PART II:  POLITICS AT BAY

Chapter 2:  Campaign Gear Up

I met with our State Assembly Minority Leader at a local restaurant about 7 miles from my home.  Our districts bordered each other, so meeting was convenient.  He arrived about 10 minutes late, but that was common in politics.  Everyone always wants your time, and it can be difficult to step away politely.  By the time we separated ways, the plan was 500 yard signs along with him getting me $11-12K in lobbyist money to add onto $5-7K I was to raise.  All I knew was that my Assembly Representative was an evil woman, and she needed to be removed from office as she was not a real “Representative.”  Maybe she promised to be a “Representative” at the time she was elected, but she ultimately became a Republican rubberstamp.

My State Senator decided he would help me gain the support of the loyal Democrats, so he invited me to a Dem meeting at a local library.  In hindsight, many of them were Homeland Security agents.  Sitting next to our State Senator, we met the whole desperate crew that had accomplished nothing progressive over the last decade and a half because they belonged to the minority party.  I say this as the majority party controls committees, and committees control what legislation reaches the legislative floor.

We sat in a “campfire” discussion group and spoke of what we all hoped to achieve.  I introduced myself and stated that all help would be greatly appreciated with the up most humility and respect.  I ended up receiving some help from some of the people there, but not an extensive quantity.  My partner and I were told that we needed to collect 300 signatures despite 200 being required by the state elections board.  This was to not only get my name on the ballot, but to avoid being kicked off of the ballot by a challenge to my signatures.

I later understood the sincerity in the recommendation as the incumbent later did successfully challenge and keep another Democratic challenger off of the ballot in 2006.  The incumbent’s family-in-laws were apparently all Democrats despite the incumbent being a Republican.  I was curious, however, if they vote for her.  The incumbent’s direct family, however, seemed to be Republican.  Both being politically involved families, they surely had found their similarities and differences with compromises.  “Let’s agree to disagree” must be commonplace.

In gathering signatures, my partner and I tromped near a nearby gun club, in a city of 12,000 where people were afraid to sign my nomination papers, in our own village, and in bedroom community.  I did this during the day by myself, and my partner helped me on a handful of evenings.  If you ever run for a state office yourself, do not take anyone’s advice to quit your job.  They are Homeland Security and want to force you to work for them when your campaign is over.  When they asked of my background and learned I had never even had a speeding ticket, their response was, “oh, we’re good…and you’re young too.”

Others who helped gather signatures were Bruce and Vera.  Bruce dispersed literature during my campaign as well, but to the wrong homes despite having an outlined map.  A neighbor of ours took a sheet into work to gather signatures, but we found out through the grapevine that they were all out of district and the incumbent was attempting to knock me off of the ballot with invalid signatures.  The grapevine was mostly correct, so I did not submit a single signature she collected even though one or two were valid.

Given the district was almost entirely rural, collecting signatures was a very manual process.  City districts you can stand in the middle of the mall, but not having a mall in the entire district makes things even more difficult.  It is especially manual when you do not know many people and you do not belong to a church.  I walked around neighborhoods collecting signatures with a flat foot shoe as I unsuccessfully tried to jump over our cedar chest into bed several weeks prior.  Needless to say, my signature collection phase was not fun.  I have to admit that I almost quit several times, but the drive was there to complete the task.

There was one group of people that I had to please in order to run for office, the gay community.  I asked them for their support, but they could only focus on “marriage” versus “civil union.”  It was true that civil unions on the national level were not “equal,” but that could be changed in time.  I was told by someone in online chat that I may be accused of being a child molester if I ran for office.  It was a ridiculous claim, and I thought nothing about it at the time.  After the election, there was an investigation that divided my partner and I.  I did not know if we would ever fully recover, but I hoped we would.  At times, I felt like an actor in the musical “Chicago.”

We met some very interesting people during my campaign.  While I wanted to collect signatures as quickly as possible, it did help that I spaced signature collection throughout the district.  Some folks I spoke with for over an hour.  Others stated they would vote for me but would not sign my nomination papers because they were afraid of backlash from the community or at their workplace.  For some crazy reason, that did not raise a red flag that maybe I should not be running for office.  But, you live and learn.  Eventually we collected the needed amount, and we verified each address was in the district before declaring mission accomplished.  By the time they were ready to turn in, the signature sheets looked like one big scribble due to all of the address corrections for municipality of residence.  If a single item was incorrect, the signature did not count.

So it was delivery day, and I drove to our state capitol to drop of my nomination papers about 2-3 hours before the deadline.  I called my father once I got into town.  I had received some heavy resistance from loyal Democrats regarding my pro concealed carry stance.  As a matter of fact, my photo I sent to the Democratic Party had a photo of me with some hunting guns.  They chose not to publish my photo in the candidate meeting with lobbyists and others running for office post nomination paper turn in.  I spoke of the dilemma with my father, and I later came up with a solution that would satisfy everyone.

While turning in my nomination papers, the State Elections Board met with me and asked if I wanted to sign up for a government grant to help fund my campaign.  There was a catch, however.  I could only spend a certain dollar amount in the race, I had to have a certain number of low dollar donations by a certain date, and PAC (Political Action Committee) donations were kept to a minimum.  Knowing I could opt out later if I wanted to, I went ahead and signed up.  I was happy I did because the promises from the Democratic Assembly Minority Leader never came to fruition, and cutting lobbyists out of politics ended up becoming a cornerstone of my campaign.

The candidate networking event, after all candidates turned in their nomination papers, proved to be pretty worthless to me.  I can understand as I knew no one, and in hindsight, telling a lobbyist I was going to be the next Martin Luther King seemed to turn her off.  That was not the wisest thing to say at the event, and I stated that to two lobbyists.  It was something that I would never forget as that was a “foot in mouth” comment for a politician.  From what I gathered, however, was that lobbyists really liked the incumbent.  Why would they not like her?  She towed the party line ninety-nine percent of the time, and the Republican Party was well funded by lobbyist money at that time.  After about 2 hours, I headed home.

That weekend we drove up North for a weekend vacation.  We had not been there before, and we stayed in a yurt despite the campground’s dog ban in yurts.  We were surprised to learn that the couple staying across the trail from us was from a nearby town just 15 miles from our home that was in my district.  They were very rude, but the weather was warm, sunny, and the perfect rest before an adventurous campaign.