No election for me

I have to face the music. I am not going to get on the ballot to run for the Va. state legislature. Getting the required petition signatures is beyond me. I want to thank all my donors, and I will refund anybody's donation upon request. You have two weeks to request, no hard feelings.

Otherwise the proceeds will go to the successful Democratic nominee, Rob Banse. (His campaign website is here.) He’s a retired Episcopalian minister. We had a pleasant lunch, a couple of months ago. In total I raised over $7K. I'm told Rob has done much better, but he will still need much more to cope with our local, loony MAGA dude, Geary Higgins, so don’t hold back.

I've learned a few things about politics and about myself. There were two ways to go about this campaign -- the correct way and my way. The correct way entails tireless pursuit of voters in the district with door-to-door canvassing, texting, and phone calls. The objective is to turn out Democrats. I am not made for this kind of campaign. I'm too much of an introvert to be good as this sort of thing.

The other way was to try to engage people on ideas, to spark something, to bank on a miracle. Dopey three-dimensional chess. I had a bunch of gambits and stunts in mind, none of which panned out. Overall, the lack of response is depressing. I don't doubt that it was as much me as anything else.

I'm going to keep writing, doing what I can about the same things that motivated me to enter the campaign. If you have recurring donations to this substack, you can easily turn them off, though I could still use the money. I used to be rich, but these days I keep looking at how to save ten or twenty bucks a month by cancelling this subscription or that cable channel. If you are poor, the money is better staying with you.

Cheers.