Over the past 18 months, I've backed a lot of candidates. I encouraged DailyKos to get involved in Jean Schodorf (now DailyKos endorsed) who's running for secretary of state. I've helped local candidates in state and out of state. To me, though, there is one candidate that is very special.
When Jim Sherow started campaigning, I knew I wanted to be involved. Jim Sherow was someone I knew not just as a politician, but as a teacher at a time I needed someone. The opponent he faces is seen as the 'odds on favorite' and Tim Huelskamp has tagged Sherow with the typical "he's awful" type campaign.. but I want to tell a story of who Jim Sherow really is, and what this campaign is about.
In 1995, I was a student at Kansas State University, chasing down a history degree. I loved the university, I loved the town, and I loved everything about my college experience. I knew Jim Sherow from the department, as an adviser to students hoping to get their degree and move on with life. And then my life changed.
"Every time he turned his head, blood would run out of his ear,"
I was walking through Manhattan park when several young criminals decided that they needed to make quick money. Using an aluminum baseball bat as a weapon, they shattered my skull with 63 fractures. I was stabbed 4 times. I dislocated my knee. I was life flighted to Stormont Vail, where my health was at risk. I suffered real memory loss, motor function issues and my entire path in life felt changed. I spent the next few weeks rushing through rehab, trying to get back to campus to continue my journey in life.
I returned to the K-State campus and I struggled to relate to the world that had changed for me weeks later. The rush through rehab put me on campus at K-State, but eventually I returned home to South east Kansas. While I was at K-State, I would walk through campus frequently, defiant of what had happened. I wouldn't talk to my friends about the medications I was taking, I didn't want to talk to them about the nightmares. When I went to court for hearings, I sat in the courtroom alone. I didn't want people to know how I really felt.
The professors in the history department knew what was going on though, I talked to them about it frequently - they became the people I relied upon. I was scared of the debt I was creating. I was worried about my academic future. I was frustrated and feeling left out of what my life could have been.
I walked to the courthouse in spring, to attend a first meeting with prosecutors and attorneys, and I was given one of the defenses that was mounted by a perpetrator - someone who later escaped from Hutchinson Prison. I was told that he had made the effort to hurt me because he thought I was gay. And the idea of killing me was OK, in effect, because killing a gay person didn't matter as much. A gay person was simply 'less than', so trying to kill a gay person wasn't a big deal.
I left Manhattan and rarely returned. I tried once, but bad feelings and struggles led me to say: I have to get away.
It was 1999 before I went back to Manhattan again - this time to file paperwork in regards to my attacker who had escaped. I spoke to people in the history department, and at a later point I think maybe a year or two later, I spoke to Jim Sherow about my family and how life had worked out for me. Jim told me he remembered what had happened, and that everyone in the history department cared about what happened and it wouldn't happen again.
I didn't go back to Manhattan more than to drive through in the years since. The memories were too hard. It was rough going to Manhattan, imagining how things could have been different in my life. It wasn't until I knew that Jim Sherow was going to run for House that I said: I owe it to Jim to visit. To take time. To try and see if something can be done.
Jim Sherow, though, kept his word to me. Manhattan is a different community now. It's safer. There is active support for people who suffer domestic violence. The community is prettier than it has been. Sherow wasn't alone, but he fought for those things, and he fought for non-discrimination - the idea of treating people as equal, and never less than.
What Tim Huelskamp doesn't understand is that when you give people a reason to hate, they aren't always sure of their targets. People who've seen me at Netroots Nation and elsewhere can look at the giant scar across the rear of my head and they always say "OWCH". What I learned from it is the real cost of telling people that others are worth less. Tim Huelskamp has spent the last few years telling people what is wrong with other people, referring to them in terms that define them as less. When you do that, it encourages people to believe that. And when you treat people as less, we all suffer. As a straight man, it was a wakeup call to the horror of how people could treat you with impunity if they valued you as less than.
I don't think they attacked me thinking I was gay. I think they thought it was a good excuse after the fact. How sad of a statement - to beat a case of aggravated assault, they might argue I was gay. In court, we heard a lot of excuses before the Judge stopped the litany and we moved on into sentencing. The perpetrator in my case was sentenced, escaped prison, fled to Florida, finally caught after escaping prison, released, and recently re-imprisoned after beating his girlfriend.
I've worked hard in District 1. Harder than I think I have worked on any campaign. Thousands of miles. Visits. Voter registration drives. Outreach. Organizing canvass, helping talk to communities.
Those efforts are paying out, as many have seen from polling data that puts the democrat AHEAD, and has caused Tim Huelskamp to melt down on his facebook today, posting pictures of the mail that he didn't send, because he didn't think the Democratic candidate would try.
Jim Sherow has been a big part of that. He's been willing to meet with conservatives and liberals, to travel the state and talk to people - to treat them all as individuals. Sherow ran the only campaign in the state that put an active outreach into the Hispanic/Latino community with advertisements in Spanish. He's the candidate who spent time traveling where he could talk to people rather than stay home.
I'm writing this diary tonight as a personal one. I talk about what happened that night sometimes, I used to talk to high schools and others about violent crimes. Tonight, I'm doing it for my friend, Jim Sherow.
Democrats tell me "he's a longshot" and "we should give up". His opponent, in the end, stockpiled his money and refused to spend it. He believed the race was over. Knowing the long odds, Jim Sherow invested his money - every penny of it, into the campaign. His campaign poured money into community outreach, ads, support, events.. because they wanted to grow the party. It wasn't just about trying to win - it was about making the state party better.
It's the kind of campaign that makes me proud to wake up in the morning. It makes me believe in the Jim Sherow that told me he wanted Manhattan to be better, and for people to not assume that hating each other was an excuse that would work against terrible crimes.
I've at times asked on DailyKos for people to donate money. And I know you get frequent requests for funds. We're all investing what we can.
Tomorrow through Monday, Jim Sherow and his staff are working their brains out to get people to the polls. They are providing support, staff, outreach into communities that need to get to the polls - including voters who normally feel left out or don't vote. They do it not just because they believe in their campaign, they do it because they believe in allowing democracy to work.
So, I'm going to make a VERY personal ask. This weekend, I'm helping Jim Sherow manage that effort. Frankly, I'm asking all of you who follow my musings on Kansas to chip in a few bucks. Help us spread the message in the west. No matter how this race goes, we will have done something special. We will have spent months talking to people, and to help register voters not just for now but for the future. We aren't investing in guaranteed wins.. we are investing in growth of a party.
Donations to Sherow don't go into a warchest. They don't go into some slush fund at DCCC. They go into the hands of workers who will be spending the next 96 hours walking streets, speaking in SPANISH to voters, and helping people get to the polls.
What we do in the West doesn't just help Jim. His work to register voters and to get them to the polls helps change the dynamics for years and helps every candidate in the state.
And yes, that means your donations help pay for my gas too. And, if you've read anything I've written this year, all the places I've been.. I hope some of you find that worth it.
https://supportsherow.nationbuilder.com/...