A Primer For Candidates

As another election year comes upon us, I thought it would be a good time to share my experience as a candidate.   This was written a few years ago, and I have shared it with a few candidates.  Election laws may have changed somewhat and, at the national level, the Citizen's United case has totally screwed up the playing field.  (More on that later).  But local elections and first time candidates are still quite similar, I'm sure.

I respect and admire the impulse to put yourself out there.  Even after years of serving on Ethics Commissions, I still think most of us seek public service for the right reasons.  But it's hard to run a campaign, and particularly hard to maintain a reasonable perspective while doing so.  I hope my little primer helps.

A Primer for Candidates

“Don’t Take Yourselves Too Seriously”

            Recently as I was cleaning out the garage, which involved moving my accumulated memories into my office, I ran across a piece I wrote in May, 1986, during the primary campaign that I was waging that year for the State Senate.  It was four months before the primary and I was already disillusioned - not so much about the effort to find and influence votes of people who did not know me, but more by the reactions and statements of a lot of my “friends.”  I was upset by the sudden re-evaluation of my motives.  All the years I had worked as a volunteer to create and nurture such things as Family Services, the Arts Council, Covered Bridge Theatre, my church, the PTA, Little League, Ethics Commission and many other good deeds were all being re-examined now.  Where it was previously believed that I was a community-oriented, selfless worker, the act of offering myself as a candidate proved, to many, that I had always been a selfish, egomaniac who only did those things to promote my chances for attaining political office where, if I should be successful, I would undoubtedly confirm all the suspicions they suddenly had.  Why could they not understand, I argued, that the desire to serve the public in little ways, working for charitable, educational and cultural organizations, led logically to a desire to serve in a political office where more people could benefit from my efforts?

            But speaking of ego, there is nothing like the roller coaster effect of a political campaign upon that fragile but easily inflated piece of personhood.  Most of us go for weeks, even months without having anyone ask for our opinion about anything.  We fight for the opportunity to express our opinion and usually find no one listening.  This is not the case when you are a candidate:  Suddenly, everyone from the League of Women Voters to the Ingrown Toenail Support Society wants to know what you think about everything!  Everything, that is, except what you want to talk about.  Heady stuff.  Those are the highs.  They really seem to want your opinion.

            Then there are the lows - probably more of them for a first-time candidate, like when you realize that no one has bothered to read the opinion you so laboriously wrote or to listen to your carefully articulated spoken position.  There are times when people act as if you don’t exist, or certainly, don’t matter.  This attitude is most likely to be exhibited by the old pols, the people who believe that they have power which is derived from a relationship with those currently holding office.  They lord it over the poor candidate but, if that candidate should be successful, they will be the first ones to offer their hands and assurances that they (quietly, but effectively, working in the background or underground) are primarily responsible for that success.  The flatterers, who feed the ego without sincerity are not much better.  Each extreme makes it harder to maintain a sense of balance.

            And finally, never underestimate the lack of interest of the average voter in those issues which you have labored for hours to develop and perfect and which you have at great pain and expense, published in every form of communication media in the district.  The great majority of voters are paying absolutely no attention.  This was illustrated most graphically on the morning of the primary.  We had raised more money (and spent even more money) than anyone in the district ever had to that date.  We had blanketed local newspapers with position papers.  We had volunteers lined up to work at every polling place in the district (the largest in the State covering hundreds of miles) with ample literature.  We had completed massive phone polls and door-to-door canvassing to thousands of homes.  A mass mailing went out the last week to every registered Democrat in the entire district.

            It was my plan to vote at home, first thing, then go from poll to poll, encouraging all my precinct workers for the rest of the day.     As I drove up the road to the elementary school which served as the polling place that year, I saw my name posted on signs, on both sides of the road every two hundred feet as planned.  There were at least a dozen of them on the short street and they had been placed there just an hour before the polls opened.  I greeted my volunteers in the parking lot, noting their banner, buttons and literature, and walked in.  I went to the desk  marked “A through C” in my home precinct.  The clerk looked up at me, and though I thought I recognized her and was sure she recognized me, I spoke up (not to be presumptuous) and said, “Clower  - - Dennis.”  She looked down at the list of registered voters in front of her.  “How do you spell that?” she asked.

                                                                                                Dennis S. Clower

                                                                                                226 E. Main St.

                                                                                                Elkton, MD 21921

                                                                                                410-398-7400