Thursday, November 27, 2014

Team up with Represent.Us re: small business

The Represent.Us organization is conducting an initiative to obtain endorsements by small business owners of  the provisions of the American Anti-Corruption Act. This initiative is set out at Represent.Us small business endorsement.

At the link, Represent.Us says:
The corruption in our political system is causing our elected officials to focus their time and effort to their campaign donors instead of serving their constituents. Represent.Us is building a grassroots movement to end this corruption.
We’re asking small businesses to sign on as endorsers of the campaign. 88% of small-business owners have an unfavorable view of the role money plays in politics, and now they're taking action by publicly endorsing our anti-corruption campaign.
We’re asking small-business owners to endorse the Represent.Us Campaign. Help us collect endorsements by reaching out to small-business owners in your community.

In my Congressional campaign in the AL 6th Congressional district, I tried to call the attention of the business community generally to its concerns about the country's economic recovery being threatened by "fierce political divide" and about Congress being a "primary culprit." See my campaign blog entry  BhamBizJournal: "Congressional Inaction Could Derail Recovery".

As part of that, I sent communications to the Birmingham Business Alliance, the Business Council of Alabama and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  These communications particularly submitted  two ideas or concepts which I believed were worthy of consideration by the chambers in order to improve Congressional performance and the governance of the country by Washington DC.

This past week I joined helping Represent.Us with its small business initiative, with my own campaign. I sent to the Birmingham Business Alliance the email posted at Small business owners and money in politics. I will likely send similar emails in due course to more chambers of commerce locally. Depending on the reactions I get from chambers of commerce, I will then consider contacting small business owners directly.

I think MAYDAY supporters should consider this "line of charge" I am employing in the direction of the business community in my area, and whether the Represent.Us initiative offers a means to begin a similar "line of charge" in the direction of the business community in their area to aid their efforts to advance MAYDAY's goal in their locations.

Continued at Team up with Represent.Us cont'd.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

How is MAYDAY doing?

Who thinks MAYDAY supporters can do anything to advance MAYDAY's goals?

What can they do?

Looking at the websites and Twitter, I am unable to see that they are doing much other than a lot of talking back and forth and liking on Facebook.

Maybe MAYDAY supporters can do little or nothing to advance MAYDAY's goals, and the exhortations I am trying to make are pointless.

If so, please tell me, and maybe I will agree that I am wasting my time and stop what I am doing.

Let me review a little data for your consideration.

By sending out hundreds or thousands of tweets, I have been able to generate 820 pages views of Just answer the question, Gary Palmer.

By sending out a couple hundred tweets to @MAYDAYUS followers in the past two weeks, I was able to generate 235 pages views of  From the AL 6th Cong'l district: I am not crushed,  and 80 page views of  Roy Cho candidacy: Root problem vs. multiple issues.

The foregoing page views generated maybe 40 retweets, favorites, and Twitter following from those MAYDAY supporters who received the tweets

Was it worth it to send individual tweets to @MAYDAYUS followers?

The past couple of days I decided it's not worth it to send individual tweets to MAYDAY followers, and instead I would send one tweet to @MAYDAYUS using hashtags #maydayus and #maydaypac.

Sunday I tweeted to @MAYDAYUS  a link to Where's our massive public mobilization?, and yesterday I tweeted a link to What about candidates?. Those have each received 10 page views.

Plain and simple, if massive public mobilization is needed for MAYDAY, the interest among MAYDAY supporters for doing things to achieve that seems massively lacking to me.

Monday, November 17, 2014

What about candidates?

The MAYDAY leadership team is presumably deep in consideration about its original plan and strategy and about what MAYDAY will do on the candidate front for the 2016 elections.

The "candidate front" has possible choices of MAYDAY very passively identifying candidates MAYDAY thinks should be supported, or, alternatively, MAYDAY publicizing MAYDAY and its goals in ways that induce candidates or potential candidates to take up the MAYDAY cause or take it up more vociferously.

In terms of its plan and tactics on the candidate front, MAYDAY has the "coordination" limitation to accommodate to.

MAYDAY supporters of course will be very interested in what the MAYDAY leadership team decides for MAYDAY's plan and tactics on the candidate front.

Whatever the leadership team decides for MAYDAY, it would not seem harmful for MAYDAY supporters to be active on the candidate front in their own ways, and it would seem that it could only be beneficial.

MAYDAY supporters, in their individual capacities, would seem to be less constrained by, and may be completely free of, the "coordination" rule. This could be a material advantage for MAYDAY supporters to help advance MAYDAY's goals.

I have advocated that MAYDAY supporters be aggressive in interfacing and interacting with candidates and potential candidates. I continue to advocate that at this start of the 2016 cycle.

Last week I tweeted to MAYDAY's 2014 candidates and to other 2014 candidates who were followers of MAYDAY or who had expressed notable support for CFR. My tweet gave a link to Roy Cho candidacy: Root problem vs. multiple issues and solicited comments the candidates might have.

I hope much interaction with and among candidates develops as the 2016 election cycle proceeds. I hope other MAYDAY supporters will participate in and abet this.



Sunday, November 16, 2014

Where's our massive public mobilization?

One Jamie Lovegrove has a November 6, 2014 posting that MAYDAY.US linked on its Facebook Page (which posting can be found here and which is copied and pasted below).

In the posting, Mr. Lovegrove says, "Incredibly, it seems Lessig is one of the first to recognize that for this kind of unlikely effort to stand even the most remote chance, it will require massive public mobilization."

What can MAYDAY supporters do to help with massive public mobilization?

I have been pushing numerous ideas in this blog to try to contribute to massive public mobilization. I wish I could get more response from MAYDAY supporters.

UPDATE 11/27/15: We must mobilize now to get candidates who are running for Congress in the 2016 elections to #DeclareForDemocracy. Please go to 2016 Congressional candidates Declaration.



Jamie Lovegrove on November 6
Harvard law professor Larry Lessig’s campaign finance reform super PAC failed comprehensively on election night, but attracting public and media attention to the cause is still its only hope. (Photo: Joi Ito/Flickr CC


Mayday, Mayday:

How Not to Reflect on Campaign Finance Reform’s Disastrous 2014 Election Night

Politico’s Ken Vogel and Byron Tau have the definitive, scathing breakdownof the calamitous 2014 election day for Mayday PAC, a super PAC that is trying to spend big money to get money out of politics. In its first election cycle, Mayday failed comprehensively in its foremost goal of electing reform-minded candidates. Vogel and Tau are rightfully ruthless — spending $10 million on several ambitious races and losing all of them is an unequivocal disaster.
Over the next few days, Mayday will inevitably release some polling data to show that the message is beginning to get across to the public even though the candidates aren’t winning. But at the end of the day, that just proves what we all already knew: a lot of Americans oppose the undue influence of money in politics, they’re just not willing to do much about it.
With that being said, some courageously anonymous sources in the piece incredulously suggest that Mayday co-founder and Harvard law professor Larry Lessig’s grand attempt to make campaign finance a mainstream political issue is actually hurting the cause. According to Vogel and Tau, the buzz that Lessig and his PR strategists generated “prompted grumbles from ostensible allies who were irked by Mayday’s headline-grabbing and wondered whether all the attention was helpful to the cause.”
So let’s be perfectly clear about this: The notion that quiet, behind-the-scenes politicking can someday lead to comprehensive campaign finance reform is patently absurd. We’re talking about reversing the effects of the most significant and well-known Supreme Court decision since Bush v. Gore, drastically shrinking a multi-billion dollar industry overnight, and wrenching power away from some of the most power-hungry people in the entire world. This is not some pet political pork that you can tactically maneuver onto the end of some long, unrelated bill and hope nobody notices. This kind of sweeping, controversial change simply does not happen behind the closed doors of the Capitol building cloakrooms or K Street boardrooms.
Incredibly, it seems Lessig is one of the first to recognize that for this kind of unlikely effort to stand even the most remote chance, it will require massive public mobilization. Although he offers a new strategy, he has repeatedly praised and supported those who have spent decades of arduous work fighting for this cause. But the fact of the matter is that they have little to show for it — indeed, despite their respectable efforts, the scope of the problem has gotten dramatically worse under their watch.
There’s nothing novel about Lessig’s assertion that the more entrenched money-in-politics becomes, the harder it will be to get it out. It’s intuitive, it’s happening right in front of our eyes, and it’s supported by all the data and political science research. He’s vigorously studied the history and laws of campaign finance and made the frankly obvious observation that the prospects for reform are now-or-never. And while the likelihood of never seems increasingly likely each day, his only options are to either resign himself to that fate or go all-in on the now.
By jumping into this cycle, Mayday took a huge risk. Failure could not only further discourage potential supporters of reform but also prove that money indeed cannot win elections. Some astute opponents of campaign finance reform ingeniously point out that, as always, several candidates that were heavily outspent in this cycle still ended up winning. That’s completely irrelevant in several ways. First, it’s cherry-picking a handful of outliers to obfuscate a much broader trend. Second, while big money has an increasingly profound impact on electoral politics, nobody is suggesting that it is the absolute be-all and end-all of winning.
But more importantly, the issue is actually not whether big money is the key to winning elections, it’s whether politicians think that big money is the key to winning elections. If they do, the odds are much higher that they’ll be happily willing to compromise their values and their broader constituent preferences if it will open up a few fat wallets. And if politicians did not believe that massive cash reserves are essential for staying in office, they probably wouldn’t spend a whopping 30–70% of their valuable time fundraising from big donors.
But when overall campaign spending is in the billions and individual senate races are funded by over $100 million, spending just $10 million across several different races was always going to struggle to compete against the big guns. Karl Rove’s American Crossroads PAC and Koch groups combined to spend $24 million in a single North Carolina senate race alone.
In that sense, Mayday’s naiveté and ultimate failure actually proves Lessig’s point. If you can raise as much money as Mayday did from a combination of crowd-funding and bigger donations and still not make any significant dent in these races, you can only begin to imagine how completely inconsequential small donors have become. Politicians need not so much as blink at just a few million dollars when the real prizes are even larger.
Ironically, Lessig can now look to Rove of all people for inspiration. The 2012 election cycle was infamously humiliating for George W. Bush’s former political architect: American Crossroads PAC spent over $100 million and successfully defeated just two candidates for a return on investment of 1.29 percent. This time around, $26 million of spending from the group led to a96 percent success rate.
Much like every single campaign finance reform effort before it, Mayday has clearly yet to break much ground. But if it is going to stand any chance in the coming years, it will need to continue trying to galvanize voters behind the issue. Lessig was not “siphoning off money that could have [been] spent more effectively by existing groups,” he was raising money that otherwise would likely have never gone towards campaign finance reform at all. Maybe the “ivory tower egghead” doesn’t have a “radio voice,” but he’s brought new energy, supporters and ideas to a campaign that sorely needed them. Instead of trashing Lessig in Politico, his ostensible allies should be thanking their lucky stars he joined the team.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

The start of the 2016 election cycle

The announced learning from the 2014 elections is the difficulty of voters voting against their party in partisan, contested situations. This is ostensibly causing a shift of MAYDAY focus to getting involved in "safe seat" elections or in primary elections.

How effective MAYDAY is going to be during the next two years is a huge open question, and is one which will not be answered soon. It will probably take the two years to play out before the answer is adequately known.

I think it is obvious that a very significant factor is how much publicity and attention can be gotten in the country for MAYDAY's corruption issue.

Exactly what MAYDAY is going to do in terms of using MAYDAYPAC funds, and raising more MAYDAYPAC funds, to publicize its corruption issue, is in the hands of the MAYDAY leadership team and presumably will be determined in due course by that team.

Regardless of what MAYDAY decides it will do to publicize the corruption issue, and pending any "guidance" it chooses to give to MAYDAY supporters, it would seem obvious that the more MAYDAY supporters can do to publicize the corruption issue, the more it will help the MAYDAY goal.

There is no gainsaying how hard and tedious, and how minuscule the effect can be, in trying to publicize something like the corruption issue, if you are not spending funds to do it and are depending on elbow grease and shoe leather in carrying out the publicizing.

Few people will put in much personal effort to do it.

If no one does it, however, is to give up and throw in the towel.

It helps to look around.

There are other organizations which are working on the corruption issue and are trying to publicize it. Commenters on the MAYDAY websites have mentioned  Every Voice. While MAYDAY is focused on the Federal level, other organizations are focused on or starting at the state and local level. Represent.Us has gotten publicity for its recent success in Tallahassee. WolfPac and MoveToAmend are working on constitutional amendments.

I think all the publicity these other organizations are trying to generate is publicity that is generally desirable publicity for MAYDAY's goal. Perhaps there is some distraction that is not entirely beneficial, but the help of having it out there I think clearly outweighs any disadvantage for MAYDAY's plan.

In other words, I think you should view these other organizations as help and reinforcement for what you try to do publicity wise.

On the MAYDAY plan, while you are waiting for its tactics to unfold, I would say, if you have the gumption, turn yourself into a Congressional candidate right now. That takes a huge commitment and dedication, and a goodly amount of available time.

I am continuing my Be An Alabama Rootstriker campaign. My reward is that I have a little soapbox in the Alabama 6th Congressional district from which to publicize MAYDAY and the corruption issue.

I think my campaign can be used as a model for other campaigns. If you are interested, take a look and decide for yourself.

If you don't want to become your own candidate in your Congressional district, but you would like to put in personal effort on behalf of MAYDAY but are not sure what, there are things you can do to help my campaign about the corruption issue.

In my dreamworld, I like to think what I am doing in the Alabama 6th Congressional district can be leveraged to have effect in the rest of Alabama and also outside of Alabama.

Thank you.

Friday, November 14, 2014

The fate of GOOOH

GOOOH is an acronym for an organization named Get Out Of Our House.

GOOOH described itself as a "nonpartisan plan to evict the career politicians from the U.S. House of Representatives." The full statement of its Mission is set forth below.

I am not sure when GOOOH was formed. I became aware of GOOOH in 2010. My recollection is GOOOH purported to have 75,000 members. It endeavored to have district leaders for all of the 435 Congressional districts. While the below Mission statement refers to the 2012 elections, I believe GOOOH made efforts in the 2010 elections, and possibly earlier elections.

I endeavored to become involved in the GOOOH effort in Alabama, but nothing much happened.

GOOOH did not succeed very well in the 2012 elections. After the 2012 elections, GOOOH posted the below message on its website:

While thousands of groups have been working incredibly hard to effect change, it should be clear to all that nothing has worked, including GOOOH. It is time to create a new plan. If you have thoughts, please send us an email at goooh@goooh.com. We'll begin reaching out to patriots and groups all across America in the next few weeks to see if we can find a way to work together to replace the career politicians with citizen representatives. Be creative. Think out of the box. Send us your ideas.
That message has remained on the website for the past two years, and I am not aware of any update from GOOOH.

GOOOH's message and goal should resonate with MAYDAY and its supporters.

GOOOH's experience should also be instructive to MAYDAY.

GOOOH greatly appealed to me personally, but GOOOH's experience is cautionary about how MAYDAY can achieve its goal, and cautionary about the efforts I am making in my own campaign.

I solicit your comments about what MAYDAY and its supporters can learn from GOOOH's experience.


[Below is GOOOH's Mission statement, copied and pasted from its website.]

Mission
GOOOH stands for 'Get Out of Our House' and is pronounced like the word 'go'. It is a NON-PARTISAN plan to place citizen representatives on the ballot in 2012, ideally in the primary against the incumbent, competing for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The members of each district will have an honest opportunity to replace the career politicians who have taken over OUR House and are destroying our nation.
If you are tired of career politicians, GOOOH is for you. If you believe money has corrupted Washington, GOOOH is for you. If you believe politicians have too much power, GOOOH is for you. If you are weary of the death grip the two parties have on our government, and are ready to return control of our government to the people, then GOOOH is for you.
GOOOH is NOT a political party. It is a system that will allow you and your neighbors to choose, among yourselves, a candidate who will truly represent your district. Members will select a citizen representative to serve their district. How our candidates get on the ballot will be dependent on when we reach our membership goal. Our preference is to compete in the primaries against the incumbent. It is possible candidates may choose to run in some other way; the candidates will make that decision based on the situation in their district. It is important to clearly state that we are not a third party. We have no platform and are a bottom-up organization. We are a process for selecting and funding candidates.
This is an evolving system and your input is requested. The questions are changing based on the feedback of members like you. Participate in the forums. Send us your thoughts. This is YOUR system. We will perfect it with your input.
This is a new system created by an innovative engineer who has developed complex computer systems his entire career that change the way we do things. The founder developed software for a spy satellite system, helped invent the first credit-card-reading gas pump system, and worked at Dell as the company grew to a $55 billion technology giant. This system leverages the internet and social networking to allow "we the people" to select true representatives, not choose between the politicians the two parties offer. If we continue to elect career politicians who represent their party, the special interests that fund them, and themselves, nothing will change. This is a non-partisan process that will enable the change we all seek.
GOOOH will allow you to:
Help select your Representative - while being considered yourself if you like
Hold your Representative accountable
Replace career politicians with true representatives
Take the money out of politics.
Our process allows Americans of every political leaning to participate in the selection of their District's Representative while being considered themselves. Through our Candidate Selection Sessions you and your peers will select the candidate in your district who best represents your district's views. Even if you do not wish to become your district's representative you will want to participate in the process and have a direct say in who is chosen to represent your district. We will fund a single national campaign to promote our candidates (one from each district) who are selected to run against the party politicians. Because we are a process for selecting representatives (not a "party") we expect a socially moderate candidate to be selected in San Francisco and a socially conservative one in Colorado Springs. We expect fiscally conservative candidates to be chosen in just about every district -- but it will be up to the members in each district to decide.
Originally, our founder proposed excluding lawyers, members of political families, and individuals with more than $11.5 million in assets (250 times the median income). They were not to be excluded because they are bad people, but because they are overly represented in government today and, generally speaking, no longer seem to represent the common man. However, based on input from our members, the Question Committee has voted to remove the exclusion of lawyers and the wealthy. It will be up to the participants in each pool to decide whether or not that is of concern. We believe this change is indicative of the continuing evolution of our system.
We hope you will join GOOOH today and help us take our House back from the politicians!
For GOOOH to succeed we need donating members. We encourage each member to donate $100 now and help us get the advertising efforts started. We will choose candidates for 2012 in any district with 250 or more members and a leader. We will continue to build our base of supporters until a month before the filing deadline in each state, at which time we will begin the selection process. Our first candidates will be chosen in Texas, beginning on Nov ember 5th - Texas has the earliest filing deadline in the nation. In most states, candidates will run as a Republican or Democrat, competing in the primary. In some states our candidates could run as an Independent, though they will be advised that the odds will be stacked heavily against them if they do. They could run on some other Party’s ticket, such as the Libertarian Party or the Constitution Party, but again, we will not advise taking that route; Republicans and Democrats win 99.9% of the time. The rules in each state and the willingness of established parties tocooperate will help determine how to access the ballot.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Using climate as dagger against DC political class

I continue to solicit discussion about "multiple issue" campaigns versus "root problem" campaigns. See Roy Cho candidacy: Root problem vs. multiple issues.

My campaign was a "root problem" campaign, and I am continuing it.

The news of the past two days of, first, the "historic agreement" with China about emissions, and, then, of "top" Republicans "slamming" the same, offered me the opportunity to do this campaign post: Time to revisit "Is global warming real?".

As I have said,  my message to voters in my "root problem" campaign  has been: "The common enemy of average Democrats, average Republicans, and average independents is the political class in Washington DC."

The above entry I have done (Time to revisit "Is global warming real?")  pushes hard on that message.

I solicit comment on this (as I desire comment on most everything I put in The MAYDAY Supporters Blog).

Thank you.


Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Roy Cho candidacy: Root problem vs. multiple issues

Today I became aware of Roy Cho's candidacy in the New Jersey 5th Congressional district. This came about by my seeing Roy's October 28th #lessig tweet, which gave a link to Prof. Lessig's instagram supporting Roy.

Roy ran a "multiple issues" campaign, as reflected on his Issues webpage, and on which webpage Campaign Finance Reform is placed first.

As described in From the AL 6th Cong'l district: I am not crushed, I ran a single issue ("root problem") campaign.

What did my "root problem" campaign gain?

What my "root problem" campaign has gained is the establishment of an incontrovertible and blatant record that the relevant powers that be for my Congressional district refuse to give any public recognition to the possibility that there is something fundamentally wrong with Congress.

These powers that be categorically will not discuss this possibility in a public way and seek that no one else (such as myself) is successful in bringing about public discussion.

Thus far, these powers that be for my Congressional district have managed to get away with giving no recognition to any possibility that something is fundamentally wrong with Congress and with keeping the matter from getting in the public eye.

How long can these powers that be in my Congressional district get away with this?

If I continue to push on this in the Alabama 6th Congressional district, and more and more persons in the district became aware of the stark unwillingness of the powers that be to entertain any discussion, at what point will the powers that be start to look bad in the public eye in my Congressional district?

Perhaps I can never make meaningful headway.

For now, look at the record of what I have done to date, and think about what might be done in the coming 2016 election cycle.


What would happen in other Cong'l districts?

What would happen if similar campaigns were mounted in other Congressional districts?

My Congressional district is very Republican.

Would the powers that be for a Democratic district be more amenable to giving public recognition to the possibility that there is something fundamentally wrong with Congress?

In my campaign, I said: "The message of the other six candidates to you is that your enemy is Obama and the Democrats. My message to you is that the common enemy of average Democrats, average Republicans, and average independents is the political class in Washington DC."

I don't know to what extent you agree with the foregoing and whether you would agree that a "root problem" campaign in a Democratic district would call for a campaign message to the effect of: "Your enemy is not the Republicans; rather, the common enemy of average Republicans, average Democrats and average Independents is the political class in Washington DC."

If the latter is the message if a campaign such as mine is conducted in a Democratic district, then I think the powers that be will be equally resistant to a candidate purveying that message, as the powers that be in my Congressional district were resistant to me.

I am of the belief that Congress collectively will not give public recognition to the possibility that something is fundamentally wrong with Congress.

Thus, I would make a general prediction that, if a "root problem" campaign such as mine is carried out in other Congressional districts, the powers that be in those districts would refuse to discuss the matter and would seek for the topic not to gain public attention, similar to what occurred in my Congressional district.

The goal would be to make those powers that be look bad in their Congressional districts, and for this to happen in as many Congressional districts as possible, and ultimately to make Congress look collectively bad throughout the country, as would materially help MAYDAY in achieving its goal.


Roy Cho's candidacy

The purpose of this entry is to try to generate discussion about which can achieve more in pushing forward MAYDAY's goal, i.e., "root issue" campaigns versus multiple issue campaigns.

Maybe both types need to be pursued.

I would like to hear what Roy Cho has to say.

I would like to hear what you think.

Thank you.


Update 11/13

Thursday, November 6, 2014

From the AL 6th Cong'l district: I am not crushed

I am not crushed in the Alabama 6th Congressional district.

I am on to 2016.

If you look at what happened in the Alabama 6th Congressional district this year, you would think I should be crushed.

I want to tell MAYDAY supporters why I am not crushed.

I think I created a campaign that has latent potency. I think my campaign should be studied by reform candidates in other Congressional districts.

Let me put this out there, and you can decide for yourself.


The conundrum

The starting point is that there a conundrum about conducting a single issue campaign or conducting a campaign with other issues besides campaign finance.

The problem with a campaign with other issues is that the candidate risks losing large percentages of voters because voters have strong views opposite from the candidate's positions on other issues and will not vote for or will even be strongly against the candidate for that reason.

A candidate who tries to run a single issue campaign (the campaign finance issue) has a great problem that most voters won't accept and vote for a candidate who declines to take a position on other issues.

This a big conundrum for MAYDAY and for any candidate who wants to identify him or herself as a MAYDAY candidate.

This conundrum could even be sufficiently great for MAYDAY to decide its plan is impossible.

I went the single issue route.

I think I developed a strong logic and strong tactics in constructing my campaign.

Make no doubt that I am still at about zero in the Alabama 6th Congressional district.

But please hear me out, follow what I constructed, and think about it.


My campaign's construction

I started by asking, "Is there something fundamentally wrong with Congress?"

I thought there was reason to think that persons who should answer that question would not answer that question and would avoid answering and ignore me.

I started with the Alabama state Democratic and Republican parties. See Letters to Alabama GOP and Democratic parties.

I escalated my question to Senators Sessions and Shelby, 6th district Representative Bachus, and others in the Alabama legislative delegation in Washington. This foray started with this Open letter to Alabama delegation in Washington. Follow up on this can be found at Representative Bachus' response and through links set out there.

There were six other candidates in the Republican primary. For four months, over and over and over, I kept asking  whether something was fundamentally wrong with Congress. For four months, the other six candidates would not discuss or answer the question and avoided it and ignored me. See, e.g., Answer the questions, 6th district candidates.

The avoidance of my question carried over to the local media and local political commentators. See Reviewing the bidding with one week to go.


Dealing with "single issue" problem

The "single issue" problem was difficult for me in my campaign.

I did my best to make the "root" problem argument. (Rootstrikers website says, "The people must recognize that corruption is not just one among many important problems. Corruption is the root problem, that makes solving the others so difficult.")

I said, with a failed Congress that could not properly do its job for the American people, discussion about other issues was academic, rational discourse to find compromise and common ground was impaired, etc.

For examples of the difficulty I encountered with my "single issue" campaign and how I tried to deal with same, listen to this telephone interview of me by Dale Jackson: http://vocaroo.com/i/s0pswxf2GBm4, and see this entry: From a DeMarco supporter (updated)


What I have accomplished

I have a soapbox in the Alabama 6th Congressional district. My campaign did not end on the June 3rd primary election date. I continued as a write in campaign. I am poking wherever I can at the Alabama political establishment. Check out #alpolitics and #al06 from the past two days. See the current posture I am working with in this link The betting in AL 6th Cong'l district.


What is the potential

What is the potential of the campaign I constructed? What if similar campaigns were constructed in other Congressional districts? Could they build on one another to gain publicity and attention that Congress refuses collectively to respond to the American people on the question of whether something is fundamentally wrong?

I have reached the limit of what I can do or push on my own.

It is up to MAYDAY and its supporters to decide whether I have created anything of value which can be built on.