughton and Jain were in the Chatham parade with us. Mary appeared before our committee a couple of months ago and made a great impression. She is a CPA, has a history of routing out fraud and waste as a Romney appointee to the Turnpike Board. The Globe called her “the thorniest thorn in Governor Patrick’s side.” As usual, the Globe was probably complaining about that, but most of us would take that as praise. Jain is a qualified candidate. He had been a Libertarian, but resigned from that party and became a Republican in February.

Both of these candidates should be interesting to see close up. Both are long shots. Why are they running? What do they think they can offer that the leading candidates do not?

This is your chance to show your support for effecting change in governments at the state and national levels. We are asking that you make a special effort to attend Monday and get a friend or two to come along.

Both these candidates will be in contests on September 14. We will need your help as the elections near. The better informed you are the more help you can be. There are 5,700 voters in Chatham; 1300 Republicans, 100 Democrats and all the rest independents. We need to be able to persuade those independents that the country and the state are headed in the wrong directions and our candidates can help steer the ships of state back on a sane course.

We welcome folks from neighboring towns. The 10th Congressional is the South Shore, all the Cape and the Islands. The state senate seat is most of the Cape and the Islands.

We have the most extensive line-up of Republican candidates in years. Their quality is excellent.

This is a chance to make a dramatic change for the better at the state and national levels. What we do here in Chatham will have an impact.

See you Monday.