THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

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My Journey from California Liberalism to Utah Conservatism: Inspired by Reagan’s Timeless Vision

A Childhood in the Shadow of Turmoil

I moved to Southern California shortly after I was born in 1953, at the tail end of the postwar boom when the Golden State still felt like the land of endless opportunity. My high school years stretched from 1967 to 1971, a time when the world seemed to unravel before our eyes while rock & roll excelled. The Vietnam War dominated everything: protests on campus, body counts in the morning paper and again on the nightly news, friends' older brothers shipping out. In 1971, my draft lottery number came up on TV...14, yea...Fourteen. I remember staring at that TV screen, heart pounding, knowing it meant almost certain service in a war that was deeply mismanaged. Suddenly, the draft ended and the all-volunteer military was established—just in time for me to escape the call, but the fear, the uncertainty, and the deep questions about government integrity never left me.

Bartending My Way to a College Degree

After high school graduation, I moved down to Orange County—still affordable then, still full of promise—and put myself through college by bartending nights and weekends in Balboa. Shaking cocktails at the Studio Café paid the bills while I studied Political Science with a focus on International Relations at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. I minored in Philosophy and took every Constitutional Law class I could. My specialty became the politics of oil, which felt painfully relevant as I drove back and forth to campus during the shortages of the mid-1970s, praying the station on the corner still had gas on my even or odd day.

My First Vote and the Pull of Progressive Promises

In 1976, during America's Bicentennial, I was president of the Political Science Association. I organized voter registration drives on campus—bonfires, cold beer, red-white-and-blue banners—and I enthusiastically registered Democrats. That fall, at age 23, I cast my first presidential vote for Jimmy Carter. I believed his promises of compassion, healing after Watergate, and a new kind of honesty in government. Like so many of us raised in that era, I leaned left, drawn to the emotional appeals for equality, social justice, and caring for the vulnerable...and what interested the girls.

The Awakening: Malaise and the Voice of Reagan

But life, observation, and hard experience have a way of reshaping convictions.

The late 1970s hit like a slow-motion disaster: double-digit inflation eating paychecks, gas lines snaking around blocks, the Iran hostage crisis dragging on for 444 humiliating days. By 1980, the national malaise Carter himself named felt suffocating. That's when Ronald Reagan's voice cut through the fog for me. Reagan was the great optimist who never flinched from declaring we must "recognize that evil exists in the world." After two decades of upheaval—from JFK's assassination through Vietnam, Nixon's resignation, and Carter's weaknesses—Reagan offered a rebirth of American pride, growth, and exceptionalism. His message of pro-growth economics, strong defense, and spiritual renewal rooted in faith, family, and patriotism spoke directly to the disillusioned young man I'd become. I voted for him in 1980 and again in 1984, watching as he restored confidence at home while developing a tremendous business environment and staring down the Soviet "evil empire" abroad.

Reagan’s Principles Become My Compass

Reagan governed California while I was coming of age there, and his principles became my compass. He trusted the everyday American—the bartender pouring drinks after a long shift, the factory worker, the small-business owner—believing greatness flows from enlightened individuals, not distant bureaucrats. He warned that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction, a line that still chills me. And he reminded us that the American experiment—a constitutional republic united by universal ideals, not blood or soil—is both miraculous and fragile.

Watching California Drift Away

Yet over the decades, I watched California drift far from those principles. Policies sold on compassion—affirmative action quotas, unchecked immigration after the 1986 amnesty, ever-expanding welfare, crippling regulations, relentless gun control—delivered resentment, strained resources, declining schools, rising crime, and a hollowed-out middle class. NAFTA shuttered factories across Southern California. Green mandates brought rolling blackouts and soaring energy costs, echoing the shortages I'd lived through as a student. Each failure followed the same heartbreaking pattern: heartfelt intentions, massive government intervention, unintended consequences, blame deflected elsewhere.

Lessons from a Lifetime in Business

These weren't abstract debates—they touched every part of my life. After college, I built a 45-year entrepreneurial career, co-founding and leading companies in professional golf (a women's developmental tour preparing players for the LPGA), high-tech database development, direct marketing, waste-heat recovery for power generation, and molecular diagnostics. In business, I learned brutally and repeatedly that results matter more than intentions. Accountability in a fiduciary environment, merit, and limited interference drive success; government overreach does the opposite.

Post-9/11: Channeling Patriotism into Innovation

That lesson crystallized after 9/11. The attacks shook me to my core. Too old for military service, I channeled my anger and patriotism into energy independence. Researching America's staggering waste—over 60% of industrial fuel lost as heat—we licensed a breakthrough patent and founded ElectraTherm. We pioneered low-temperature waste-heat-to-power technology, turning factory exhaust into clean electricity. Awards followed, and in 2011 even President Obama visited our facility, praising the innovation. We were acquired by a global leader, and the technology now reduces CO2 emissions worldwide. This was the America I loved—the one of ingenuity and self-reliance—and I became determined to defend it for my children and grandchildren.

Turning to the Intellectual Foundations of Conservatism

The widening gap between progressive promises and real-world outcomes drove me deeper into study: Milton Friedman's clear-eyed defense of free markets, Thomas Sowell's empirical takedowns of leftist myths, and the Federalist Papers' timeless case for limited, balanced government. These are cornerstones, and building on them has deepened my understanding of why good intentions so often go awry, and why conservatism (rooted in human nature, incentives, and constitutional wisdom) offers better answers.

A New Chapter in Utah

Eventually, the California I'd grown up in—high taxes, declining schools, rising crime, eroding freedom—became unbearable. In 2002, my wife and I moved to Utah to start a family, drawn by stronger communities, lower taxes, and a culture that still valued self-reliance and principle. Here, my hard-earned conservatism flourished.

Diving into Grassroots Republican Politics

In Weber County, I threw myself into the Republican Party: precinct chair and vice chair, legislative district chair and vice chair, county and state delegate, service on central and executive committees. In 2017, alarmed by low participation and institutional drift, I founded Weber County Conservatives to train volunteers and delegates in civics and party governance.

Discovering Utah’s Unique Caucus System

What captured my heart in Utah was the caucus-convention system—neighbors gathering in local meetings to deliberate, elect delegates, and hold candidates accountable. It's the closest thing we have to true self-government, the purest expression of republicanism. As precinct vice chair, I hung 100 door hangers, ran training sessions, and begged leadership for better outreach tools. Yet turnout remained dismal—only 8% in my precinct—because the party clung to outdated methods while big-money interests pushed to dismantle the system entirely.

The Fight Against SB54 and Party Drift

That fight became personal. SB54 in 2014 allowed signature-gathering to bypass caucuses, letting fame or fortune override grassroots voices. Opportunists—sometimes not even genuine Republicans—began hijacking the party label. Leadership often looked the other way, enforcing neither platform loyalty nor bylaws. I watched in disbelief as some endorsed candidates opposing the party's clear supermajority choice. Principles became negotiable; power became the prize.

Proposing Reforms to Restore Integrity

This betrayal spurred action. Drawing on First Amendment precedents and the party's own authority, I have offered proposals to restore integrity: require one-year Republican registration, public loyalty certifications, and rules declaring that signature-gathering forfeits party membership. Under these reforms, only convention-supported candidates would appear on the ballot as Republicans—functionally neutralizing SB54's damage without needing legislative repeal.

The Wisdom of Rural America

Rural Utah embodies the America the Founders envisioned: self-sufficient families, land ownership, independence from centralized control. Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Madison—all farmers—would be appalled at today's urban dependence and cultural decay. Rural communities remain the strongest conservative stronghold, guardians of originalist constitutionalism, patriotism, and common sense. Their wisdom is our best hope for restoration.

A Partnership with God

God's blessing on America has always been a partnership. We must remember the price paid for freedom—from Normandy's beaches to today's threats. We must wait on the Lord for strength. And we must be the faith—loving even those with whom we fiercely disagree, proclaiming liberty throughout the land.

Echoes of Reagan in a New Era

As we stand on January 1, 2026—the threshold of America's 250th anniversary—Donald Trump's triumphant return echoes Reagan's transformative victories. Both rose amid despair, rejected moral equivalency, recognized evil, and rebuilt strength through bold economics, energy independence, and unapologetic power. Reagan's shining city on a hill lives anew in Trump's America First movement, restoring dignity to individuals, sanctity to borders, and trust in the goodness of the American people.
The solution remains what Reagan said: a matter of the human heart.

My journey—from a 1953-born California kid staring at draft number 14 on the television screen, bartending late nights in Balboa to pay for college, casting my first vote for Jimmy Carter in 1976 with hopeful idealism, to a Utah conservative who has spent years training the next generation to defend self-government and constitutional principle—has been forged in the crucible of hard-won experience, unflinching reason, deepening faith, and the timeless vision Ronald Reagan gave us.

Those principles pulled America from the depths of malaise once before, restoring pride, prosperity, and strength. Today, as we stand at the threshold of our nation's 250th year, they burn brighter than ever in the America First renewal we are witnessing. With God's grace guiding our hearts and our unwavering resolve steeling our hands, we will lift her once again—not just to endure, but to shine as that city on a hill for generations yet unborn.
God bless America.

By BillyO