Lost

I got 28.1% of the vote, Ron Flury got 38.9, and John Newton got 32.8. Due to a technical problem, complete results weren't in before I went to bed, but I went to bed knowing that I had less than 28%, and about half the people had voted. I had said to a guy I work with that I would feel like I'd made a respectable showing with 28%, and that's what I got. About 54,000 people voted.

I have to spend a lot of the next couple of days getting signs down, and then I'll go back to work. It's a trifle anti-climactic, but I will say the idea of having to raise money to be competitive in a full election was less than attractive. It was good, too, to have Jim and James to go home with at the end of the evening. I would have been hard to go home alone.

Voted for Myself

Actually, it was a bit weird, standing there in the voting booth looking at my name. It felt almost unladylike to vote for myself, but I did. When I walked into the polling station, which is the same one I've been going to since we moved to this house nine years ago, I happened to be aquainted with the poll worker standing at the door, who felt compelled to announce loudly that I was a candidate for county court judge, and everybody in the room looked up and I was really embarrassed, even though I know as a candidate I'm supposed to be really happy.

While I was standing in line to get a sandwich at lunch, a woman I never saw before told me she'd voted for me. That was cool.

Election Day

We've done what we can do, organized as well as we could, and Jim and I have no regrets. How do I feel? Okay. I feel okay, a little bit at loose ends, but okay. I'm happy I did it. Last night we entertained ourselves looking up how much my opponents had spent on the primary, each raised over $90k and spent about the same. Remarkable, I think, for a County Court Judge race. You would think for that kind of money people would have a real sense of what County Judges do, and what you look for in a judge, but the analysis has been truly superficial, and I suspect that even today a majority of voters will appear at the polls knowing little about the candidates.

The Supervisor of Elections here in Leon County is predicting higher than average turnout for today. We'll see. Several people have told me that low voter turnout would help me, but I don't know. I just don't know.

This morning I got a tiny bit of free publicity from NPR when they did a short piece on sign waving, and they had a quote from Terry Madigan, who gave tips for successful sign waving, and closed with a nice quote from me about name recognition in down the ballot races. And they said my name and what I was running for and everything.

Another person came and stood by the side of the road supporting another candidate and said she'd seen my flyer in the newspaper this morning and that she was going to vote for me.

Staging Day

Today we'll go around and gather up everything we need for tomorrow and get it where it needs to go, from signs and water for the sign wavers to food for the party after the polls close. We'll call everyone who is participating and confirm with them by phone tonight, and generally hope for the best.

I'd like to say I'm calm and cautiously optimistic, but I'm slightly sick at my stomach and wishing the day of reckoning was not upon us. My webmaster, Ted, is always talking about the book I'll write after this is over. What will we call it, "The Working Mother's Guide to Running for Office"? Considering that out of 27 local candidates, only 4 are women and of those only I have a child at home, it's going to be a narrow audience.

So, do you like princesses?

Yesterday while we were standing at the Courthouse waving signs, somebody else brought along a little kid, a five year old girl. She was sort of standing around with us. James, who had retired from campaigning, started showing her his game boy, and I heard him say to her, "So, do you like princesses?"

I just thought that was the nicest thing. I don't believe I have ever previously heard the word princess uttered by my son. He asked that little girl if she liked princesses because he knew that was something she might be interested in and something she might like to talk about, it was not anything he was interested in. He asked it to be nice to her.

They played together for over an hour, and my son was consistently kind and gentle to her, and when he thought she was doing something dangerous, he came and told me (she was trying to climb a tree using a very small branch).

Nobody deserves a considerate child, sometimes you just get one.

A Real Candidate

I felt like a real candidate yesterday. Jim and James and I went over to the Courthouse for the last day of early voting. It was very festive. The people who had been diligently sitting there for the previous two weeks were happy because it was their last day and because they were having higher traffic than on any previous day. I was happy because I was the only candidate there and I feel confident that I picked up a few votes. After all, most people come to vote for someone higher up the ballot, and since they are voting, they might as well vote for me. We came loaded up with lawn chairs and signs and a cooler of water, and stayed a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the afternoon. It was fun, and we went swimming and had lunch in between shifts so it wasn't a burden.

Jim and I were talking last night. We both feel like we did everything we could do to make a credible run. I think we're both proud of that. It's one thing to say you are going to run on principle, and another thing to do it well.

Last Days

The election is in three days. I spent an inordinate amount of time organizing people for election day, and now discover that I spent no time planning what to do over the long weekend. Surely there must be some voters left in the city.

I got my monthly cell phone bill, between Jim and I we made over 1500 minutes of calls. That doesn't count the time I spent on our home phone. Amazing.

The Democrat ran an article this week that addressed the voting record of candidates, to wit, whether they voted regularly in elections or not. What I couldn't get through the head of the reporter was that it gave the home field advantage to candidates over 50, because it reported only elections after 1988 for every candidate. This permitted showing candidates over 50 with a high turn out rate for the polls, because their voting record for their teens and twenties was omitted. For candidates in their 30s, their voting records looked terrible, because it included the early years of their voting, which for 80% of the voting public, is usually pretty terrible (this is why polling stations near the University usually have 18% turnout in primaries). For example, I haven't missed an election since my early thirties, but the paper showed a 66 percent turnout rate. One of my opponents, who also hasn't missed an election since his early thirties, had a 98% turnout rate, because they didn't start counting until his mid-thirties. The Democrat's reporter told me sanctimoniously that they stood by their methodology. In 30 years, this won't matter, but for the time being, older candidates are favored because their early voting years are ignored.