Running for Office

No, not me. Mark Prokay, co-leader of the former group Mercer County (Pa.) for Obama decided to take up the challange from our new President and actually run for office. Mark is running in the Democratic primary for a seat as a Hermitage City Commissioner. At least he will be if he can get 100 valid signatures by March 10th to get on the May ballot. So today I took the 25 mile drive over the state line and joined him in some door to door work gathering signatures. Mark had checked and verified that an "out of state" person like me is qualified to gather signatures.

Now I majored in Political Science but let me tell you that no class at Ohio State ever gave me as much knowledge about politics as the thousands of voters I've spoken to during door to door work. I can see how the thought of knocking on doors and talking to complete strangers can be terrifying to some. Yet in 20 plus years of such work for people like Barack Obama, Charlie Wilson, Ted Strickland, Paul Hackett, John Kerry and, skipping back a decade or two to Dick Celeste and Howard Metzenbaum, very few people have been outright scary and most have actually been friendly. Sometimes the homeowner may want to vent, but usually they respect the fact that you put in the effort to walk their neighborhood in the cold, in the snow, in the heat, what have you.

Mark is the first of our group of Obama supporters to run for office. My hope is that we can get many, many more --- especially on our side of the border in the Mahoning Valley of Trumbull and Mahoning counties. Here's a picture of Mark in action at last year's "Barack the Valley" in Sharon during the Pennsylvania primary. Mark and his pal Don Christoff badgered the Obama campaign until they sent in Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius as a speaker to the event which drew several hundred people. In fact the event garnered so much attention and made Hillary Clinton's camp so nervous that they sent in Bill Clinton to speak the same day about 5 miles up the road.