{"id":3179,"date":"2010-07-30T21:44:39","date_gmt":"2010-07-31T02:44:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=3179"},"modified":"2010-07-30T22:34:32","modified_gmt":"2010-07-31T03:34:32","slug":"ten-day-countdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=3179","title":{"rendered":"Ten day countdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This election represents both the shortest campaign I&#8217;ve ever been in (two months) and the one I&#8217;ve spent the least effort campaigning.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve had a dozen of my hundred or so lawnsigns picked up by others to put up but I&#8217;ve not put any up in the several dozen sites offered to me by contributors. I could have spent today doing this and that would have made sense because tomorrow its supposed to storm.<!--more-->And putting them up in the rain wouldn&#8217;t be any fun.<\/p>\n<p>After three years of maniacal work to win a vote on the Red Plan I&#8217;ve spent the last year putting family far ahead of politics. My father and brother-in-law will pay us a visit on Sunday and cleaning my Garage takes priority. We just purchased a new car that is far to big for the garage space its in and I simply must clean it up the larger garage stall before they arrive. <\/p>\n<p>this meant hauling two loads of garage debris to the materials recycling center and another load of stuff to Goodwill this afternoon. I bought a new utility cabinet for the garage and I expect it will take half a day to put the cabinet together and pick up all the stuff I emptied out of the old kitchen cabinets that were too fat to admit a Chevy Traverse. <\/p>\n<p>One thing relieved me of any guilt I might otherwise have felt for abandoning this important campaign day for family. I submitted a good letter to the editor to the Trib this morning. <\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s my simple political calculation. Both Roger and I have good name recognition. Although Roger is a man in the grey flannel suit I&#8217;m either loved or hated by voters. Putting up lawnsigns won&#8217;t change anyone&#8217;s mind and won&#8217;t give me any added name recognition.  However, for those voters who are still undecided my letter in reply to the Trib&#8217;s endorsement gives me a rare opportunity to restate my case. By now its three years old but that doesn&#8217;t mean I can&#8217;t reinvigorate it.<\/p>\n<p>The Trib&#8217;s circulation is a little fuzzy but its quite likely that my letter could be read by up to 30,000 voters in District 7. Compared to lawnsigns a good letter stands a chance to change minds.<\/p>\n<p>Putting more faith in my words is simply following the example of my hero Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a rare exception. He was a man who labored hard to write his way into the hearts and heads of his countrymen. It got Lincoln elected President and I won&#8217;t argue with success. Besides, the last three years has effectively been my campaign for this office although I did not realize the office would become vacant.<\/p>\n<p>When I finally gave up cleaning a happy band of beer drinking college boys began shouting at the cars driving up 21st Ave. Their racket threatened to keep my new grandson awake so, I wrapped him up in my arms and paid a call on the boys. I played the god cop and told the boys I really needed to put my baby to bed. They were nice kids took the hint and left us in peace. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve got to decide whether to spend the $3,000 left in my campaign account. I&#8217;ve not prepared any new ads. Once my in-laws arrive for the week on Sunday being a good host will make it difficult to campaign. I&#8217;ve hired a charter fishing boat for Monday and hope we can catch a lunker. <\/p>\n<p>A couple of people have suggested to me that I&#8217;ve become a single issue candidate. It may very well be true that a single issue gets me elected but the thousand folks who read this blog know that unlike most politicians I relish telling folks what I think about issues. I&#8217;m almost a stand in for that moth who is attracted to theflame. If you doubt this just look at the incindiary list to the right of this blog post.<\/p>\n<p>I have the eclectic knowledge of a trivia pursuit champion paired with the humility to admit publicly when I&#8217;m wrong. Because I&#8217;ve run and lost so many times I&#8217;m no longer fearful (if I ever was) about losing an election just for being honest. In fact I consider it a badge of honor to lose for a good cause. At a few months shy of age sixty I can&#8217;t abide the thought of being a mealy mouthed politician. That&#8217;s something Roger Reinert might be able to say in thirty years but he sure can&#8217;t say it today.<\/p>\n<p>Roger could use a little leavening. I&#8217;d highly recommend listening to an hour of Raffi singing lullibies to a grandchild. Its a good way to relate to your constituents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This election represents both the shortest campaign I&#8217;ve ever been in (two months) and the one I&#8217;ve spent the least effort campaigning. I&#8217;ve had&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,9,92],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3179"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}