The Guilford County Republican Party held its annual Lincoln Reagan dinner at the Embassy Suites on Saturday, April 13.
It was the first major event for the Chairman David Gleeson and the new Guilford County Republican Party leadership team that was elected at the Republican county convention in March.
Brian Hamilton of the Brian Hamilton Foundation was the featured speaker and he talked about Inmates to Entrepreneurs, a program funded by his foundation that works with former inmates to turn them into entrepreneurs. Hamilton uses his experience as a successful entrepreneur to help former inmates and others in historically disadvantaged groups to create and grow their own businesses.
Hamilton said, “How do people get out of poverty, by being entrepreneurs, starting their own businesses.”
He said the left’s solution to poverty was the government and “that stuff doesn’t work.” He said what worked was capitalism where people start small businesses.
Hamilton said when he went to visit men in prison he asked them what they were going to do when they got out and was told they were going to get a job. He said he told them not to get a job but create their own job by starting their own business.
Hamilton is a graduate of Sacred Heart University and has an MBA from Duke University. After receiving his MBA Hamilton was the minority business consultant for the Small Business Administration for North Carolina.
Sixth District Congressman Mark Walker was the Lincoln Reagan Dinner Honoree and spoke for a few minutes. Before winning the Sixth District seat in 2014, Walker had been a Baptist pastor for nearly 20 years and he hasn’t forgotten how to speak to an audience. Walker said that the president was talking about a national emergency on the border because their was a national emergency on the border. He said the Born Alive Protection Act went beyond pro-life and pro choice to protecting the lives of babies.
He said that North Carolina was second only to Florida in importance in presidential elections and he implored the 150 or so in attendance to continue to be the firewall for the Republican Party.
