Campaigning

Campaigning is an interesting world that I entered this year. I’d never been a candidate for anything prior to running for the Clerk of the Circuit Court. Let me tell you, it is NOT easy, or something I would suggest to anyone that had any second thoughts about devoting more than twelve hours a day to the task. One of the things I learned is that while a person can have all the right ideas, it is not possible to communicate those ideas effectively in a short period of time to those that are not really interested in the subject to start.

One of the most peculiar things I found out is that many of the people that I met did not even have an idea of what this constitutional office holder was supposed to do, or had any idea of what he might have done. That means that the office is rather obscure, and if nothing else, it would be very difficult to remove an incumbent. (“Why should I vote for you? I don’t have any issue with the way things are being run now. What difference does it make?” I heard those comments many times.)

But campaigning is an artificial world. While I certainly believe I could do a better job than the person I was attempting to replace (otherwise I would not have put all that effort into leaving a job I find very rewarding) I found that it was distasteful pointing out publicly the errors a person had made. What made this even worse is the term for the office—eight years! (Please note: the following is NOT what I believe about the person I was campaigning against!) Even if a person did the most rotten job in the world, if they cleaned up their act after four or five years, they would have three years of good performance to point to and say how wonderful a job they did. I really believe no office should have a term longer than four years, otherwise accountability is sadly lacking.

Trying to be upright in the midst of that kind of world must be difficult. I questioned pointing out what I believe are errors in the performance of the incumbent, but it still did not feel right. I was saying what I would never have said about someone outside of an employee performance review. But really, that is what I was attempting to do. Give a performance review.

Boy, was that a mistake.

The idea of getting people to accept that an incumbent is not doing a good job takes a lot of time, and it takes talking to people. I fully believe that everyone to whom I had a chance to explain why I felt the way I did truly accepted that explanation. But you cannot reach 2600 people in four weeks, and explain things in detail that way.

Six months, and I might have had a different outcome. (Trust me; if I ever run for any office again, I’ll start early!)

I did okay for what I thought was running on a shoestring. But running a campaign takes money as well. Mailing even bulk class costs money. And I have to believe that a lot of people (even though the mailing only went to delegate households, not the general public) just throw any political mailing in the trash. Personal contact I have to believe is the only way to do this, and I have to believe it must be through a mutual friend.

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