Last year, I decided that I had had enough and formed with a group of family and friends the first
Stamford Democratic Committee in Delaware County, New York. My new town chair and I then decided that the best way to revitalize Democrats in our heavily Republican town in Upstate New York would be to actually run for office. So we did. And despite
losing the election to the incumbents, the simple act of running for office has changed my life so completely and has lead to my decision to run for the
107th New York State Assembly District.
More below...
When I decided to run for
Stamford Town Board, I realized that I had finally taken
Howard Dean's call to arms seriously and offered up my sword for the fight to take back our country. I also realized that running for office, even in a rural Upstate town, could be time consuming and challenging, but I stuck with it and knocked on as many doors as possible. Once Election Day rolled around and the results were tabulated, it turned out that we, the challengers, had lost this vote, but we had won something much more important: an organization. Currently, we have a very committed group of people that show up to our monthly meetings, debate issues, and work towards getting local progressive Democrats elected. This may take some time, but as
RenaF said today, the Democratic Party is changing, and we are leading the charge in our town.
Since that town board election, I have become extremely involved in the revitalization of the Democratic Party in Delaware County. My town chair and I have gotten our largest town's Democratic Committee to meet for the first time since 1994. We are helping other towns that have had some organization make it better and meet more regularly. Also in the process, I found myself last week being voted upon to join the New York State Democratic Committee from my State Assembly District, which I won unanimously. And how are we doing this? We are accomplishing these things by offer others a new hope, passion, understanding, hard-work and lots of energy that I used to invest in playing Diplomacy and other similar games. We are reminding the Democrats of Delaware County that their voices do carry weight and that we should be proud to be Democrats. We have the vision and the ideas that will help our people through the coming peak oil crisis. We have ideas about home-grown micro-enterprise economic development that looks to help the everyday person as opposed to the corporations that run our country.
In the process of recruiting new members, we have also been using the unprecedented numbers of Democratic candidates to motivate the Democratic electorate in our county. We have the perfect storm brewing here in New York. The New York State Republican Party is in disarray. Our top two candidates (Hillary Clinton and Eliot Spitzer) are not facing any real challenge, and in the 20th Congressional District, we have a great candidate in Kirsten Gillibrand. But even if that were not enough, we even have someone running for State Senate and for Supreme Court of New York.
And now we return to the beginning and the 107th New York State Assembly District currently held by our O'Reilly-quoting Clifford Crouch, who is very well liked and admired here. He has also never truly faced a Democratic opponent, but that will change this year. After reading TrueBlueMajority's diary, I have decided to run against a popular Republican incumbent, if only to do the following:
1. Get on the ballot.
2. Get better name recognition.
3. Use my candidacy to energize the Delaware County Democratic Committee.
4. Challenge an incumbent where no one else wants.
This is the year. This is the moment, where we can show that progressive candidates can and do perform. This is the year that we will start taking back our country!