Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail

My six-month foray into local politics

Frustrated by short-sighted decisions by our local school district, my friend Julie and I decided to run for the School Board last May. As education policy experts, we regularly spoke during the public comment section of school board meetings about the right ways to do things, but the school board members ignored us. So, we decided that we should be the ones making decisions. Ideas would win the day!

For months, we spent 14 hours a day, 7 days a week fighting for a full-time volunteer job. Insane, right? With seven people vying for two spots, it wasn’t an easy fight, but we were fueled by great optimism and enthusiasm and endless confidence in the wisdom of voters.

It’s okay to mock me now. I have finally stopping crying after my defeat on Tuesday.

In 1972, Hunter S. Thompson, fueled by amphetamines rather than endless optimism, followed the presidential candidates around in the country in the press bus and reported on the stupidity of American campaigns. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail is still a classic in American nonfiction. I don’t think my little local election is book material, but I’ll share a few thoughts in this newsletter today.

My friend Julie and I were comically overqualified for the job of a school board member in our little town. There are links to our ridiculous resumes in the last newsletter that I produced.

Yes, I produced a newsletter for the campaign, which included professional-level essays about schools. I also made my own commercials, website, Facebook advertisements. I designed our signs, wrote speeches, and more. Later, I walked for sometimes five hours a day, knocking on doors and handing out 2,500 door knocker flyers BY HAND.

Effort, brains, and charm didn’t win the election. Neither did another candidate’s huge campaign budget. The winning candidate had the best connections and the support of a network with a long list of phone numbers and email addresses. That alliance was so strong, they were even able to steal some of my (former) friends.

Most in the winner’s camp didn’t care about ideas or education policy. They made those phone calls and posted lawn signs around town as revenge over past grievances and grudges. With the Hatfields and McCoys fighting each other in town, Julie and I were collateral damage.

In the 1900s, a group of reformers — the Progressives — took office to reform the corruption-filled cities. One of their longest lasting reforms were civil service tests, which ensured that government officials were hired based on competence rather than connections. They really believed that government could be run scientifically to create good policies that would benefit the country.

Julie and I ran that smart policy kind of campaign, and it went nowhere, because local elections are tribal. People will only bother to walk down to the voting booth when they feel some connection to a person on the ballot. Often party affiliation can provide those tribes, but in local non-partisan elections, the tribes are more parochial — “people who live on my block” or “people who play pickleball” or “people who sent their kids to the same nursery school.”

As I was going around town canvassing for hours, I stopped talking about policies and ideas all together, because I could see that nobody cared. When I campaigned in my neighborhood, I said, “Hi, I’m Laura. I’m running for school board next week. You see that house down the block? Yeah. The white one with black trim. I live there.” And then they would vote for me.

Voters didn’t care that I had a PhD and had done school policy stuff for thirty years. All they cared about was tribes.

The winner was a long-time resident with kids who did all the varsity sports and clubs and had a big house on the rich side of town. She had more tribes than I did. That’s how local politics works, and I should have known that.

The toxicity of the local social media was an eye opener. When I wrote for the Atlantic and other online magazines, I never read the comments, because everybody knows that only crazy people write comments. I thought I had a tough skin. But it’s hard to ignore the craziness when it happens in your own downtown. When it is written by people that you see in the supermarket. When the slander is personal and threatening.

One anonymous commenter on a local blog said that I handed out flyers outside the high school when I was sick with covid and infected the entire school with my covid-covered campaign flyers. Yes, totally bonkers. And nobody ever corrected that. I’m sure that accusation is still out there in the Internet ether. My friend Julie had an antisemitic death threat on her Facebook page.

Julie and I thought everybody was running a clean, positive campaign. We did. But two days later, I’m hearing stories about some of the scummy stuff that happened behind the scenes. Of course it did. Now, I’m going to run into these people in the vegetable aisle in Stop and Shop. Awkward!

I truly missed writing regularly for magazines, my blog, and this newsletter. I was simply too consumed with election work to produce anything worthwhile. I also held myself back from writing because I didn’t want to get slammed by the basement dwellers and their homemade websites for a careless sentence or political statement. Writing without a team looking over my shoulder was simply too dangerous.

I held myself back from talking publicly about some crap going on in our schools, because I thought I was going to win office and could handle things quietly behind closed doors. I still don’t know quite what I should do with certain information.

So, yes, I’m disappointed that I didn’t win that seat for the school board. I tried really hard and felt like I could be an asset to my town. I’m still horrified at the scummy politics. But I’m also glad that I can speak my mind and write again.

For the most part, I remain hopeful about local democracy and will always encourage more qualified people run for office. Local government can make a huge difference to thousands of people and perhaps become training grounds for higher office. I’m glad that there are people willing to barbecue themselves for these jobs. I did it once. And I think that’s enough for me.

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ICYMI