California has two regional Curly clubs that have or are applying for A-OA status, which is the last step towards being licensed with the AKC to hold shows and trials. As far as I know, these are the only two clubs in the US that are working towards becoming licensed and since I am president of one club and secretary of the other, I get, er, odd questions about this! So I figured I would try to answer them all at once here.
* What is a regional club? Depends on the club! There are regional Curly clubs in other parts of the country that apparently have no desire to become AKC licensed, so their goals will be different than the two California clubs. However, for the most part a regional club is simply a way for local Curly people to easily communicate, get together and do things. The S Cal club has two WC/X/Q tests a year, sponsors the Meet The Breed booth, holds training days, maintains a website and coordinates supported entries as well as the business of holding meetings and fiddling with AKC paperwork!
* What is meant by "licensed club"? An AKC licensed club may hold shows where points towards a Ch and legs towards obedience/rally titles can be earned.
* How will licensed regional clubs affect the CCRCA? Realistically, very little. Some people will find the CCRCA thru a regional club and join, but probably not that many and I can't imagine that number would be more or less simply because a local club is or is not licensed. On the other hand, there should be no adverse effect on the CCRCA - I don't know of any adverse effect the local clubs of Labs, Flats, Goldens have on their national clubs. Indeed, it appears that they depend on these local clubs to hold their national specialties.
* How will regional specialties affect the national? Again, very little. A regional specialty is not much different than a supported entry at an all breed show - indeed, most regional specialties will probably BE the classes at an all breed show due to the cost involved in holding a stand alone specialty. So there won't be any more effect than what local supported entries affect now. National specialties attract people and dogs from all over the country - local specialties will be same local people that one sees all the time, unless and until some one person goes on a quest to have the top specialty winning Curly! And even then, that would be just one extra person and dog. People go to nationals to see dogs from other areas all in one place and to catch up with people they only see once a year, so it isn't like going to a local specialty is going to keep them from going to the national.
* Do we need regional clubs? Do we need them to be licensed? I think we need regional clubs now that there are active Curly people in most of the country. It is far easier to ssssuuuuck people into active Curlydom if there are local contacts and local activities, than a once a year event hundreds of miles away. Whether or not a local club decides to go for license is probably immaterial to the overall goal of getting Curlies and their people out there and doing things. Being licensed makes things harder and easier, so it just depends on the make up of the members of each club.