Young Emerging Leaders

Well I can officially say my campaign has started. The deadline to file the paperwork was noon on Friday. I had to turn in 50 signatures from registered voters in Fort Smith to get on the ballot. The clerk's office advised me to get extras in the event some people weren't actually registered to vote. I got about 80 just to be safe. You may have signed my petition at Bella Notte so thank you to all who did.

Many people have asked me why I wasn't mentioned in the paper along with several other of the candidates on Thursday. It was because I did not file my paperwork until Friday morning while most everyone else got there's in on Wednesday. In case you missed it I was mentioned in the Saturday article. For some reason it's not available through the Times Record but you can read it in the NWA newspaper: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/218357/

On Saturday I took my first major step towards campaigning - I hit the pavement and went door to door. Obviously I was nervous as I hadn't knocked on strangers doors since selling little league candy bars more than 20 years ago so I started with the shiny happy people - my neighbors. Surely I would be able to get my own neibhborhood to back me up. Of course we just moved to our new house 6 months ago so except for 2 households most everyone was meeting me for the first time. Let me just say I had an absolute blast talking to people. Everyone was very friendly and eager to talk. The downside however was that it was also extremely exhausting. 2 hours seemed like 6 and my feet were aching all day on Sunday. By the time I was done I had knocked on 26 doors and actually spoke with someone at 10 of them. Those I did get to speak with were all extremely supportive of me running for office and everyone was very appreciative that I took the time to come to their house - although they could have just been happy to discover I wasn't trying to sell them something. Most just said they would be happy to vote for me but of the 10 bodies, 4 actually wanted to talk politics and all 4 repeated pretty much the same sentiment: we need new faces on the board, specifically young faces, and they all wanted to see Fort Smith grow and progress. This was very exciting to me because all 4 of them were over the age of 60. It's certainly encouraging to know that "progress" is an issue that transcends demographic boundaries. I can't wait to get to the next neighborhood and I can very much see that this is what it's going to take to win this election. Although very time consuming and tiring, knocking on doors is up close and personal. Signs and ads are great but when did you ever vote because of a sign?

What's next:

Monday at noon I am to report to the City Clerk's office. All the candidates for the special election will be there and the purpose will be to draw straws (or something) to see where our names will appear on the ballot. For Ward 1 I have just one opponent so I'll either be on top or on bottom. For Ward 2 there are 3 candidates so it's not quite as simplistic. Not sure but I guess there's a theory somewhere that says the first name that gets read might get a few extra votes. Who knows.

Also I was amazed to find out that you can obtain a disc from the county clerk's office (separate from city clerk) that contains voter information for the entire city. It is broken down by each of the 4 wards and it lists every address in the city and whether or not the occupants of the house are registered voters and it will tell you the last time they voted in an election. WHAT A TOOL! This means that I can totally skip over certain houses (and even some neighborhoods) and devote what little time I have to focusing on the highly concentrated areas of voters. With only 5 weeks until the special election day this will come in very handy. Why knock on a door who can't even vote?

Finally if anyone is interested in helping me out in any way I invite you to join my campaign team. We will meet at my office on Wednesday night (Mar 5th) at 9:00. My office is at the Bank of the Ozarks at Waldron and Rogers Ave. We will be discussing distributing signs, passing out literature and all the other things that go into running a campaign. This is an open invitation to anyone wanting to help me or just interested in learning about how a campaign works.

I'm working on my platform and will get that posted as soon as I feel it's final.