Yuman speaks at Harvard about tea party

A Yuma woman was recently asked to give a presentation at Harvard University about what it means to be part of the Colorado River Tea Party.

Lisa Replogle, current steering committee member and former chairwoman of the Colorado River Tea Party, traveled to Cambridge, Mass., to speak to a group of political science students during their Conundrums of Constituencies class.

She said that Farai Chideya, a Harvard Institute of Politics professor, was looking to provide a different political point of view to her class when she thought of Replogle.

The two met in Yuma a few years ago when the Colorado River Tea Party hosted an election forum at Arizona Western College. Chideya was filming the event to air on a National Public Radio show she hosted called “News and Notes.”

Replogle said her presentation for the Harvard class was titled “Beyond the Stereotypes of the Tea Party” to address the common misconceptions about the political party.

The class was open to graduate and undergraduate students as well as faculty, she said.

“The kids were great. They asked really poignant questions. They wanted to know how I got involved in the tea party, they wanted to know about women in the tea party and they wanted to know what made up our local tea party. I talked a lot about how we're doing a lot of outreaches in south county ... and we're doing a lot to try and reach out to the Hispanic community.”

Replogle said they also discussed health care because she and her husband find that very important as they own the Replogle Medical Clinic, 11871 S. Fortuna Road.

“Many of them wanted to continue dialogue after the class was over and so we went into another room and I talked with them about conservatism and the Constitution and getting back to our grass roots. I was basically trying to educate them on what the government is supposed to be doing as opposed to what it is doing and part of the reasons were in the mess we're in right now.

“I felt very strongly that they needed to hear that we're more than just what appears in the newspaper and hopefully they got that sense that ... we have the same common goals as a lot of Americans. It was a long trip but it was well worth it.”

Replogle will be giving the same speech that she gave at Harvard during the Tax Day Tea Party Community Forum from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Yuma Civic Center, 1440 W. Desert Hills Drive.