Well, Ladies and Gentlemen. Boys and Girls. This will be my last post titled “Getting On The Ballot.” Because I’m on the ballot. Or at least I met the requirements to get on the ballot. I guess they need to print the ballots. Maybe a meteor hits or something. But, other than that, I think I’m on.
Here’s how it went. I picked up my petition at the Election Commission. I walked around and got people to sign the petition. My deadline was Thursday, December 12 at noon. I turned my petition in today at around 11 a.m. They told me they would call me today one way or another and let me know the results. Within about an hour they called and told me that I had the requisite number of signatures. You can see the scanned petition here. At the end of the day, they also put out their updated Candidate Pickup List and it included a return date for my petition. See Gepetto, I’m a real candidate.
I’ll be following developments the next couple of days closely to see how the races shape up. One of the Republicans in District 4 still hasn’t returned his petition. There’s also word that the incumbent Republican candidate in District 2 is not going to run. Will another Republican pull a petition with 2 days to go and try to fill her spot on the ballot? Probably a campaign manager might advise me to let go of the amateur political pundit thing. But there’s a method to my madness. Stay tuned.
Now that I’m officially a candidate, I figured I should go check out this job for which I’m applying. I attended the work session of the Knox County Commission tonight and it was a good night to do so. They discussed at length the controversy of the TVA Tower deal. I learned a lot about the subject from the discussion. I also got a sense of where some of the commissioners stand. I found the Law Director’s arguments to be persuasive. I don’t think the proponents of the move made a good enough argument to overcome the multiple legal issues that the Law Director raised with regard to the issue. Don’t take this as an official campaign position, though. I would want to read the MOU and the contracts that they discussed tonight before I came to a final decision. There will be another meeting next Monday and I think this issue will be discussed again. See you there.
Now that I’m on the ballot, there are a lot of things I’m going to need to do in running the kind of campaign I want to run. I’m going to be attending as many Commission meetings as possible between now and the election. I’m going to be doing my research. I’m going to use this space and social media to be open about my positions. I’m going to leave people alone until after the holidays, but then in 2020, I am going to try and walk every neighborhood in the District. I’m going to try and meet and/or talk to as many residents of the District as I can. I will try to elaborate on these and other issues as I keep writing about this campaign process. I hope you’ll come along with me.