Thank You for Running

Every election has it's quintessential moment. It's usually when you know whether you've won or lost the race. Most good pols know that it comes well before the final tally. It sometimes comes with the lastest polling data, and sometimes it's with the first returns.

But sometimes its during the course of election day. It my case, it came about mid-afternoon standing outside a polling station with one of the poll workers of another candidate for another race. You make some of the best aquaintences standing in the fall weather waving aimlessly at cars driving by with voters. I didn't get her name.

After about an hour of conversation about her candidate and other races, we got onto the subject of my candidacy. She said "Thank you for running." I could tell in that moment, that it was not meant to be. She was very complimentary, but she could not tell me that she had not voted for me.

So we carried on throughout the rest of day, waving robotically, going from polling place to polling place, hoping that these last gasps, (after all the lawn signs, advertising, mailings, sign holding, interviews and non-debate debates), wouldn't be necessary to make the difference.

For the record, I lost my race for Assembly of Delegates from the town of Yarmouth, decidedly. My opponent was re-elected with about 8,100 votes, about the same number she got 2 years ago when she ran unopposed. I got 4,400 votes, about 1,300 more than blanked her last time.

Along the way, we campaigned about how we would each approach the job, and what the priorities of the county government should be. In the process, my opponent managed to raise the Assembly to a new level of obscurity.

No matter how smart you are about politics and elections, (refer to previous blog, Romney Reform: NIMBY), it doesn't necessarily translate into election victory.