Board Conference Call Meeting Minutes

Meeting Minutes of
The Board
Conference Call September 2, 2012

A conference call of the Board of 80-20 NAAPAC was held on Sunday September 2, 2012 from 9:00PM to 10:30PM EST. The following (11) Board members were in attendance: Ved Chaudhary, Clyde Diao, Alice Huang, Haibo Huang, Charles Li, Edward Lin, Yin-Long Qui, Kathleen To, S.B. Woo, David Yang and Jing-Li Yu. With 11 out of 15 active board members present, quorum was achieved for the meeting.

Un-excused Absences: Fel Amistad, Chenming Hu, Munsup Seoh, Victor Swaroop.

The meeting started at 9:00pm.

1. Planning for the donation campaign:

Motion (1): 80-20 NAAPAC should give to Obama campaign and the Dem Party the maximum amount of contribution allowed by the FEC for PACs (This is the final amended version). By: A. Huang; seconded by K. To.

The Motion was discussed and amended by Jing-Li Yu, and the amended version as stated above was accepted by Alice Huang. The motion was voted: 10 yes, 1 No. Motion passed.

During the discussion, following suggestions were made:

Charles Li suggested that rather than sending money to Obama campaign where the amount we provide will be rather insignificant, it would be better if we collect those funds to build 80-20 as an organization and use the funds for the grass roots campaign with ethnic media advertising we should do to deliver a bloc vote. That will be more meaningful to the objectives of our mission.

Jing informed that the maximum allowed amounts were $5000 per election to any candidate. Thus we can send $5000 to the candidate Obama’s campaign now for his primary election (i.e. before the Dem party convention and acceptance of party nomination by Obama), and $5000 for the general election after he accepts the nomination. Additionally, the maximum amount of contribution allowed by any PAC to any political party is $15,000. Thus, 80-20 PAC can also contribute $15,000 to the Dem party.

The passage of motion (1) allows 80-20 PAC to send two checks of $5000 each to the Obama campaign and a $15,000 check to the Dem party.

Motion (2): Start a campaign to encourage 80-20 membership, and other contacts on various email lists, to donate to 80-20 PAC a readily distinguishable, specific amount of $5.82 or $80.20 which can be used by 80-20 PAC to support the Obama campaign. By Haibo Huang, seconded by Charles Li

After some discussion, the motion was withdrawn by Haibo. Not voted on.

Motion (3): Start a massive campaign to encourage 80-20 membership, and other contacts on various email lists, to donate a readily distinguishable, specific amount of $5.82 or $80.20 directly to the Obama campaign.
By: Y-L Qui; seconded by A. Huang

The Motion was discussed and voted: 9 yes. 1 No. 1 abstain. Motion passed.

After the motion passed, discussion centered around who will lead the campaign and who would help with various activities. Yin-Long volunteered to lead the effort. Haibo agreed that his letter writing campaign will be focused from now till the election day to support this campaign. Alice volunteered to help provide the content for the mass emails. Ved will help with coordination of multiple efforts. All state chapters will help with local state level coordination and support.

Haibo asked if we should start the mass email campaign right away or after we have collected some more funds from the Board members. After some discussion it was decided that the email campaign will start immediately.

Agenda Item 2 and 3 were combined: Planning for the media blitz with Media info gathering from BGS board members.

Ohio, Florida and Michigan were selected as the battle ground states. There was no one from Ohio on the conf call. So Yin Long volunteered to inform and work with Ohio chapters. Florida board members Clyde Diao and Ed Lin were going forward with plans to start one or more chapters, to collect media contacts, and to participate in a large Asian American gathering in October to gain more members and spread the word about our campaign.

Meeting was interrupted at 10:30 pm as some members (including your sincerely) were abruptly cut off due to some technical glitch in the conference bridge. Some members (including your sincerely) ) called back and the discussion went till 10:45pm.

No motions were brought for this agenda item.

Notes taken by:
Ved Chaudhary
Secretary, 80-20 National Asian American PAC