Around two months ago I started getting calls from a person who works for the state Democratic Party. He told me they think my state representative has the potential to be vulnerable, because of some hazy rumors of scandal or general bad behavior or corruption that (apparently, allegedly) surround him. Pick one: scandal, general bad behavior or corruption. I’m not sure what the caller was alluding to. It’s an overwhelmingly conservative district, so the idea is to have a Democratic candidate on the ballot ready to exploit the possible implosion of the incumbent.
They needed help finding a candidate. I didn’t do anything about it for a month or more, because I’m not the only person they’re calling, and I was hoping they’d find someone. But they haven’t. They have a week left to find the candidate and do what is necessary (50 valid signatures on a petition) to put her or him on the ballot.
I sent emails on it, but no one ever here responds to a request for help in an email, so I made phone calls last night. No one wants to do this. My “top” pick, a woman I have asked to run before, is a retired teacher and would do it, but she cares for her sick and frail elderly mother and she’s just completely consumed by that. Most of the people I talked to had reasons like that not to run: one woman I spoke with who has four kids literally laughed out loud in a jagged, slightly hysterical way. The people who don’t have crushing, overwhelming family and work responsibilities and might consider running talk about how horrible campaigns are: they won’t have any privacy and half or better of the county will end up hating them. I’m not blaming these people, at all. They don’t want to run for office. I don’t want to run for office, either, which is why I’m asking them.
I bring this up because I think there’s a perception that there are just tens of qualified, wonderful people vying for these slots, and the “candidate” is chosen in a smoke-filled room, after carefully excluding all the liberals and hippies. That may be true for big important jobs, like US Senate or House, I don’t know. Maybe it’s true in liberal areas, where there’s a lot of potential Democratic candidates, but in a conservative area like this it isn’t true at all. In a place like this, they’re contacting clueless people like me in absolute desperation trying to come up with a candidate. It’s really wide open. I’d take a hippie in a heartbeat. So why doesn’t anyone want to try?
John Boehner started in a statehouse, and then:
Ever wanted to know who to thank for House Speaker John Boehner’s congressional career? The late Ohio Republican Rep. Donald “Buz” Lukens was your man. It was 1990. Lukens was in his second term in Congress. The year before, the 58-year-old congressman had been caught on a television network’s hidden camera in a McDonald’s restaurant speaking with the mother of a 16-year-old girl he was allegedly sleeping with. Lukens was soon convicted of paying the teen $40 to have sex with him and wound up serving nine days in prison and paying a $500 fine. That would be his first of two stays in prison, and his second of three sex offense allegations.
Despite the scandal with the 16-year-old, Lukens ran for reelection. He declared his bid for reelection on May 2, 1990, calling the whole debacle a “dumb mistake.” Boehner, who was at the time was president of a packaging sales company, saw his chance. He crushed Lukens in the Republican primary, launching the congressional career that has brought him to the position second in line to the presidency.
According to the FBI report, Lukens told his staffers that the underage girl had given him a fake I.D. that said she was 20 years old. The staffer said Lukens maintained the attitude that there was nothing wrong with what he did. Lukens felt he could have won the election if he had come forward and apologized.“10,000 people voted for a convicted sex offender,” one staffer told an FBI agent, referring to the 20 percent of the vote Lukens received in his race against Boehner.
Maybe Boehner’s not a good or inspiring example. I don’t know that I would actually say “you, too, could end up passing out checks from tobacco lobbyists on the House floor”, but still. These things happen and could happen again.
mistermix
I feel your pain. My old man was Democratic party chair for a while in a tiny conservative county and getting the latest sacrificial victim for state representative/senate races was a constant struggle. The only path to victory is a lightning strike of some sort. The state party always wants someone to run because it takes resources from more competitive races. But if you run a real race, then you alienate friends and neighbors who otherwise never gave your politics a second thought (“I didn’t know George was a liberal!”). And if you’re just a placeholder, what’s the point?
Republicans really do have a leg up in little rural counties because they’re generally the ones who are independent businessmen who can leave their jobs to go collect a legislator’s paycheck. Democrats tend to be employees, not employers, except for a few liberal attorneys and the odd retiree.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
I think that one of the unanticipated benefits of public financed elections would be more people willing to run for office. There are enough barriers without having to beg for money every day. Of course half of the region will still hate them but hopefully some civic minded middle aged/retired people with a life of experience would be more likely to give it a try.
cathyx
Sometimes you have to read the writing on the wall. I think you need to run.
Zifnab
Given the incredibly low bar set by Congressmen “What’s the matter with a little child prostitution”, I can honestly say Boehner has risen a tiny bit in my estimation, if only by comparison.
kay
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
Great point, and I forgot to include it. That’s reason number three, right behind “I will neglect my family” and “everyone will hate me”.
r€nato
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: which is why the GOP is doing their best to destroy publicly-financed elections. They want to keep the process firmly in the hands of the kinds of people who can afford to underwrite campaigns by like-minded people.
r€nato
running for elective office, even in an ideologically-friendly district, takes a skin thicker than an elephant’s and a willingness to put up with having everything you’ve ever said and done examined under a microscope and likely misrepresented by people who don’t want to see you win.
(and to a certain extent, maybe that’s as it should be.)
unless you can self-finance your campaign, you’ll also have to beg for money from donors who will certainly expect *something* in return, while not giving them the idea that they are buying your vote on this or that matter.
and unless you have the stones of Barney Frank, you’ll also have to put up with rants from crazy people and one-issue-obsessed activists and be pleasant to them, resisting the urge to tell them they are fucking crazy and to stop bothering you with their BS.
if you actually manage to win the election, then you get to be in the Legislature, where it’s more of the same and all the time.
It’s not a job for civic-minded people, at the end of the day. It’s a job for people who love power enough to put up with all that shit.
Villago Delenda Est
The problem with this particular job is that the interview process cannot be compensated for by the job itself.
Linda Featheringill
Think about running, Kay.
You’re very qualified. You would be good in that office. We would help with the finances. We might even help with the phone work.
Culture of Truth
Look at Obama – as recently as 2006 he was a state senator.
Even a Democrat did manage to get elected, we would still have a capitalist banking system in 2 years so he or she would only end a great disappointment.
Hoodie
This is absolutely true. For a lot of offices, the people who can “afford” to do them are often either (1) retired on a pension or (2) see the job as an opportunity for, at best, a genteel form of graft. This is one of the worst byproducts of the “reduce the size of government” narrative; small governments are often more vulnerable to corruption and incompetence. This is particularly true in areas where these small governments actually deal with relatively large public expenditures, such as schools. The things that government does don’t necessarily go away or even shrink when the government shrinks.
Cat Lady
Run, kay run! I’d pay to see you debate some teaparty fucktard in a NY minute. Hell, we could get a BJ roadtrip/meetup together to show up at a debate. We could be your union thugs.
Hungry Joe
It’s also a job for people with an uncanny ability to remember names and faces. I’ve been to events where the candidate, having met me once, briefly, months before, remembered me … and it’s not as if I’m all that memorable. They have to be able to do this; otherwise you get people saying, “I spent fifteen minutes discussing [whatever] with him, and ended up contributing $250 to his campaign, and now the S.O.B. looks at me like he’s never seen me before.” Well, in the interim the S.O.B. has met 700 other people, not to mention the 900 people he met the months before that. If you’re weak on names and faces, you’ll never be a pol.
kay
@Linda Featheringill:
I don’t want to. I’m usually very clear about what I DO and DO NOT want to do. That’s never been a problem for me :)
Thanks, though. Weirdly, the one job we get inquiries about is “judge”. Everyone wants to be a judge. Not me, I like my job, but a lot of other people.
Mino
If you are soliciting suggestions:
If older people are consumed with their lives, try a single 20-something. And a female, I think. Not much history, practical, and empathetic, usually. Should be a good field to choose from out there right now.
Steve
My Republican friend at work lives in a small, heavily Republican suburban community. A couple years ago their state assemblyman retired and the party went looking for a new one. They had a great deal of trouble because it’s a part-time job, it’s a pain to schlep up to Albany all the time, and the Republicans are the minority party so there’s no prospect of actually doing anything. Sure, you can find some kid who’s fresh out of college and can’t find a job, but if you want someone who’s actually accomplished in business or law or whatever, it’s just not that attractive a job. So I’m not surprised to hear Kay’s story, but yeah, previously I totally would have assumed that there’s always people interested in elected office.
Roc
Wait… 9 days in jail and $500 for being *busted* paying a 16-year old $40 for sex?!
People get stiffer penalties for *consensual* (non-prostitution) sex with minors. To say nothing of what the proles get for soliciting a sex worker in general. WTF.
kay
@Steve:
That’s true for Republicans in NY, but it’s really not true of Democrats in Ohio. It’s a swing state. They can, and do, gain a majority, back and forth.
I actually do think about that, though, Republicans in “blue” counties, because I’m a Democrat in a “red” county.
SiubhanDuinne
@Roc:
As always, IOKIYAR.
bin Lurkin'
@Hungry Joe: A Farley File helps a lot of politicians with the task of remembering people.
Culture of Truth
Have you thought recruiting from the military, like a returning veteran? Leadership skills, patriotism, admired in the community, etc.
deep cap
You have to be a special kind of narcisist to run for public office.
Seriously, I think half the men who run for office just do it for the poontang.
Davis X. Machina
@Hoodie:
When have you ever heard a proposal to increase the size of a parliamentary body? To convert one from part-time or per-diem to full-time? To pay them more, or give them pensions? To un-do term limits?
If no sane person would bother, you get a state house full of non-sane people.
Ian
Boner is 3rd in line. Punditz failz.
Benjamin Franklin
Kay;
Do you have a websit?. Trying to determine if we know each other. No big…..
Mrs. Whatsit
My father is a state senator in Montana, and one of the good guys (I don’t just say that as his daughter!) He is retired and has the time to spend 4 months in the capital. I think the system is set up to weed out the good guys–after years in the legislature (as first a representative, then senator), he is so dispirited that he may not run again even though there is no one to take over his district on the D side. Being a democrat in Montana is tough–being a democrat in the legislature is even worse.
r€nato
@deep cap: and the other half are family values Republicans looking for mansex on the DL.
Culture of Truth
If there is a line, he’s second in it.
Cat Lady
OT, but as bad a candidate as Martha Coakley was, she’s as good an AG. She’s got MERS and the banksters in her cross hairs, and she’s got nothing to lose by winning.
Culture of Truth
@Benjamin Franklin: The Pina Colada song needs to be updated for two people who flirt on a blog only to find out they’re married.
El Cid
The right often puts together groups to find and encourage people to run for office, to train them how to run, to connect them with knowledgeable predecessors or insiders, and fund campaigns or at least connect candidates with funders.
This in itself is a favor that ideology and money does for grass roots politics.
If you want more people to run, start thinking about what would need to be done to find and train and support candidates.
How many people know what offices there are to be staffed, and what people in those positions do? What sorts of knowledge and commitment would it take? Does it pay? How do you file to run? How does one run a campaign? The basics.
One of the great parts of the social reproduction process to perpetuate insider power is how so much of it is invisible — the people who don’t know what they don’t know just don’t tend to show up to do anything, while someone who just happens to know someone in a position of power, or close to a politician, etc., has some grasp of the basics — who runs, how you get money, what you do, the impacts of your decisions if elected, etc.
Let me rephrase it: Let’s say someone handed you $10 million dollars and said they wanted more people of a like mind to run for and win local office in your area.
Would you sit around glumly, waiting for candidates to show up, or answer one person’s phone call from a personal phone list?
No, you’d do the sorts of stuff you know you could do with a campaign office and several million dollars.
Unions used to do this sort of thing, but they didn’t need tons of money to do it.
In my volunteering days, I didn’t see the local Democratic party institutions beating the bushes way in advance for future candidates.
mikefromArlington
Boehner got a job over another guys boner. Go figure.
Benjamin Franklin
@Culture of Truth:
Totally professional. No untoward intent.
CarolDuhart2
Democracy for America. Coming out of the Howard Dean campaign. it trains people for offices. I would like to see more progressives make use of this group, and help it expand.
Scott P.
I suspect the age of consent in Texas is/was 16.
Satanicpanic
Kay, it is your destiny, you should run
ruemara
People are always angry at the party machines of the Democratic Party for not running people for perceived vulnerable seats in states. It’s interesting how ignorant they are of how few people are willing to make that commitment, no matter how passionately liberal they are, to run for office.
Hungry Joe
@bin Lurkin’:
You’re right about Farley files. But still, when some guy walks up to you, sticks out his hand and says, “How you doin’, Congressman?” and he’s contributed to your campaign, you damn well better be able to put a name with the face. It’s not easy, even if you have the name on file and you reviewed the file an hour ago. I can quote (almost) verbatim from books I read 20 years ago, but often as not I don’t recognize neighbors when I run into them in the grocery store. People like me simply can’t be politicians. Not that I’d ever run for anything. (Okay, and not that I’d ever win anything, either.)
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I don’t think Boehner works because he ran against a fellow Republican in a primary, not as a Democrat in a general election.
Fred Clark
A more-inspiring-than-Boehner example might be Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, who offered himself up as the sacrificial lamb candidate when Beau Biden opted not to challenge massively popular Mike Castle for the Senate seat. Then Castle ignored a primary challenge from Christine O’Donnell and, well, Coons is a U.S. senator.
kay
@El Cid:
They have something like this in Ohio, like a “summer camp” (for lack of a better term). They even have scholarships and such.
I agree that there could be more planning, though. How did Righties end up with these giant wingnut factories?
Bo Alawine
Excellent post, one which I think should be expanded upon.
This year, being totally unencumbered by the thought process, I ran as the Democratic candidate for the District #4 Supervisor here in Jackson County, MS. I found the process very educational.
In the end, I received approximately 25% of the vote. Some would argue that I had my ass handed to me on a paper plate (not a silver platter); I beg to differ. I did minimal campaigning, no door-to-door, and spent only $1100 (all my own money; I solicited no contributions). My eventual opponent (in a field of 3 Republicans, one of whom was the incumbent) raised and spent in excess of $35K.
My Republican opponent spent about $7.75/vote. I spent about .80/vote.
Sure, I lost but I gained a lot and I didn’t have to sell my soul to run. Besides, I could not allow the incumbent to go unopposed (initially, there was no one else running against him) and, at the very least, I want the GOP candidate to have to spend money! LOL!
Space/time doesn’t permit me to really elaborate on this but I think that EVERYONE should run for office at least once in their lives. Just think: If every race in this country had even token Democratic opposition, the GOP would be forced to spend far more on their campaigns/candidates.
kay
@Satanicpanic:
It’s not my destiny. Further, I like my job. Further, I’m sort of mildly eccentric and deeply unserious in real life. I think I’d end up in a youtube video. I know I’d end up in a youtube video. Then there’s the whole youthful indiscretions part.
Joey Maloney
I think they found an abandoned Cyberman manufactory or Borg collective or something.
bin Lurkin'
@Hungry Joe: I wasn’t disagreeing with you, just pointing out how the professionals enhance an edge they already have.
The good ones also have a list of stock phrases they can trot out until their memory clicks on a name.
I think most of us could be a lot better at name/face recall if we made it our business to do that.
kay
@Mrs. Whatsit:
God, I bet. But “his people”, Democrats in Montana, had someone to vote for. I think we forget that. That there’s millions of people who are moping around with no one to vote for.
Yutsano
@kay:
:: perk ::
I knew I liked you for a reason. :)
IL JimP
There issue I always see is that most liberals/Democrats I know work for a living and their entire network is the same. That means, for fundraising, where you start with those closest to you there is no money there.
Public financing of elections would help with that, but in the mean time we have to find a way to a solution to get more good working people involved.
kay
@Yutsano:
I “went skiing” after the 2008 election, that means I wandered around after people who know how to ski, and none of us were willing to undergo the “vetting” Obama got. It was very funny. People were saying things like “I don’t think there’s a paper trail…”, all worried.
nastybrutishntall
I just registered as a Republican to help elect a friend as DA because I live in a one-party county, and that party ain’t ours, so Primaries are the only way to get someone elected you can stand. He’s an extreme social / civil rights liberal, which is all that matters for DA. The current DA is hated by all so my pal is going for it and looks likely to win. He schmoozes will all the teatards and is good at making people like him, says the right things, and, since this is the Southwest, people are supportive of Libertarianism when it comes to law enforcement, so, since that’s all a DA is all about – not economic issues – he has my full support and could be the most progressive person elected in decades. Gotta do whatcha gotta do.
Lol
Progressive Majority has been doing candidate recruitment/training for a decade now. they recruit for lower offices and build people from there.
pseudonymous in nc
Morton Blackwell’s wingnut finishing school.
In the UK, where candidate selection is done much more centrally, promising party activists will actually get asked to contest unwinnable elections, to see how well they get on. If they don’t implode, the party will find a safer seat for them next time round. That’s only possible because of strict limits on campaign funding and advertising, and because it’s not a requirement (or a big deal) to be from the district.
I’ve read about six-figure sums to run city council or state rep. campaigns. That’s insane: they’re just a two-step cash transfer from the pockets of donors into the bank accounts of local TV stations.
Steve
@kay: Well, your situation is a bit different. They’re looking for people to run on the off chance that the seat will fortuitously fall into Democratic hands. In my case, the seat is any Republicans for the taking but they still couldn’t find a taker.
smintheus
My state rep in this rural district is utterly pathetic and obnoxious. But he has beaten two much better, more experienced, more intelligent Democratic opponents…one of whom is very well known and liked locally. Republicans around here will vote for their party almost religiously, in every race up and down ballot. They even voted in a group of poorly educated GOP nutjobs to run the school board (not one has a college degree or has ever shown any interest in education before this year)…even though all the Democratic candidates are well educated and several had extensive background in education and in this school. It’s simply a waste of time to run as a Democrat around here; unless your Republican opponent dies before the election, you cannot win.
alicia-logic
@kay:
Perhaps you’re thinking of Camp Wellstone? I believe Wellstone Action! schedules events in Ohio.
In any case, I’ve been contributing to Wellstone Action! (www.wellstone.org) since the moment I could no longer contribute to a Wellstone campaign and recommend it heartily.
I believe one of the early Camp Wellstone participants was Minnesota’s 5th congressional district representative, Keith Ellison. (Not my rep, of course. I’m in the 6th. You all know who my rep is.)
OzoneR
@Steve:
Beyond that, the problem is also if the Democrat can win the seat. they can’t hold it long enough to do any good with it.
Duane
as someone who has gotten the same call Kay has received….hell i would say from the same person most likely at the Ohio House Democratic Caucus….. I took not 1 or 2 but 3 shots for the team…… and I live in every bit of a Republican state rep district as there is in Ohio….. sometimes we have to put aside all the reasons for not running and just do it…. of course after 3 runs…i was smart to avoid the 2010 blood bath and well I have said no to this year as well….
just do it Kay….. as to digging up dirt unless you really make some waves or look like you are going to win…. it just doesnt happen in lopsided state rep races…the appearance of civility is way more important…. all bets are off if you start breaking 45% . The general public just doesnt pay that close attention to state rep races. in Ohio at least.
as a 3 time ohio candidate I say do it Kay…..and I will make an early contribution to the campaign.
Duane
Paul in KY
Maybe you could be that candidate, Kay? You are certainly well versed in the issues & would have a good grasp of standard campaign tactics.
Paul in KY
@Mrs. Whatsit: I’m glad he has been there fighting the fight. Tell him that it’s not his duty to die in office & if he wants to hang it up, then retire from that & enjoy his remaining years.
You now do have a’legacy’ in that district & name recognition is a big, big plus in those races. Just saying…