True North

Derek lives in Plymouth with wife, 3 kids and an aging Akita named Ginger that keep him jumping through hoops 24/7. He has lived in the midwest all his life with large stretches in Illinois and North Dakota. From 1991 to 2003, Derek resided in south Minneapolis. He is the GOP BPOU chair of the A side of SD45 in the near NW burbs outside Minneapolis.

He has been active in the blog and new media world both writing at his own site and designing the graphics for too many center-right blogs to count. Derek started with Freedom Dogs, in 2002, then launched SD45 Republicans, with Lassie to help out in the neighborhood and now the behemoth—True North.

To make a dollar holler, Derek runs a small business as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator and has been doing it as well as a few corporate and newspaper jobs since 1985. He works on a Mac, of course. Need some graphics created to help your business? Give him a call.

Kevin Ecker began blogging back in 2002 at EckerNet.Com,as a way to extend the range of his voice. While his writings are fairly eclectic, he has lately focused on the immigration issue and national security issues.

Occasionally frustrated with the state of the Republican Party, Kevin decided to eventually branch out and become officially politically active by volunteering with his local Republican Party BPOU, Senate District 37. He is now an elected officer, Secretary, of that BPOU and has volunteered a great deal of time providing technical assistance and running several other websites including SD37 GOP and Shelley Madore Watch.

Here at True North, while occasionally putting his sharp tongue to editorials, helps support the site behind the scenes as party of the True North Junta and the True North Tech Team.

In real life, Kevin lives in his work-in-progress (house) in Apple Valley with his dog Sadie and his firearms collection.

Lassie, aka Nancy LaRoche, is a delegate and committee member with her northwest suburb Senate & Congressional District. A former radio announcer (and Democrat), she now pushes pixels around as a marketing communications manager and web designer. She began her blogging career with FreedomDogs in the fall of 2006. Prior to that, she was active with ProtestWarrior and FreeRepublic. Seeing first-hand how rabid (and vapid) some leftists can be at protests, Nancy aims to expose their behavior while supporting our troops and their mission. She hopes to help other conservatives in Minnesota put the “act” in activist. A current "right to keep & bear arms" student, she resides in suburbia with her husband, a bird and a rescued mutt.

“Liberals at their core have no sense of true north. They can't determine right from wrong, good from evil, and in this case even help from hurt. Worse yet - they don't care.”
-Kevin McCullough

Matt Abe's blogging career began at Scholar's Notebook, aiming to replace the process-oriented Profiile of Learning state graduation standards with a knowledge-based version. He was able to see his wishes realized up close when he was selected to serve on the Minnesota citizens' academic standards committee, led by then-commissioner of education Cheri Pierson Yecke. He frequently cross-posts at the Carnival of Education "edublog" roundup, and his post on integrated math is among the top search results on this topic on Google.

Having become active in his local Republican organization, he started a political blog, North Star Liberty, which specializes in reporting on local political events, from BPOU meetings to the election-night event at Minnesota Public Radio headquarters. His projects based on the open-source content management system Joomla! led him to a tech role on True North. One of these projects is Minnesota Education Reform News, which has existed in various incarnations and URLs since 1999.

Mitch Berg's vocation is as a "human experience designer" - but it's his avocational life that brought him here.

He started his main blog, Shot In The Dark, an outlet to his inner pundit, which had been hidden away since he first left talk radio in 1987. With the success of his and so many other Minnesota center-right blogs, Mitch joined with the guys from Captain's Quarters, Fraters Libertas, Minnesota Democrats Exposed Powerline and SCSU Scholars to form the "Northern Alliance Radio Network", the nation's first all-blogger talk show, heard on AM1280 The Patriot and at Townhall.com.

Mitch lives in a very old house in Saint Paul with his two teenage kids, a dog, two cats and five guitars.

Cindy Whitehair (aka the Lady Logician) is a self-described "soccer mom" complete with the mini-van. She shares the Logical Household with her husband, son and two dogs Lucky the worlds best border collie and Captain Jack (Sparrow).

A native of the Chicago area (motto - vote early and often) she escaped to "God's Country" 13 years ago. She still carries a couple of Chicago habits (a love of the Cubs and the Bears) but in almost all other aspects has become "Minnesotan" including the accent!

She began blogging in 2005 when she was invited to join "The Savage Republican". After blogging there for a year, she struck out on her own and has been typing away ever since. Besides blogging, she is active in the Minnesota GOP as a volunteer and BPOU Chair and as a 4H adult leader.