Election season is finally over. After months of filling out forms, attending party functions and candidate forums, and spending untold dozens of dollars, I can now sit back and reflect on some of the lessons learned in my very first political campaign.
For those of you who didn’t already know, I was the Libertarian Party candidate for State Representative for my district here in Texas. I had originally volunteered as a “paper candidate.” Basically I was the only person from my district they could find, so I threw my hat into the political ring in order to help the LP maintain its ballot access.
You see, the Republicans and Democrats in each state have set certain rules about who is and who is not allowed on the ballot – i.e., whom the voter may or may not vote for. The specifics vary, but generally speaking, the Republicans and Democrats get space on the ballot automatically, but every other party has to go through a time-consuming and wildly expensive process of obtaining signatures, verifying names and addresses, and fighting off legal challenges just so they can have their candidates listed as a choice for the voter to ignore come November. And should the voter ever pay more attention to these renegade candidates than the major parties might like, the number of signatures required to gain ballot access in the next election cycle is simply raised higher. And if for whatever reason the minor parties either don’t pull down enough votes or don’t have enough candidates to fill a certain percentage of the available races, they have to go through the whole ballot access process again.
So with that in mind, I decided to do what I could to help the LP retain its access. I submitted my name at the nominating convention, and was chosen by acclamation (and by the fact that no one else was there from my district to challenge me). After that, I was officially a candidate for State Representative. Truth be told, if I thought for a second that I could actually win, I never would have volunteered. State Representatives in Texas make $600 a month, and frankly I couldn’t have afforded the pay cut.
Nevertheless, I found myself wanting to represent the LP to the best of my ability, while staying within a budget of roughly nothing. So I participated wherever I could. I created a website, got some business cards, filled out voter questionnaires, gave phone interviews to the local press, and participated in whatever debates I happened to be invited to. At the end of it all I garnered a whopping 3% of the vote, but I have to say it was a good experience. Or at least an interesting one.
Ours was a three-way race. The incumbent is a Republican who was seeking her sixth consecutive term as State Representative (each term is two years, so she had been State Rep for this district for the past decade). The challenger was a newly minted Democrat. Prior to her conversion to liberalism (which took place immediately before the initial filing deadline), she had been a lifelong Republican. In fact, she had even been the Republican incumbent for three terms until she got knocked out of the box in a GOP primary ten years ago by the woman she was running against (the current Republican incumbent). In short, these two women have been fighting over the same job for roughly twenty years now, and the voters of my district had a choice between the current Republican incumbent or the previous Republican incumbent – or me.
I live in a district that is one of the reddest parts of this red state, so the outcome was never really in doubt. The woman with the “R” after her name won in a landslide. But the campaign wasn’t a total loss. I did manage to make a few observations along the way.
1) THE SPECIAL INTERESTS: As a candidate, you receive countless surveys from various special-interest groups. From what I can tell, these surveys all ask the same two basic questions:
a. “What’s your central plan to run everything?”
b. “Will you promise to funnel taxpayer money to our pet project?”
As I was preparing for the various candidate forums, I consolidated all of the surveys that I had received over the past few months. When I put them together, the underlying assumptions behind all the surveys became frighteningly clear. People really think that any elected official should have a complete central plan for absolutely everything under the sun.
For example, one issue on virtually every questionnaire is education, or more accurately funding for public schools. Although most use those terms synonymously, the two have very different connotations to a libertarian. Nevertheless, everyone wanted to know what Stephen Smith’s master plan for public schools was. My background is in international supply chain operations in Latin America. My faux-Democrat opponent’s background is listed variously as homemaker, consultant, and farmer. And the last time the Republican incumbent held a straight job it was in health care and pharmaceuticals. Why would anyone want to put control of their children’s education into any of our hands? Not a single one of us has any experience in education - we don’t understand the differences in educating primary, secondary, or university students. We live in North Texas – what do we know about the needs of schools in, say, Laredo? Nothing. So why would anyone want us to make these decisions? To the degree that these decisions should be decided by government at all, they should at least be handled at the lowest possible level. Unfortunately, that is flat-out not what the vast majority of voters want to hear. Everyone expects the candidate to have a central plan, and they want to hear you describe how you will be the one who finally makes central planning work. They might as well ask us to build a perpetual motion machine while they’re at it.
2) REPUBLOCRATS: I’ve discovered that there may even be less difference between the Republicans and Democrats at the state level than at the national level, believe it or not. Being a Republican in Texas these days seems to involve agreeing with the Democrats that the government should be involved in absolutely every aspect of life while spouting a lot of anti-immigration rhetoric. Democrats apparently just want to wave their magic government wand and make health insurance instantly cheaper. But beyond that, it’s just a question of presenting your grand plan to run everything out of Austin, and hope that the voters find your plan slightly less revolting than your opponent’s.
3) CAMPAIGN FINANCE: The Republican incumbent raised almost $200K and spent about $60K just to keep a job that pays her $600/month. Although I certainly defend her right to raise and spend as much money as she likes on a voluntary basis (unlike her party’s standard-bearer, John McCain), I do have to question the kind of cost-benefit analysis skills this reflects. It does go a long way to explain the state of government budgets across the country, though. (And just as an aside, last year the Republican incumbent was fined $5,300 by the Texas Ethics Committee for reporting violations – that’s almost ¾ of her total salary last year, but she still sailed into a sixth consecutive term.) Don’t worry about her, though – she’s been using campaign contributions to pay for a luxury condo in Austin for years. She’s going to be alright.
4) THE ISSUES: Democratic strategist James Carville once said, “You can’t beat something with nothing.” Mr. Carville has obviously never attended a candidates’ debate for a state office. Case in point, light rail.
I attended a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters. The question was, "Texas is one of the richest states in the country, but we rank dead last in light rail. Why is that?"
My answer: "Light rail is the most expensive and inefficient form of transportation this side of the Space Shuttle. A mile of light rail costs as much to build as a mile of 4-lane highway, but only carries 15% of the traffic. Light rail has never once delivered on its promises to reduce congestion, provide environmental benefits, or even run in the black. Politicians love light rail, because they get to throw lots of taxpayer dollars into a big government sinkhole, and they get to have their picture taken in front of a shiny new train. A much wiser investment in clean public transportation would be to add more natural gas or hybrid buses. They are just as clean as light rail, and they carry far more people. In addition, buses cost pennies on the dollar when compared to light rail, and they have the added advantages of being more flexible (because routes can easy be changed to reflect changing population dispersion), and scalable (you can add or subtract the number of buses on the road at any given time to reflect actual ridership needs). Light rail is one contest in which the winner is the one who comes in last. As State Rep, I will be much more careful in how we invest in public transportation."
Democrat’s answer: "I really like light rail. Last year, I rode the Dallas light rail to the Cowboys game, and it was really nice. So I want Texas to be number one."
At this point, I flashed back to an old Saturday Night Live skit thinking, "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!"
5) WASTED VOTE SYNDROME: After the candidate forums, I had Republicans forming a line to tell me that I won the debate. My Democrat opponent said that I should run as a Republican so that I could win. It was kind of a back-handed compliment, but she meant it sincerely, telling me how well she thought I had done in the forum. Of course, I’m a small-government, free-market guy. There’s no room in the Republican Party for someone like me. I would not get the GOP’s nomination by espousing my free-market philosophy. Much better for me to run as the libertarian that I am, and get the chance as the Libertarian Party’s candidate to share an alternative view with the voters.
And despite the encouraging words, I’m quite sure most people who heard me voted for the Republican – even those who preferred my answers to hers. Fears of “wasting one’s vote” are very real, as well as very irrational. People like Mark Cuban apparently believe that the purpose of voting is to bet on who’s going to win, and not to take advantage of their one opportunity to express their opinion on what direction the government should take. These people think that voting for a dark-horse candidate they happen to agree with is wasting their vote, while voting for the well-known candidate they despise is not. It’s a bizarre pathology, but it’s out there nonetheless.
6) THE POLITICAL ZOO: The League of Women Voters hosted the forums, and they were really great. Very welcoming, and very excited to have participation from the Libertarian Party. After my panel had concluded, they moved on to the US Congressional race. The LP candidate was also participating in that panel, and in his introduction the LWV moderator said, “Don’t you just love it when the Libertarians attend? They are so interesting! I’ve never heard one before!” As if we were exhibits in the zoo or something, which may be a more accurate analogy than I care to admit. But she and the other members of the League were genuinely happy to have us there and they were actually quite supportive of what we had to say, which was a pleasant surprise. I had anticipated a much cooler reception, but the LWV really made the experience enjoyable.
7) A SLIVER OF HOPE: At one of the candidate forums, I got the best reaction of any candidate the entire night. When asked if I would support a statewide smoking ban I said, “No, but I might support a ban on smoking bans.” At that point, the entire room burst into laughter and cheers. A small thing, perhaps, but hope springs eternal…
For those of you who didn’t already know, I was the Libertarian Party candidate for State Representative for my district here in Texas. I had originally volunteered as a “paper candidate.” Basically I was the only person from my district they could find, so I threw my hat into the political ring in order to help the LP maintain its ballot access.
You see, the Republicans and Democrats in each state have set certain rules about who is and who is not allowed on the ballot – i.e., whom the voter may or may not vote for. The specifics vary, but generally speaking, the Republicans and Democrats get space on the ballot automatically, but every other party has to go through a time-consuming and wildly expensive process of obtaining signatures, verifying names and addresses, and fighting off legal challenges just so they can have their candidates listed as a choice for the voter to ignore come November. And should the voter ever pay more attention to these renegade candidates than the major parties might like, the number of signatures required to gain ballot access in the next election cycle is simply raised higher. And if for whatever reason the minor parties either don’t pull down enough votes or don’t have enough candidates to fill a certain percentage of the available races, they have to go through the whole ballot access process again.
So with that in mind, I decided to do what I could to help the LP retain its access. I submitted my name at the nominating convention, and was chosen by acclamation (and by the fact that no one else was there from my district to challenge me). After that, I was officially a candidate for State Representative. Truth be told, if I thought for a second that I could actually win, I never would have volunteered. State Representatives in Texas make $600 a month, and frankly I couldn’t have afforded the pay cut.
Nevertheless, I found myself wanting to represent the LP to the best of my ability, while staying within a budget of roughly nothing. So I participated wherever I could. I created a website, got some business cards, filled out voter questionnaires, gave phone interviews to the local press, and participated in whatever debates I happened to be invited to. At the end of it all I garnered a whopping 3% of the vote, but I have to say it was a good experience. Or at least an interesting one.
Ours was a three-way race. The incumbent is a Republican who was seeking her sixth consecutive term as State Representative (each term is two years, so she had been State Rep for this district for the past decade). The challenger was a newly minted Democrat. Prior to her conversion to liberalism (which took place immediately before the initial filing deadline), she had been a lifelong Republican. In fact, she had even been the Republican incumbent for three terms until she got knocked out of the box in a GOP primary ten years ago by the woman she was running against (the current Republican incumbent). In short, these two women have been fighting over the same job for roughly twenty years now, and the voters of my district had a choice between the current Republican incumbent or the previous Republican incumbent – or me.
I live in a district that is one of the reddest parts of this red state, so the outcome was never really in doubt. The woman with the “R” after her name won in a landslide. But the campaign wasn’t a total loss. I did manage to make a few observations along the way.
1) THE SPECIAL INTERESTS: As a candidate, you receive countless surveys from various special-interest groups. From what I can tell, these surveys all ask the same two basic questions:
a. “What’s your central plan to run everything?”
b. “Will you promise to funnel taxpayer money to our pet project?”
As I was preparing for the various candidate forums, I consolidated all of the surveys that I had received over the past few months. When I put them together, the underlying assumptions behind all the surveys became frighteningly clear. People really think that any elected official should have a complete central plan for absolutely everything under the sun.
For example, one issue on virtually every questionnaire is education, or more accurately funding for public schools. Although most use those terms synonymously, the two have very different connotations to a libertarian. Nevertheless, everyone wanted to know what Stephen Smith’s master plan for public schools was. My background is in international supply chain operations in Latin America. My faux-Democrat opponent’s background is listed variously as homemaker, consultant, and farmer. And the last time the Republican incumbent held a straight job it was in health care and pharmaceuticals. Why would anyone want to put control of their children’s education into any of our hands? Not a single one of us has any experience in education - we don’t understand the differences in educating primary, secondary, or university students. We live in North Texas – what do we know about the needs of schools in, say, Laredo? Nothing. So why would anyone want us to make these decisions? To the degree that these decisions should be decided by government at all, they should at least be handled at the lowest possible level. Unfortunately, that is flat-out not what the vast majority of voters want to hear. Everyone expects the candidate to have a central plan, and they want to hear you describe how you will be the one who finally makes central planning work. They might as well ask us to build a perpetual motion machine while they’re at it.
2) REPUBLOCRATS: I’ve discovered that there may even be less difference between the Republicans and Democrats at the state level than at the national level, believe it or not. Being a Republican in Texas these days seems to involve agreeing with the Democrats that the government should be involved in absolutely every aspect of life while spouting a lot of anti-immigration rhetoric. Democrats apparently just want to wave their magic government wand and make health insurance instantly cheaper. But beyond that, it’s just a question of presenting your grand plan to run everything out of Austin, and hope that the voters find your plan slightly less revolting than your opponent’s.
3) CAMPAIGN FINANCE: The Republican incumbent raised almost $200K and spent about $60K just to keep a job that pays her $600/month. Although I certainly defend her right to raise and spend as much money as she likes on a voluntary basis (unlike her party’s standard-bearer, John McCain), I do have to question the kind of cost-benefit analysis skills this reflects. It does go a long way to explain the state of government budgets across the country, though. (And just as an aside, last year the Republican incumbent was fined $5,300 by the Texas Ethics Committee for reporting violations – that’s almost ¾ of her total salary last year, but she still sailed into a sixth consecutive term.) Don’t worry about her, though – she’s been using campaign contributions to pay for a luxury condo in Austin for years. She’s going to be alright.
4) THE ISSUES: Democratic strategist James Carville once said, “You can’t beat something with nothing.” Mr. Carville has obviously never attended a candidates’ debate for a state office. Case in point, light rail.
I attended a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters. The question was, "Texas is one of the richest states in the country, but we rank dead last in light rail. Why is that?"
My answer: "Light rail is the most expensive and inefficient form of transportation this side of the Space Shuttle. A mile of light rail costs as much to build as a mile of 4-lane highway, but only carries 15% of the traffic. Light rail has never once delivered on its promises to reduce congestion, provide environmental benefits, or even run in the black. Politicians love light rail, because they get to throw lots of taxpayer dollars into a big government sinkhole, and they get to have their picture taken in front of a shiny new train. A much wiser investment in clean public transportation would be to add more natural gas or hybrid buses. They are just as clean as light rail, and they carry far more people. In addition, buses cost pennies on the dollar when compared to light rail, and they have the added advantages of being more flexible (because routes can easy be changed to reflect changing population dispersion), and scalable (you can add or subtract the number of buses on the road at any given time to reflect actual ridership needs). Light rail is one contest in which the winner is the one who comes in last. As State Rep, I will be much more careful in how we invest in public transportation."
Democrat’s answer: "I really like light rail. Last year, I rode the Dallas light rail to the Cowboys game, and it was really nice. So I want Texas to be number one."
At this point, I flashed back to an old Saturday Night Live skit thinking, "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!"
5) WASTED VOTE SYNDROME: After the candidate forums, I had Republicans forming a line to tell me that I won the debate. My Democrat opponent said that I should run as a Republican so that I could win. It was kind of a back-handed compliment, but she meant it sincerely, telling me how well she thought I had done in the forum. Of course, I’m a small-government, free-market guy. There’s no room in the Republican Party for someone like me. I would not get the GOP’s nomination by espousing my free-market philosophy. Much better for me to run as the libertarian that I am, and get the chance as the Libertarian Party’s candidate to share an alternative view with the voters.
And despite the encouraging words, I’m quite sure most people who heard me voted for the Republican – even those who preferred my answers to hers. Fears of “wasting one’s vote” are very real, as well as very irrational. People like Mark Cuban apparently believe that the purpose of voting is to bet on who’s going to win, and not to take advantage of their one opportunity to express their opinion on what direction the government should take. These people think that voting for a dark-horse candidate they happen to agree with is wasting their vote, while voting for the well-known candidate they despise is not. It’s a bizarre pathology, but it’s out there nonetheless.
6) THE POLITICAL ZOO: The League of Women Voters hosted the forums, and they were really great. Very welcoming, and very excited to have participation from the Libertarian Party. After my panel had concluded, they moved on to the US Congressional race. The LP candidate was also participating in that panel, and in his introduction the LWV moderator said, “Don’t you just love it when the Libertarians attend? They are so interesting! I’ve never heard one before!” As if we were exhibits in the zoo or something, which may be a more accurate analogy than I care to admit. But she and the other members of the League were genuinely happy to have us there and they were actually quite supportive of what we had to say, which was a pleasant surprise. I had anticipated a much cooler reception, but the LWV really made the experience enjoyable.
7) A SLIVER OF HOPE: At one of the candidate forums, I got the best reaction of any candidate the entire night. When asked if I would support a statewide smoking ban I said, “No, but I might support a ban on smoking bans.” At that point, the entire room burst into laughter and cheers. A small thing, perhaps, but hope springs eternal…
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