= results are in = The results are finally in. In my first run for public office, I got 3% of the vote, but it was for a state-wide race. Support varied from 2% in rural Oregon to 4% in Coastal and Urban Oregon. My total was about the same as the sum of the Pacific Green Party's Congressional Peace Slate of candidates, showing that probably most people simply voted party-line. In total I spent a thousand dollars on the race (for the voter guide statement), and drove about two thousand miles touring the state. My vote total was the second highest of the election for a US state-wide candidate that had opposition from both major parties. In West Virginia, the governor candidate Jesse Johnson, whom I represented as a delegate to the national convention in Chicago for the Presidential Nominating Convention, got about five percent of the vote. In prior runs he didn't get as much as I got, so it looks like if you keep running you keep getting more votes. That's my plan -- in another four years, I'll run again, for the same office, but I think I'll change my tact a little bit. = lessons learned = == limit donations reasonably == First, I took zero donations. That made a lot of sense to me -- why take anybody's money when the point of my campaign was to eliminate the influence of money. I'm actually ok with taking some money, as long as it's in small amounts and not from special interests. "General interests" supporting candidates are good. I'd rather all elections be financed through public requirement to give free coverage to all qualified candidates as exchange for private monopolies having the privilege to use our public airwaves in an exclusive manner. We need to ensure that ideas like the "public financing" of elections (AKA Voter Owned Elections or Clean Elections) shouldn't ever imply that government is supporting one form of speech over another. Money for clean elections should never be allotted based on past performance of a party or candidate -- that works toward the status quo and is how federal public financing is run. My tax dollars pay for D and R elections, but not third party elections, even in proportion of popular support. Limits on campaign donations, and specifically limits that challenge Buckley vs Valeo's interpretation of "free speech", as well as limits in Oregon along the lines of Measure 47, if we have something like Measure 46, are my preferred way of reforming the system. self-donations should be limited as well, but Valeo strikes us down again there. Portland's public financing system is candidate-based, so it appears to work well. There are a few glitches in it -- candidates can opt-out (which isn't so much Portland's fault, but the US Supreme Court's doing), and it's not based on ballot qualification. If you qualify for the ballot, you should be supported by public funds, otherwise it's quite unfair. I think to be more consistent, I should have taken the time to find a treasurer who would handle taking donations for me, but who would also enforce the provisions of Measure 47, which is the law of the land in Oregon, despite the Secretary of State not enforcing it. I think the first step of any candidate is to find a treasurer who is willing to take on legal liability and stick it out. == media == I think I did pretty well with the media -- for the most part they all have newsworthiness requirements and the Secretary of State isn't very newsworthy, being an administrative position and not a legislative position. Most people don't realize that it's almost as important as governor because a lot of legal interpretation goes on (along with the attorney general) that can dramatically affect the effect of legislation past, present, and future. But I was able to use Measure 65 as a way to get about half my news coverage. The other half was just about the Secretary of State race. The work against Measure 65 greatly helped my ability to be confident in front of large crowds and/or cameras. For the first few events I was visibly nervous, but by the last month, that feeling gradually went away, and I was kind of a natural politician. Some of that definitely involved developing very clear talking points that are short enough to work into a sound-bite or print-bite. For example, I learned that for TV, they will often just take one sentence, so you have to be very on-point, and either begin or end with a coherent summary punch, particularly if it's pre-recorded. Often the reporter will summarize for you and let you end with a punch, or they'll just take a random sentence and use it. For print media, my main problem was probably not being able to follow up with places that wrote articles. One paper talked about my position on ballot measures, but a lot talked about my desire to ban payment for signature gathering, often pointing out that it would likely be overturned by the courts. The Eugene Weekly even went so far as to call that position politically naive. I beg to differ -- it's politically necessary and regardless of a court, the whole point of politics is to present ideas to the marketplace -- those courts follow the market just like every other interest group. They know they will lose their status in history if they make too many unpopular moves. Courts have political capital, too. Another paper liked my auditing and legislative redistricting ideas. Oddly enough, few papers wanted to talk about my main issues of Campaign Finance Reform (Measure 47) and Instant Runoff Voting. As much as it would have been good to talk about lots of issues, I think ultimately talking about a lot of issues dilutes some of my message. But is it a really bad thing? I think for this position it isn't so much a bad thing, and in particular third party candidates I think need to set themselves apart by having a breadth of knowledge of the issues, unlike the D and R counterparts -- who come to the table supported by one special interest or another. I think I struck a delicate balance here by ensuring my voters's statement, limited to space available, and my public speeches, also limited to time available, were on point and not drifting. I often get conflicting advice, to not have long policy documents published or anything that might turn off a voter. My goal isn't to get as many votes as possible, although that would be nice -- my goal was to educate the public about alternatives that are available to them -- thinking outside the box, as it were. But, back to media -- I think I lost a little bit by having a policy of only doing media when directly asked to do media. Sometimes I had scheduling conflicts even with that! A serious statewide candidate needs somebody who will specifically schedule the candidate for events, seek out events not in the schedule, and make sure the candidate is working full time on the campaign. My campaign was limited in that I had a regular job I had to do, so I didn't want anybody having to tell me I had to do certain events and thus having to miss work. I missed enough work as it was with just the events that sought me out. That being said, the whole issue of media bias is rather interesting -- I think most of it is based upon perceived support of parties, and the necessity to balance articles not to be equal and fair, but to proportion the articles to their readership to maintain group-think with their subscribers. News organizations should realize that it's the alternatives that are more important than the status quo. when it comes to democracy, and thus they should report on all ballot-qualified candidates equally (and those that aren't qualified when the standard is too high to be meaningful). "Wasn't enough room," is a common refrain. That being said, I used to think you had to have political experience to get elected to high office, but it turns out that in my race, the Republican, with no experience, got pretty close to winning. I think it's a combination of experience and party support that works well. The Republican was able to tap into Republican donors and then run an effective campaign based on xenophobia (illegals voting), while at debates backing off and saying it's "mostly a perception problem", pointing out that election fraud in Oregon is statistically low. The real fraud in elections is our not using preference voting (to ensure candidates are supported by a majority) and our having no proportional representation in the legislature. == debates == Debates were my favorite party of the entire process, but most probably don't realize that debates have to be prepared for. I often spent the entire night before preparing what I'd do at every moment, and re-reading my position points making sure it rolled off the tongue correctly. It takes a lot of skill to do these debates, and I think I'll only improve. That being said, I kind of have to thank the Republican for ensuring I was even in the debates. Normally both major parties shut out third parties from debates to ensure it's a two-horse race, but when there's only one third party in the picture, the incentive to negotiate to get the third party in by the opposite viewpoint goes up since there's no majority vote requirement, and they can win with a minority of votes. Also, the League of Women Voters has always been good to third party candidates -- they typically use ballot qualification to invite for debates. The entire reason the CPD (Commission on Presidential Debates) is just the two major parties is because the League refused to moderate a debate limited to just the top two parties, which had been negotiated after the 1992 Perot "spoiling" to help keep him out in 1996. Nader and Robertson were kept out of the debates in 2000 by the CPD, and the CPD has been doing two-party debates ever since. So, I think third parties should figure out a way to collude together to ensure that only one third party is running at a time in specific races. I don't think it's going to work for, say governor, where there's a chance somebody viable from many third parties would try, but since a lot of seats go un-challenged, any place where a candidate exists already on a third party ticket, any fourth party entering the race essentially spoils the chance of the third party from being in debates. Maybe that's not a major issue the more local debates go because in a lot of cases, only the League of Women Voters will be organizing a debate anyways. That being said, I want to put out a general pitch for membershop in the League of Women Voters. They take men, too, I found out. :) They are a hyper-democratic, true "democratic" organization that really behaves in a non-partisan fashion. They reliably invite third parties to debates, support campaign finance reform and better election methods, and are strong proponents of voter education in general. = Conclusion = I'll probably go back through and edit this blog entry a bit more as needed to encapsulate more information as I remember it. Expect me to run again in four years -- my account is still open, so contact me to see if I'm going to start taking donations. I still need to think about it. Two million dollars were spent on the race and I have to raise a million to win next time around. Kate Brown's a very effective fundraiser, and well-connected, but if she doesn't enact the reforms we need to increase democracy, she should expect another challenge from her "democratic" side. P.S. I don't have a lot of time to ruminate right now, as I'm catching back up with work, so I didn't even re-read this entry -- I hope it's not too jagged to read, but feel free to email me if you have any questions or I've missed something.