PART II:  POLITICS AT BAY

Chapter 3:  Assembly Campaign 2004

Being a gay man in a rural area where the district had been Republican for over 30 years, I collected my signatures before notifying the media.  Since purchasing our house in 2000, we had approximately 15 open cases with our Sheriff Department ranging from vandalism to trespassing.  In fact, we had put up a fence around our entire yard, installed a Brinks alarm system, and even installed infrared video surveillance outside of our home.  So, publicly coming out of the closet in the newspapers was something I avoided until I had collected all needed signatures.  The local news was pretty surprised there was a candidate running against the incumbent, and they had left me a voicemail before I even got home from our state capitol.

I chose to call the local news back the next day.  I spoke with a reporter named Joe, and I ended up receiving another article as my campaign announcement due to my run for office being such a surprise to everyone.  Here was this no-name gay guy running for a State Assembly seat in an impossible to win district, at that time anyhow, wanting civil unions and slamming the incumbent’s only accomplishment as changing our state fruit.  I was noted as a political neophyte by the local news, and the easy press at first quickly became a constant struggle as not a single campaign press release made the paper.  Upon my complaints, my press releases were considered “issue papers” and still did not get published in the paper.

Once I turned in my nomination papers, my party’s Assembly Minority Leader stopped returning my phone calls as it was not a targeted district.  However, he said positive things to the media at the education forum.  Several die hard members of the party did offer their advice.  Point blank though, my name was on the ballot.  It did not take long to figure out that I had to do well in order to spare myself public embarrassment.  Homeland Security would later handle public embarrassment for me in an effort to hide their identities and illegal behavior.  The public embarrassment turned into a US Senate Investigation, but the outcome may never be known.

I challenged the incumbent to debates, and upon her decline, I issued press releases regarding the matter.  One public radio station did hold a question and answer interview in a small time slot with different questions for each of us.  Point blank, the media would not give equal press to my Assembly race unless I paid for advertising.  A few other exceptions included a public radio station interview and public television who gave a one minute spot to every candidate.  After my campaign, I realized I could get ideas on CNN in just a few days.  This was not because I was independently special, but because I stood up for all of the people the Democratic and Republican Parties had ignored.

I attended two forums while running for office.  One was education, and the other was long term healthcare.  Starting with the second forum I attended, it was largely comprised of senior citizens.  I was just thrilled that a Republican State Assembly Representative began his speech with a homophobic joke which the senior citizens really enjoyed.  Although off subject, it is important to note the adversity I faced in my campaign for office.

Our Republican U.S. House of Representative incumbent said everything wrong for these people.  Yet, they were enamored by him.  It was as if the devil walked into the door, put a spell on the crowd, and walked out while being looked upon as God.  It just goes to show that too many people are elected based on looks and likeability versus their votes on the legislative floor.  But, no matter how disgusting it may be, demeaning one segment of the population in order to divide and conquer another segment is clearly effective as well.

The first forum I attended was education.  Aired on public radio live with several state Senators and Assembly Representatives from both major political parties, myself and two other state challengers spoke our minds with the incumbents.  They all had their political answers minus me and one Democratic Assembly Representative who is now a State Senator.  When I pointed out that the “Jobs Creation Act” never mentioned jobs, that Democratic Assembly Representative was the only person who stood up for me.  The woman I was challenging and a Republican State Senator decided to turn on their radio microphones and yell, “lies, they’re all lies” when I pointed out the flawed Act.

I think this was the first time in my life, coming from small town in another state, that I had met people so devious and evil.  I knew the incumbent was evil, and I knew that the Republican Party had to be evil for not believing in equality for all citizens as long as there was a separation of church and state.  But, I knew I was going against the devil, of sorts.  They do whatever it takes to win including destroying other people.

My yard signs did not go up until about 3 weeks before the end of the election due to funding.  I ended up getting the state grant money, but it did not come until the very end of your campaign.  In addition, State funded candidates are restricted in how much of their own money they can spend.  Thus, all advertising, with the exception of about 12,000 of my 17,000 direct mail pieces, was done during the last month of the campaign.  Yard signs increased my visibility, and it showed that I wanted to win.  It brought on a few surprises.

First, churches started contacting me regarding abortion and gay marriage.  I had a moderate stance on both issues, and that seemed to annoy them.  I stated that abortion should be legal, safe, and not considered birth control.  In addition, I believed in third term births versus third term abortions.  For gay marriage, I stated that I believed in equality and the separation of church and state.  Thus, I supported civil unions.  I drew some anger from Shepherds Ministries who said that I was running for office to hurt this nice Christian girl, I was going to hell, and he would “fight me to the end.”  I eventually sent this string of emails to the FBI.

Second, campaigns have sign wars.  Whoever has the most yard signs, for the most part, signifies who will win.  Everyone likes to vote for the winner even if they know nothing about the campaigns.  There was a yard along a county highway that heads into the largest city in the district that requested a yard sign from my campaign website.  I brought two and set them up as it was a great location.  About a week later, I drove by and noticed they were gone.

I thought that was odd, so I called and asked if they had taken them down.  The resident said no.  So, my partner and I took a few more signs out there.  My partner hopped out of the truck, grabbed a few signs from the back, and started putting them into the cold, October ground.  Some yards were easy to put a sign in, and others were very difficult.  This yard fell into the difficult category.

I got out of our Saturn Vue, and a big white van about a quarter mile away passed an older Dodge Caravan and was not veering back into its’ lane.  As a matter of fact, it was coming right for me!  At about 150 feet, the driver of the white van and I had clear direct eye contact.  I realized that he was speeding up and was not going to get back to his side of the road.  I got right up next to our SUV, and within less than a foot from me, it zoomed past.  With my heart racing and somewhat in a daze, I turned to my left and watched the van speed away.

The smaller van drove by much slower as I ran to the shoulder of the highway freaking out before getting back in our SUV.  Considering we had about 15 open cases with our Sheriff Department, and we were told to not bother calling them unless we could prove who was vandalizing our house during the previous fall, we did not bother to notify them of what had occurred.  There were only about two weeks left in the campaign at this point, so we did not perceive a long-term concern.

Election Day I was just relaxing while my partner volunteered to drive people to the polls.  He ended up doing some poll watching and investigating as well.  In my own village, the GOP set up a table outside the polling station and were telling people they were at the wrong polling place.  The report received by the Democratic Party of my county also stated that they were telling people they had to be pre-registered.

That was certainly not a legal practice, and talk about the pot calling the kettle black when looking at voter fraud.  Voter ID cards would clearly make the Republican agenda of inhibiting the less fortunate and elderly from voting much simpler.  By the time my partner arrived, the booth was gone.  The poll workers noticed the booth, but apparently they thought they were fellow poll workers.

My village was not the only known polling issue in my district.  A few days after the election, I received a call from a man in a nearby village who had put up several of my yard signs.  I had noticed one day that the signs were gone.  He stated that he was harassed at the poll station for supporting me, and he believed there may have been some vote inaccuracies. 

The outcome was not close enough to warrant contesting the election, so I thanked him for his support.  Thinking back, if a homophobic sector of the poll workers wanted to, they could have had a significant impact on the results.  Our state would later add a paper trail requirement for all electronic voting machines.

On election night, my partner and I decided to stay home while the results came in.  We were hopeful, but with only $11K in expenditures, being a no name candidate in a Republican district of over thirty years, and with little support from the community; we pretty much knew I was not going to win.  The final results were not available until the next day, but I did get a call from the local news sometime before midnight asking if I would concede the election.  I said no because every Democratic candidate was down at the time.  In the end, at least what I thought was the end, I received about 35% of the vote.  I was happy with this as a town supervisor who ran in 2000 for the same seat received 38% of the vote and spent over $30K versus my $11K.

Although disappointed, I was relieved the election was over.  What an interesting experience to see the hopes and fears, of ordinary people like myself, put so much passion and interest in what you would like to see happen on the state and national levels.  I cannot say I enjoyed running for office, but I was happy I made such a huge difference.  It was not easy, and letting thousands / millions of people judge your life’s accomplishments and who you are as a person was very odd.

At random, via a phone call before our vacation, I was asked to run for County Board by a gentleman out of a town in the district.  Their motivation was to help them stop a gravel pit.  They would support me if I wanted to run, but I was exhausted and declined despite their help in my campaign.  It was my idea to overthrow their town board to stop the gravel pit, and that attempt was successful in April of 2005.

During my campaign, I told him that if I was elected as their Assembly Representative, I would sponsor legislation that would ban mining within “x” number of miles of residential neighborhoods worth “y” number of dollars.  I received some support, but not enough.  Despite my later warnings of how the gravel pit could come to fruition, our Assembly Representative sponsored legislation that made their gravel pit eminent.  I tried to help, but they cared more about party than purpose.  Approximately two weeks after the election, we went snow skiing in Colorado.  Let the fun begin!