Countdown 40 days Pt. A – July 4th and my 21st campaign

I put up my flag before daybreak this morning. Clouds were beginning to roll over Duluth and the forecast suggest the fireworks will be rained out tonight. I left my windows open through the little of the night that I slept and miraculously I heard no late night firecrackers. That’s a first. There are more than enough of them in our campaign with two damp presidential candidates sizzling under a non stop drizzle.

Yesterday a passel of kids across 4th Street were having a party under beautiful skies. When I emerged from the back with my weed trimmer one hailed HARRY and I waved my trimmer at him. He beckoned me and I crossed the street where Jackson asked if I wouldn’t give the group a sign. Of Course I was happy to answer his wish and we walked back to my store of them in the garage. As I left the group I told them to behave themselves and one told me I ought to behave as well. “I’m old enough not to.” I shouted back.

The two unaccounted for days of the countdown were consumed with plotting out how I will get around the vast 8th District as efficiently as possible to spread my signs and bookmarks. Yesterday I went through likely people to hit up for a fundraising mailing something I’ve always done much earlier in campaigns of less consequence. I was struck how aging of my “base” and distance from former fundraising has removed me from likely donors. I also made a discovery about a forgotten race for the Duluth School Board in between my first two protest filings against Pete Stauber in 2018 and 2020 when I only poked at the congressman from my rarely visited blog. In 2019 I filed to run against an incumbent David Kirby for the School Board having been tossed off it following the uproar of Trump’s election to the Presidency. I was the wrong gender and I had irritated some prominent females on the Duluth School Board and I was swept aside because I wasn’t a woman candidate even though no one had been a more ferocious critic of Don Trump than me.

This year I had the good sense to write such a book before I filed for Congress. But in 2019 I offered to write a book for donors but was too daunted by teh subject and so I sent them apologies. I’d forgotten this until I found the apology letter in a file for donors of that election.

Having just finished a book which contained some comments about education for this election I composed and mailed mailed the following letter to most of the 75 donors who had ordered the never written book for that 2019 school board campaign. This is it:

2024-07-04_08-55-27

And as you can see this letter answered a question I’d been wrestling with. Hadn’t I already run for public office 20 times before 2024. I could only remember filing for office 19 times. I’d completely forgotten the 2019 race for the Duluth School Board. Yes, I had run for office before this year’s 21st campaign.

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