It took all of ten minutes: “Does this mean you are running again this year?”
That was the text I got from an acquaintance shortly after mentioning on the show yesterday that Representative Gordon Hintz was not running for re-election this fall. That was followed in the next 15 minutes by two Facebook messenger alerts: “Hey, heard Gordon’s not running–this is your time!”
This has been an on and off thing since I came in second in the 2010 race for the 54th Assembly District. I’d run into someone that had supported the campaign at a restaurant or a community event and invariably they would ask if I planned on running again. My pat answer for years has been “If I did, I would be unemployed and divorced”. Let’s just say my wife was not a big fan of my first attempt at winning public office–and she would be even less supportive this time around. Plus, that first run forced me to leave my on-air and news positions during the campaign. And when your only marketable skill is reading out loud, that leaves you few viable career options (except maybe Children’s Story Time Host at the public library).
While it was a ton of work, I found a lot of the campaign to be fun. I enjoy talking to people, and I certainly got to do plenty of that. Debates were enjoyable–even if the League of Women Voters f0rum asked us a bunch of pointless questions about public library funding and public assistance for the arts. And I tried to keep things from getting too mean-spirited. One of my mailers featured then-Governor Jim Doyle’s head superimposed on the Mike Meyers character Dr Evil’s body–while Gordon’s head was superimposed on the Vern Troyer character Mini Me’s body sitting in Doyle’s lap. Gordon actually made that his social media avatar for a while–showing he could take a joke.
But the past decade has completely changed the tenor of our politics. Not long after that election, Act 10 was approved by the Legislature and signed by then-Governor Scott Walker. Had I won, public sector union employees would have been camped out in front of my house day and night protesting and blocking me and my wife from getting out of our driveway or into our house. I’m sure my neighbors would have loved that.
It wasn’t as prevalent at the time, but I did have a Democratic party operative follow me around filming some of my activities on a cellphone. It was mainly at public events like fundraisers or debates. But now those operatives follow politicians everywhere–or they pretend to be supporters and ask leading questions while secretly-recording conversations–just hoping for a “gotcha moment” that can be shared first with allies in media outlets and then of course in the next round of negative TV ads. If I was to run this time, that I’d ask the operative for all of the daily footage from the driving range at Reid Municipal Golf Course so I can see how my swing looks.
The new definition of “democracy” is accosting lawmakers in restaurants or in the grocery store, berating them in public. Or following them into the bathroom pretending to “demand access” to their representative. I’m an aging guy. My bathroom trips are getting longer and grosser–and I don’t need company in there.
And quite honestly, I can’t contain my frustration with people anymore. There was one house I visited in 2010 where a 40-something father and his 20-something son asked me to come in so they could tell me about how there were “no good jobs for them”. When I asked what they did they both said they were welders. It just so happened a few days earlier I’d heard a story about a company in Manitowoc that was looking for welders to fill immediate openings. When I told them about that the father replied “Who wants to go to Manitowoc to work?” and the son chimed in “Yeah. (Expletive) that!” And then there were countless people who asked me to legalize the recreational use of marijuana because “It’s a miracle drug, you know”. I nodded and told them we could have a conversation about medicinal marijuana legalization–but laying around getting high was not going to get my support.
Now, I would have to put up with rants about how the 2020 election was stolen, or how Democrats piling into cities and living literally on top of each other are being “gerrymandered” into fewer and fewer districts, or how they are teaching elementary schoolers Critical Race Theory, or how they’ve been “cutting education funding for decades” while the state spends a record amount on public education each year, or how COVID vaccines are killing people left and right, or how their student loan debt for a degree in Chinese Languages and Arts should be forgiven because apparently there aren’t a lot of jobs in that field.
Maybe I should change my pat answer for those that ask about me running again from the half-joke about unemployment and divorce to “Why, are we serious about governance again?”
