Election Nightmare

Today, on Halloween, I'm reminded of the election nightmare I went through 8 years ago.  The year was 2003.  My son had become best friends with another kid at elementary school.  I became friends with that child's father.  The father decided to run for Cincinnati City Council and asked me to help him with his campaign.

It was exciting.  I was in charge of analyzing the regions of the city that the candidate should target.  I analyzed the districts that had delivered the votes that got similar candidates elected in previous elections.  I created color coded maps indicating the neighborhoods that we should target for yard signs and for attending parades, candidate debates, festivals and other events.

Later, I was given the role of working with the only paid person on the campaign, our political/media adviser, to agree on the themes and content of radio and television spots.  It was a blast working with this adviser, reviewing scripts, and coming up with sound bites.

The night of any City Council election, all the candidates and their supporters pack into Arnold's Bar and Grill downtown on eighth street, just a few short blocks from the Board of Elections, and breathlessly monitor the election results on the wide screen televisions.  We kept cheering as each update showed our candidate holding his own.  Once we were close enough to be certain of victory, we left Arnold's and triumphantly marched to the Board of Elections to celebrate and to have our candidate speak to the press.

The inauguration at City Hall was equally triumphant.  I took my oldest son and one of his friends out of school that day to go to the auditorium at City Hall for the ceremony.  The highlight was when the legendary Councilman, Jim Tarbell, surprised everyone by pulling out a harmonica and playing "Star Spangled Banner".

And then the nightmare began.  The candidate became the Councilman, and I could not even recognize him.  This was not the guy I knew before the election, the laid back dad at soccer games joking around and charming everyone around him.  Instead, he became the most confrontational, radical person in City Council.  I tried and failed to influence him, to get him moderate his rhetoric, but it never changed and we became distant.  To this day, as Election Day nears, my friends and coworkers give me a hard time for having persuaded them to vote for Christopher Smitherman.  He's running again this year, and now I know better than to vote for someone based on charisma and charm alone.  I've become a policy junkie who wants to know in detail what a candidate plans to DO once they are elected.