Those were the days, standing outside my local post office accosting perfect strangers, asking them to sign my nomination papers. After six years of attending school-committee meetings, finance-committee meetings, select-board meetings and other assorted civic deliberations as an observer, in a moment of weakness, I decided to run for public office.
What was I thinking? I attended so many meetings that one local newspaper dubbed me the “official” town civic auditor.
Well, our town elections here-a-bouts are coming up in May, so it is the time of the year to bite the bullet, stop complaining and run for office. Nomination papers are available for a variety of spots in our local elections.
My first foray into local politics was to run for a seat on the school board. After attending so many of their meetings and being a teacher at the time, I assumed I was eminently qualified to hold this high position in the community. I positioned myself by the post office door on a Saturday morning, and it didn’t take long for the requisite number of signers to add their signatures to my papers. I was pumped that so many folks supported my campaign until I realized that any registered voter could sign whether they supported me or not.
Next stop: my basement.
My campaign budget was so small that I made my own signs. I had so few that I carefully positioned them at each road leading into town, one to be seen as people entered and the other when they left. Weeks of campaigning followed. Chicken dinners at the local business association luncheon and Lions Club meetings, eating chocolate chip cookies at the PTA meetings, being asked to kiss a pig at the town picnic (I declined, which I am sure lost me the pork lovers’ vote.)
I soon learned this about politics: Even if you are running altruistically, there are those who will assume you have an agenda and others who say you have a hidden agenda. The loudest ones will find your phone number early on.
Election Day arrived, and I stood outside the polling place in the cold and rain for 12 hours, anticipating an overwhelming victory. In a small town, it doesn’t take long to count the ballots … and I lost! A newcomer to town took out nomination papers just before the deadline and split the vote. I lost by 50 votes.
Even before I could congratulate the winner, I was offered a variety of consolation prizes. The PTA asked me to join their Board of Directors, and the business association of which I was a dues-paying member did the same. The fact that no one else expressed interest may have influenced them. Not long after, I was asked to run for selectman and state representative. The Arts Council called and so did the youth soccer league. I turned them all down, feigning campaign exhaustion.
It remains a mystery why, after having been defeated in my first venture into elective politics, I continued to be offered various positions on boards, committees, commissions, foundations and other distinguished honors.
As it happened, the chair of the school board ran for selectman in that same election and won. I was soon appointed to fill his vacancy on the school board. I won two more elections … one by a landslide and in the last one, I was unopposed.
So, my friends, it’s time to put your time where your opinion is. Get those nomination papers, there’s a spot waiting for you in the front of the post office. Even if you lose, all the trust and goodwill that comes your way will make you feel like a winner.
Go for it.
Editor’s note: Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and retired newspaper columnist whose musings are, after some years, back in The Wanderer under the subtitle “Thoughts on ….” Morgado’s opinions have also appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.
Thoughts on…
By Dick Morgado