Heading out of the Holiday Inn after the election results came in last night, I heard a voice call my name.
It was Stanley Arnold, who had volunteered for me. Stanley put out hundreds of door hangers for me and other candidates during the campaign. His wife made phone calls.
"It's not that we tried," he said. "We did something. We actually did something."
His knee hurt from all the hills and driveways, but Stanley beamed from the effort. Just like I don’t mind the blisters on my feet so much. We did something together. We took action.
Two years ago, my entire involvement in politics amounted to checking the polls on fivethirtyeight.com and yelling at the TV. That only left me feeling helpless and frustrated.
Fighting and losing feels much better than never fighting at all.
And as an entrepreneur and inventor, I am used to a new idea not working out the first time around. All you have to do is go through the process and figure out where your mistakes were and how to eliminate or mitigate them. So, we did it.
A Democrat had never run in this district before. Now, one has.
But we have put a chink in the armor of some misconceptions:
“If you want to have a voice in this community, you have to join the Republican Party.”
“The Democrats will never field a candidate.”
“This is a Republican district, so the Democrats shouldn’t even be trying.”
When I announced in May, I took a look at the voter registration numbers. Sure, more Republicans than Democrats in the district (1705-1043 at that point) but there were also 834 unaffiliated — “blank” — voters. In a district of 3885 voters, here’s a fun fact: Most of the registered voters in the 4th district were NOT registered as Republicans.
Of course, you don’t know which way many of those non-GOP voters lean until you knock on their doors and ask them, but it definitely seemed worth the effort.
At least now the voters of the 4th district don’t feel taken for granted. At least I hope so.
At least it is a chink in the metal, a scratch in the surface, and one thing I have learned from working with various materials is if you can make a scratch in the surface you can eventually cut all the way through.
So my take-away is this: The voters of the 4th District are worth fighting for. They do want someone who will listen and respond to them and you should not accept the misconception that Republicans will always win.
The 4th has awakened!
