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On The Campaign Trail.
When Peggy and I walked into the post-election party at about 7:45 a great cheer went up. Our reaction was the same—caution-mixed with excitement--we did not want a premature celebration. With eight of eleven precincts reported, Ernie Zavodnyik, Sue Lang and I had a considerable lead—one our friends/volunteers thought was insurmountable.
While exchanging hugs, hand-shakes, an occasional “high or low five,” we kept trying to find out which precincts were out. It turned out two large ones, voters from Waterford and nearby and so we held back a little bit-inside, waiting out the final tally. Shortly the win was confirmed, the pattern in the three outstanding precincts was the same as the first eight. We had won, thanks to the help of the packed house of supporters and many more people across every area and demographic of the city.
My emotions were gratefulness, awe, a huge sense of responsibility to live up the expectations of the voters, and a exhilaration, a bit like a rookie who hits a home-run his first time at bat in the major leagues.
The Beginning.
I did not make a final decision to run until mid-August. During the summer Peggy and I would turn to the topic every few days and exchange our thoughts and feelings. At several points I absolutely decided not to run. She made clear she was comfortable with whatever I decided. She made the analogy that I had stood by her and accepted her following her interests in the dozens of plays in which she had performed and she felt this was much the same situation. It would not stress our relationship unduly although we did recognize that if I won, the responsibilities would change our pattern of free time together.
I also had to decide how I would react if I lost. Each time I would put aside the notion of running and continuing to try to do my part to help Venice move in the direction I thought “the people” wanted, by writing my opinion column in the Gondolier, a day or so later, I would feel an inside direction to run and take the risk.
When the decision seemed made, I emailed the editor and publisher of the Gondolier and told them I would stop writing as I was almost certain to become a candidate. I also wrote a group of about a dozen friends and asked them to meet at our house August 31. On August 30 I filed a form with the city clerk, establishing a campaign treasurer and setting up a campaign account. On September 4, the first day of the official filing period I submitted the appropriate forms and the filing fee.
When that first meeting was held, I had no experience to guide me. I had not run for office before. I had not even worked on a campaign. The two people I knew who had the most experience in politics, not in Venice, were in Montana on vacation.
But the friends gathered in our home were very bright, very willing to work and very excited to be part of an effort to “save” Venice as we saw it,( “the small-town feel”), from over-development and excessive height buildings.
At that point I was my own campaign treasurer, my friends still in Montana had agreed to do that, and Ali Hicks, in her quiet, modest way, told me she was an accountant and would take on the assignment. It was a tremendous relief, there were checks to keep track of, reports to be made, checks to be written, lists to be compiled and more- and in just a day or two I could see it would have been impossible for me to do that and try to campaign. I could envision finding checks for the next year or two in various niches and pockets.
That small group recruited friends to help stage “Meet and Greets” in people’s homes for Ernie, Sue and for me. Maxine Barritt agreed to coordinate the calendar for all of us, and Ali agreed to help me liaison with Maxine. People agreed to volunteer to call and canvass on our behalf in the weeks that followed. We knew we would be outspent, but felt a “grassroots” campaign could work for us. Actually, while we were outspent, we raised much more than we anticipated from many smaller gifts and by pooling the cost of ads we were able to get needed name and face recognition. Most importantly, we were in touch with the people's wishes.
Opposing The Incumbents.
Ernie and Sue decided to run and chose their opponents long before I decided to run. Ernie, who had, in my mind, earned the right to chose his opponent by having the courage to run in the last election, chose to run against Bill Willson. Despite having being outspent in that election by the CQG Pac and his opponent by several-fold, Ernie polled over 4200 votes and lost by only about 400. Further, he was relatively unknown. But people who did know him and got to meet him, saw him as real.
Sue is a passionate advocate. She cares about issues and is willing to work very hard to read volumes and study documents that few others would, like the full comprehensive plan and then take the time to write a detailed criticism of it. She felt she wanted to move from citizen advocacy before a council which did not seem to listen and sometimes belittled her efforts as being only a “noisy minority”, so she decided to run against Jim Woods.
That left Fred Hammett, the Mayor. I had urged others to run for that seat when I had no intention of doing so myself, beginning a year ago. The two potentially strongest candidates declined for various reasons. So my decision this summer was to sit out the election or run for Mayor. You know what happened. I will share a little about the process of running and my learning-experiences in future vignettes.
They will be filed under ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL--a separate blog you will find listed on the side of the home page under categories. Ed
