We talk all the time on dKos and other Donkey-related forums about policy and left, right or center positioning.
I live in an exurban "reddish-purple" county in a "blue" state; I ran for the Minnesota House in 2004, and came within 996 voters of defeating an "old-boy" Republican with 10 years of elected experience and a 95%+ partisan voting record. At least half of our margin of defeat were sympathy votes (my opponent, a butcher, nearly died 6 weeks before the election in a slaughterhouse accident).
I am convinced more and more that left, right and center is far less important than a compelling story to which voters can connect. One of the most difficult thing to do as a candidate is to tell your story in just a couple of hundred of words (about 2 minutes when speaking).
What's your story? Why are you politically active? Do you have a favorite candidate/activist/elected official life story? Some of my favorites are listed below the fold. I'll also post my own story in a comment.
I'm really looking forward to reading your stories! Thanks!
Rep. Patti Fritz 190 words
From a St. Paul Pioneer Press article before her election to the Minnesota House
Patti Fritz is the sort of person you'd like to have caring for your parents as they grow old. When she talks about how the state's budget looks from her post at a nursing home, people tend to listen.
"The people where I work are the grandmothers and grandfathers, the uncles and aunts, the moms and dads of all of us," Fritz, a licensed practical nurse from St. Lucas Care Center in Faribault, recently told legislators. She spoke proudly of the therapies employed at the nursing home and how well they work -- even with very old and disabled clients.
"I am not willing to let that go," she argued, delivering a challenge to the no-new-taxes momentum at the Minnesota Legislature. "These cuts the governor has proposed -- there's no way we can absorb."
Whether she changed minds in the Senate Health, Human Services and Corrections Budget Division or not, Fritz, 58, was engaging in a time-honored Capitol ritual. Call it petitioning, lobbying or high-toned begging, the great old palace of politics is alive with people expressing strong views on Gov. Tim Pawlenty's budget and ways the Legislature should help them.
John Edwards 206 words
From his online bio at One America Committee...
John Edwards was born in Seneca, South Carolina and raised in Robbins, North Carolina, a small town in the Piedmont. There John learned the values of hard work and perseverance from his father, Wallace, who worked in the textile mills for 36 years, and from his mother, Bobbie, who ran a shop and worked at the post office. Working alongside his father at the mill, John developed his strong belief that all Americans deserve an equal opportunity to succeed and be heard.
A proud product of public schools, John became the first person in his family to attend college. He worked his way through North Carolina State University where he graduated with high honors in 1974, and then earned a law degree with honors in 1977 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
For the next 20 years, John dedicated his career to representing families and children hurt by the negligence of others. Standing up against the powerful insurance industry and their armies of lawyers, John helped these families through the darkest moments of their lives to overcome tremendous challenges. His passionate advocacy for people like the folks who worked in the mill with his father earned him respect and recognition across the country.
Geraldine Ferraro 280 words
From her 1984 DNC acceptance speech...
Tonight, the daughter of a woman whose highest goal was a future for her children talks to our nation's oldest party about a future for us all. Tonight, the daughter of working Americans tells all Americans that the future is within our reach, if we're willing to reach for it. Tonight, the daughter of an immigrant from Italy has been chosen to run for [Vice] President in the new land my father came to love.
Our faith that we can shape a better future is what the American dream is all about. The promise of our country is that the rules are fair. If you work hard and play by the rules, you can earn your share of America's blessings. Those are the beliefs I learned from my parents. And those are the values I taught my students as a teacher in the public schools of New York City.
At night, I went to law school. I became an assistant district attorney, and I put my share of criminals behind bars. I believe if you obey the law, you should be protected. But if you break the law, you must pay for your crime.
When I first ran for Congress, all the political experts said a Democrat could not win my home district in Queens. I put my faith in the people and the values that we shared. Together, we proved the political experts wrong. In this campaign, Fritz Mondale and I have put our faith in the people. And we are going to prove the experts wrong again. We are going to win. We are going to win because Americans across this country believe in the same basic dream.
Bill Clinton 324 words
From his great 1992 covnetion speech...
Tonight, as plainly as I can, I want to tell you who I am, what I believe, and where I want to lead America.
I never met my father. He was killed in a car wreck on a rainy road three months before I was born, driving from Chicago to Arkansas to see my mother.
After that, my mother had to support us, so we lived with my grandparents while she went back to Louisiana to study nursing. I can still see her clearly tonight through the eyes of a three-year-old, kneeling at the railroad station and weeping as she put me back on the train to Arkansas with my grandmother.
She endured that pain because she knew her sacrifice was the only way she could support me and give me a better life. My mother taught me. She taught me about family and hard work and sacrifice. She held steady through tragedy after tragedy, and she held our family- my brother and I- together through tough times.
As a child, I watched her go off work each day at a time when it wasn't always easy to be a working mother.
As an adult, I watched her fight off breast cancer, and again she has taught me a lesson in courage. And always, always, always she taught me to fight.
That's why I'll fight to create high-paying jobs so that parents can afford to raise their children today.
That's why I'm so committed to make sure every American gets the health care that saved my mother's life and that women's health care gets the same attention as men's.
That's why I'll fight to make sure women in this country receive respect and dignity, whether they work in the home, out of the home, or both......
My fellow Americans, I end tonight where it all began for me- I still believe in a place called Hope. God bless you, and God Bless America.
Barack Obama 324 words
We all know this one, from 2004 DNC speech...
Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let's face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father, my grandfather, was a cook, a domestic servant.
But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place; America which stood as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before. While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor he signed up for duty, joined Patton's army and marched across Europe. Back home, my grandmother raised their baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the GI Bill, bought a house through FHA, and moved west in search of opportunity.
And they, too, had big dreams for their daughter, a common dream, born of two continents. My parents shared not only an improbable love; they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or "blessed," believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren't rich, because in a generous America you don't have to be rich to achieve your potential. They are both passed away now. Yet, I know that, on this night, they look down on me with pride.
I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents' dreams live on in my precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.
Paul Wellstone 390 words
From an early 1990 stump speech, before the endorsement...
I'm proud to be a politician because I believe strongly in democracy. My father, a Jewish immigrant from Russia whose family had to move from town to town, because of czarist persecution, taught me to cherish free elections and the idea of "government of, by and for the people."
But I am not proud of the current state of campaigns and politics in our country and I am determined to take my case to the people of Minnesota in my Senate campaign.
The ethical issue of our time is that money has come to dominate politics and the democracy my father so deeply believed in is severely compromised. Campaigns match image-makers against image-makers, pollsters against pollsters and millions of dollars against millions of dollars. It is a superficial, trivialized politics of attack ads, manipulated advertising, and nine-second sound bites. It is a politics that treats people as if they are political nerds who know or care nothing about the issues of our time.
And most importantly, money corrupts the process. This is a much more serious corruption than the wrong doing of a single individual. This is the kind of corruption which results in too few people having too much wealth, power and say and too many people being denied a voice. It is a politics of democracy for the few, not democracy for the many....
That barely half the people voted in our last Presidential election is a real indictment of "the way we do politics" today. I will conduct my campaign differently. No PAC money from outside Minnesota. I will be accountable to the people, not the oil companies and other giant corporations from outside Minnesota.
I will not be a made-up media myth, conceived by clever ad men.
I will not be bought by big money special interests and their political action committees because I need their money to purchase television advertising time....
July 31, 1989, the headline in the Star Tribune read, "It's Boschwitz's Millions, Wellstone's Thousands," and there was no subtitle but the article clearly suggested that millions of dollars would determine the outcome. I cannot blame a talented journalist for reporting on the conventional wisdom about politics in these times. But in November 1990, the blazing headline in the Star Tribune will read: "Wellstone Wins the U.S. Senate race: Money Didn't Vote, People Did."