Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Local Politics

Monday was the deadline for candidates to file for elections to be held on Vermont's Town Meeting Day, on March 4th. I am running to retain the Select Board seat I currently hold. I have not run before, but was appointed to the seat after a resignation last spring.

I found out last night that I will have an opponent. My initial thought was that I was glad to have an opponent. I think it's good for the voters to have choices and too frequently, we don't have enough candidates for our local elections.

My plan has been that I would not campaign for my seat, but rather try to let my voting record speak for itself. My opponent is a former member of the Vermont State House and the Vermont State Senate. He is a very intelligent man, with degrees from MIT and Boston College Law School. He is also someone I would definitely not support in an election, given how much we disagree on public policy.

It's quite likely that we'll have a radio debate. We'll have a chance to be interviewed for the local paper and that paper will probably endorse one of us.

But, I now have to decide if I want to actively campaign. He probably has more name recognition than I have and I'm sure he has a loyal constituency. I've got the advantage of being the incumbent and I have a recent voting record that I am proud of.

I'm expecting an interesting 40 days between now and the election. The local press talked to me about this already last night. The question I was asked was humorous, to me at least, and I'm curious if my response will be in this week's newspaper. (Yes, as a small town, we have a weekly paper that comes out on Thursdays.)

Oh yeah, I ran 7.5 this morning. I was planning 10, but the roads were dangerously icy and it took me about 25 minutes to go less than 4 miles to the gym. I'll run for another hour-plus tonight and then lift tomorrow morning.

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