Republican ready to stretch her wings as campaign Hero


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Republican ready to stretch her wings as campaign Hero By SHERRY HALBROOK © 2004 Bill Burke/Page One Photography Grace Lamachia is a Long Island Republican, and she is among the first PEF Heroes to be deployed to New Hampshire for this election campaign. “I’ve been a member of the PEF Region 12 Political Action Committee for more than a decade,” she said in early April as she put in her last days as an auditor at the state Department of Taxation and Finance. “I have 20 years of state service and I’m retiring this Friday,” she said. Her family was very surprised when they heard about her idea of an “active retirement.” “I have five children and 10 grandchildren and they all live close to me,” Lamachia said. “They were shocked when I told them about this. They thought I would change my mind. “I do a lot of things with them. And SEIU said we can go home for visits twice a month. But I need an attachment to something like this campaign that will hold my interest while I make this transition in my life. “I’m going to learn new things and expand my abilities as a person,” she said. “We’ll work from early morning until 8 or 9 p.m. We’ll get totally absorbed in what we’re doing and everything else will go out the window.” The two-and-a-half days of training at Camp Wellstone were “great,” Lamachia said. “The tone was so good. The instructors were so qualified, and what made it workable and real were the exercises. We had to break into teams and develop campaigns and plan events, design posters and write speeches and press releases. It took a lot of effort, but after a while it got to be fun. The teamwork and creativity were great. “It’s going to be good for me because of that. I didn’t think we had much chance to be creative at Tax and Finance. I’m going to learn to think and act much more creatively,” she said. Lamachia also liked the people she met at the training. “We had about 200 people from all over country, from different ethnic backgrounds and different kinds of workplaces. We had a lot of differences, yet everybody had a good attitude. I never saw one person try to dominate the group or the discussions. “The tone they set for this campaign is good. I like it because we were told not to use political candidates as the basis for our actions, but to focus on issues. Our job is to get people registered and get them to vote.”