What started as an e-mail to Chris Gramazio
Dear Mr. Gramazio,
I just visited your web site. I see you are going to run as an independent in 2010. www.chrisgramazio.com A line from your new web site says...." Now I’ve been asked this question countless times since the Democratic Primary in District 6... "What happened?"....
Whether you’ll want admit it or not, you’ll see once you finish reading this note, that maybe we have a lot in common, including we're both too stupid (?) to learn from our own personal history. You know how that lines goes, "those who ...." but good luck in 2010 running as an independent.
I know of you from when I was visited the Phoenix area in late August and saw in the paper that there was a congressional primary debate. I attended, and besides feeling that you comfortably won the debate, I noticed there was no coverage at all in the Arizona Republic the next day. (Perhaps the conservative paper’s endorsement of you in the democratic primary, counter intuitively, hurt your chances? I was sure you would beat her in the primary. Call it machinations, or our newly developed political instincts thinking the paper was up to no good. You see I also ran for congress) Point #2, even though I was also a candidate, (independent, and you better understand where that puts you on the ballot; to the extreme side) it’s taken me 5 months to look at either yours, or Ms. Schneider’s web site; although I saved the August 20th paper giving the time and place of the debate. Who has the time or patience to go to either of your web sites, or my masterpiece? So here’s my first bit of unsolicited advice. If you expect to win, do what Frank LoBiondo, (my 8 term congressman, 2 over his term limit pledge, like Flake) does. Raise 2 million dollars and buy at least 10,000 road signs. It’s all hopeless, so I hope you have another agenda? Perhaps a cause while you're building name recognition, something like I’m going to do now. Stein for Congress 08, Stein for Governor 09, and Stein for Congress 2010. Mine is simply a cause now, a lost one at that. One friggin reporter to travel with me to Mexico. I wish I had money to bribe someone at this point?
Pardon me I digress; sorry. You made one factual error during your debate. You stated that you were the mostly uniquely qualified candidate in the country to understand and talk about immigration reform having worked with many illegals when you lived in California. Please go to my web site www.theyokelnews.com (don’t bother with www.steinforcongress.com ), and you’ll see otherwise. Yokel news because I became sarcastic, disgusted, and delirious, by the fall of 08, so I started the under appreciated Yokel News (Atlantic City Press- does Yokel news ring a bell?) I’ve relied on the same friend I visited in Phoenix last August, to post the Yokels on a web page; but that didn’t happen till 14 days before the election; not that it would have made a dimes worth of difference. I’m also a little sensitive about how it looks and reads now, and whether I can make any edits here and there, because he’s got his own every day problems to worry about, and I’m not going to keep torturing him to change anything like I did just before the election. (Some of the postings are from after the election). Please turn up the volume too if you check out the Yokel. Thanks.
Anyway good luck to you; maybe my blessing is not what you need, because as far as I was concerned you were poised and articulate during the debate, and she sounded foolish obsessing about the Patriot Act etc. Yet she won the primary. I didn’t always agree with what you were saying as I’m a Republican (with zero interest in the said Patriot Act, pro or con), and from a 3000 mile distance Jeff Flake is my kind of congressman. If you like what’s looks back at you in the mirror every morning then you’re doing the right thing, because running for political office with no backing is a thankless waste of time, and politics is a creepy profession, and don’t forget ....."Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public". ... Will Rogers (1879 - 1935).
Anyone listening in (because if you don’t mind Chris, I’m also going to send this to some of the innocent bystanders I occasionally barrage from my e-mail contact list) you professors and reporters out there from my list, you must think who am I to say Ms. Schneider sounds foolish, when I’m always talking about Mexico, Mexico on and on.......that’s if you even open your e-mails, which is doubtful.
Sincerely
Gary Stein
p.s. This could be construed as shameless use of your name Chris, (hardly) or as networking tool. Please go to the www.theyokelnews.com ; Past Issues; scroll down to issue 14 where it says in part- Independent Congressional candidate Michael Hsing issued a direct challenge today to his two opponents in the 7th District race, Republican Leonard Lance and Democrat Linda Stender, to participate in a three-way debate. Councilman Hsing was denied participation in two previous debates, one on September 16th and another on October 14th. Michael Hsing, a two term Bridgewater Councilman, surpassed Republican candidate Lance in the Q2 FEC financial filing and showed a 9% result in a poll commissioned by Democratic opponent Stender.
Chris I didn’t stay to the end of the debate and possibly say hello because I was borrowing my friend Sam's car, and I left him off to visit with his father, while I drove on another 30 minutes. Plus maybe I was feeling a little insecure not having participated in my own debates yet; and with good reason. I sucked at the first, independents weren’t invited to the 2nd, (the one with only decent coverage), and I truly believe I won the third, having taken the Socialist candidates advice to heart- and just sat back and enjoyed myself. Socialist party, green party, constitution party- you better think again about running as an independent.
p.s.s I'll send this e-mail to Sam in Phoenix as well, and it will be the second time in two days I'll wonder if I'll use an e-mail as content in a forthcoming Stein for Governor web page. How could you not do it? We're all Yokels in the political process; ask T. Boone Pickens and Ross Perot (actors, sports figures and comedians are the exceptions.) I could care less anymore if this isn’t the kosher way of doing business.
Later...Now that I e-mailed the unorthodoxy above, I’m thinking why not post it on the Daily Kos where I have a password to post a diary; and where I’ve been virtually ignored previously (they're tough). I'm certainly qualified in the shameless department as good material to be a politician. Don’t hold this content against Chris Gramazio, Party: Democrat, Age:38, Occupation: Trucking company account manager. He doesn’t know me from a whole in the wall.
And p.s. one more time. Now that it is later on in the day and I’ve decided to really post this, may I include this addendum. This is part of an e-mail I sent to Glenn Beck (doesn’t make me a bad person watching Fox) because he was talking about Mexico tonight. From: thebigmoosenj@hotmail.com
To: glennbeck@foxnews.com
Subject: FW: Diane Rehm last week ie; Mexico
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:43:25 -0500
Last e-mail for all time Glen, and now that I’ve had my supper may I respond to what you said about Puerto Vallarta; and send you a copy of previous plea's to Geraldo, and even the first draft, consisting of a few paragraphs, of Stein for Governor. (I whipped of a previous e-mail before 6PM)
I was in Puerto Vallarta last month, my friend was there two weeks ago and we both can say that even though, speaking for myself, I have no love lost for Mexico; your friend is full of shit. I walked or traveled by bus the whole length of the town and there are no boarded up stores.
Mexico in a nutshell as it relates to U.S. Use the leverage we have with amnesty, Mexican-Americans, aid etc and force that miserable government, by way of "blackmail" to start enforcing whatever f****** oath those civil servants down there take; and the logical place to start is in the local towns (which aren’t as infested with cartel criminals as your guests implied). If however the problem is even worse than I fear then the time to start is right now. BECAUSE THE BEST ECONOMIC STIMULUS PLAN WE COULD GIVE OURSELVES WOULD BE A CLEANED UP MEXICO BUYING U.S. GOODS AND SERVICES STARTING WITH OUR ENGINEERING KNOW HOW!
Mr. Beck, the below went to Geraldo last week.(Not included, I'll spare any one reading this in the Daily Kos of that) Unless you're any better than the others,including Geraldo I'll probably be forwarding what I send you to the next big shot to strike my fancy; complaining about you! But first Stein for Governor (as of this morning, I was off from work today)
Welcome to 2010, Stein for Governor; and beyond. Charging windmills again and again, even after last years unnoticed, and underappreciated run as Stein for Congress 2008. Moving forward even though it proved to even yours truly (the last one to know), that even if the electorate feign they want real change, actual election’s will never be mistaken for Hollywood make believe. Why not, if there is the chance to shock the living daylight out the establishment, if one of us, a peon with a modicum of real world common sense, has the audacity? Could we do worse than what we have already? i.e.; Larry Craig, James McGreavy, Rod Blevonavich (sic), William Jefferson, Paul Kanjorski (check him out, I lived in his district 25 years, that’s right 25 years ago when he first ran) etc, etc Or expressed in a poll question; do you approve of the job our Congress is doing. Answer. Yes 8%, No 92%
Governors would fare better in a poll, so this actually is another attempt, not at the impossible again, but as the best chance Mr. Nobody has to promote an issue, an agenda. And at first blush nobody is going to like the topic.
. It straddles the line of courageous and insanity. Mexico. I’m not quite insane yet, defined as repeating the same mistake over and over, because nobody heard me the first time out in 2008. The people of South Jersey had a right to know I, a janitor, was focused on the one issue that comes and goes with great fanfare, only to disappear every time because nobody knows what to do about illegal immigration, to the satisfaction of a majority of us Americans.
I’m either cursed or blessed...........blah, blah, blah ....that's where my opening left off.