A week’s vacation can derail a person. I’ve just got a hair over a month to go before the primary but I’m confident.
An email from an old LDVer today about difficulties reading my blog helped me realize that I’ve still got friends. Perhaps my fundraising letter reached her. A very late call tonight confirmed that the letter is in the hands of donors to Let Duluth Vote. I didn’t get one but I suspect I took my name off the list to save on postage.
I explained to folks that 300 ten dollar donations would qualify me for state matching money if I won the primary. Of course, I hope to get some larger donations. My wife and I will each donate fifty. I put in a thousand dollars as a loan to get the initial mailing out. I sure hope it stays a loan and will be repaid.
My conversation this evening was fun. It was from an old Republican ally who like me has busied himself helping Democrats over the past decade. Any more detail would give him away but I was particularly interested when he talked about some ancient Duluth politics I’ve got a little yen to write about some day.
He led me to believe that my longish letter (it was a page and three quarters long) was a little high falutin. I’ll send a variant of it out in other mailings or advertising. The writing in the blog is my usual informal style including typos. A formal campaign letter ought not have typos but I grimaced when I saw a simple one in one of the first paragraphs.
As to complexity. Some GOP pundits panned Obama recently for talking over the American public’s heads recently on the Gulf Oil Spill. And what was the measured level of his speech? Apparently it was pitched for tenth graders and the more normative level of such speeches (presumably by Republican Presidents) is seventh grade. Maybe we need a “No Elephant Left Behind” law so that Republicans can follow speeches that take one’s intellect to the high school level.
I say this having just read another half chapter in my book on Abraham Lincoln the writer. Talk about a man who didn’t write at the Junior High level. Oh, I haven’t heard his name invoked in GOP circles for a decade or two. Its all Reagan this and Reagan that. I can’t tell you how charming it was at the DFL endorsing convention to have that group recall his name and his call for a government of the people, for the people and by the people.
I’ll know by the end of the week, Saturday at the latest, whether I’m on a trend to raise the money I need. Much will depend on how I deploy those initial bucks. No one can come up with a reasonably effective ad than I can acting without a committee.
I got a couple yards mowed today. I got to crawl into bed with my grandson until he fell asleep. I snuck out a few moments ago and bought a strawberry banana smoothie.
Life is good.
Oh and I recommend the German movie “Other People’s lives.” but only for people who can follow speeches at at least the tenth grade level. It has subtitles.
Oh, and if you are reading this and would like to donate send a check to WeltyforSenate and mail it to my home at 2101 E 4th St. Duluth, MN 55812.
