A POLITICO opinion piece detailing the problems associated with campaign finance and the harm being done to our country because of the current system got me thinking about my own recent, and first campaign for office. I want to tell this story not out of bitterness (I’m not) or self-pity (I loved every minute of it). I want to make you, the voter, my fellow citizen in this great country, aware that you need to do something about this problem that threatens our liberties as citizens. This is a citizen-politician sharing my experience as both voter and candidate for office.
As a former candidate for office I got to see the problems and challenges of campaign fincace firsthand, even on a smaller scale, as I ran for Florida House of Representatives. Without any deep pockets of my own it was difficult to campaign. Trying to keep food in my fridge and a roof over my head was hard enough (and still is these days) without having to run a campaign practically by myself.
Fundraising, recruiting volunteers, ordering advertisements (when I could afford it), setting up social media and communications — almost all of it was done by me or under my direct supervision. I responded to more candidate surveys than you can shake a stick at, and attended as many candidate forums as I could take off hours from work (and sleep) to go to while working for $10 an hour in a new contracted position (I was hired August 2). I even missed a candidate forum at the North campus of the community college I graduated from in 2003 after having done well at the Central campus forum about a week earlier. I had so much on my mind at work that I forgot to get up and leave.
In all competitions we enter there is a strong desire to win. If you play sports, you want to do well. Physical strength and endurance are your currency, and you can afford the hours of training. In a campaign however, the currency is real cash, and it’s hard to come by. And without a way to get peoples’ attention there is a real feeling of desperation. Can you imagine going to a meet without having trained for the event?
As a candidate I also got to see just how apathetic the American people can be. I met more people than I have met before in my life, and while it was exciting to sell my ideas to people there were many who were hostile to the very existence of my candidacy. Many were only interested in my party affiliation. Despite the fact that Tea Partiers are more diverse than Democratic and Republican candidates, it felt at times that organizers of local Tea Party groups (the very people I needed to help me beat the street) were my biggest detractors. And I was prelabeled in the minds of many people who only get their news from CNN or MSNBC as some kind of nut job. I’m still not sure which was the wiser path, to have been independent and therefore statistically less likely to win, or affiliate myself with a movement that I felt reflected many core American values, and my own.
The worst was the opposition I received from fellow Tea Partiers. There were deep fissures among the little Napoleons in the Florida Tea Party movement which most of the public, myself included, were not aware of unless you were one of the inner circle of leaders and had been around to see the power struggles. I got into the race because I was mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it anymore. Yet many people thought I was a covert spy sent by Alan Grayson (and another good article mentioning me by name) to sabotage Republican candidates. Never mind the fact that I was running against a Democrat and no serious Republican had run for the seat in more than a decade. I was already a marked man by many Tea Party organizers simply because I ran as a candidate with the letters T-E-A next to my name. I was simply baffled when a local Tea Party organizer, a Cuban-American woman, told me that she fled her country to escape communism and she simply refused to speak to me any longer.
Stranger still is when I juxtapose attitudes like that against the way I was treated by my opponent, Ari Porth, who was extremely polite and courteous to me, and friends of mine from church all throughout the campaign and even recently. I even got to know one of his staff well enough because we were at the same events all the time. Who said it was necessary to be ugly when you get into politics? I certainly don’t see how effective you can be at solving the nation’s problems when you can’t stand to be in the same room together!
Another travesty was the almost nonexistent interest from the media. I had one televised debate (on local TV only), was promised another (but the cameras were turned off), and was interviewed by the editors of the Sun Sentinel (they were very nice, but all I got was an honorable mention as part of their endorsement of my opponent). I had one reporter email me for a quote only to lump me into a story about other no name candidates who had no hope of winning, and another story I wasn’t even contacted for that basically told voters, “The Sun Sentinel isn’t going to waste ink on these candidates because they’re going to loose anyway.”
America, you need to wake up and take ownership of your government, or I promise you the special interest groups will enslave you to a system that forces you to choose between the lesser of two evils – ad infinitum. In short, and this is where the POLITICO article I mentioned above really hit home with me… politicians need money from somewhere to win elections, and many are so desperate they will seek it from just about anywhere. Find someone worth giving your time and money to (and please don’t neglect local offices just to support your presidential pick).
And if you can’t find someone you want to vote for, do what I did and run for office yourself. Despite the fact that I was unknown to the public, ignored or discredited by the media and others, and had no money, I still won 29% of the vote.
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