Friday, February 26, 2021

Or you could just run? That is terrible advice....

Regular visitors to this site have seen that an anonymous person keeps leaving comments here, urging people with judicial ambitions to simply run for election, bypassing the associate judge process, and possible slating, and bar association screening.

Maybe it's more than one person; there have been so many of these comments. And, for every one you've seen, I've flushed at least another. They are redundant, repetitive, and, in my view, aggravating.

First and foremost, I think "just run" is terrible, horrible advice.

I can't believe it is offered sincerely. I hypothesized, in this post, that the person offering this terrible advice must be trying to create a need for his or her services as a campaign consultant, and I further suggested that, instead of playing this game, he or she just buy an ad.

No one's buying an ad, but the comments continue, now with a petulant tone. For example:

  • Or you can just run. Before you delete this comment, Jack, know that you misconstrued it. I am not [peddling] services or goods. Frankly there are no goods or services that can help most candidates. This game, and make no mistake about it being a game, is nonsense. Voters have no idea who any of us are. Politicians don't have the heft or desire to “push” us and use us as ATM machines. Our best chance is to simply run; the more the better. Bar association ratings are rigged, as is Tim Evans’ short list. So save your money, give nothing to consultants or politicians and just RUN!
  • Skip the bar associations. Skip the advisors. Skip the hawked goods and/or services. Skip the committee creatures. Madigan is done. Burke is done. Grow some spines and do your thing.
  • Or you could just grow some spine and run — paying nobody for a good or service.

The reason I think this is dumb, horrible advice is because I've tried 'just running.' Twice, in fact.

The first time I ran, in the 10th Subcircuit, in 1994, I didn't even know I was 'just running.' I knew about slating, of course, but Richard J. Daley had gone to his eternal reward at the end of 1976. Jane Byrne's election, or surely Harold Washington's two wins, signaled that the Machine was dead and gone, right? I could not have picked my committeeman (at the time, State Rep. Ralph Capparelli) out of a lineup; I hadn't the first clue how subcircuit slating was handled.

And I'd never even heard of campaign advisors in judicial races. Consultants. Pollsters! Such persons esisted only in far higher profile races, right? (In fairness to me, I don't believe there were nearly as many persons dabbling in judicial races in the early 1990s as exist now.)

I ran the classic kitchen table campaign -- as in Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and "c'mon kids, let's put on a campaign!" (Not even all the Baby Boomers will catch that reference. But it captures our naivete and boundless, though baseless, optimism.) My then-partners wrote checks and held a couple of fundraisers, my wife chased down parents on the parish school playground for petition signatures, I had friends and family leave doorknob hangers with flyers and refrigerator magnets (never in the mailbox -- it wouldn't do for a judicial candidate to violate postal regulations, would it?), and I went house to house, and stood at bus stops and Blue Line stations, and went anywhere were I could get in the door. I got lots of folks to send out friend-to-friend postcards. I had snazzy campaign buttons.

Not many people wore the buttons. Or paid attention to the postcards. And I didn't get into nearly enough places. I obviously didn't knock on nearly enough doors. I finished dead last. (I wrote more about my 1994 run in this 2017 Page Two post.)

What did 'just running' get me in 1994? On the plus side, I lost 15 lbs. campaigning.

On the negative side? Well, let's tally it up, shall we?:

  • I drained the family savings accounts, buying campaign tchotchkes and billboard spaces and newspaper ads, loaning the campaign money I would never get back;
  • I burnt out my wife;
  • I burnt out my family;
  • I burnt out my friends and neighbors; and
  • I burnt out my partners.

But I still had the bug real bad. As 1996 approached, as Adlai Stevenson III once said, I felt the sap rising.

The thing I thought I'd learned in the course of my 1994 run is that a subcircuit, though only 1/15th of Cook County, is a really big place. I didn't have enough friends and relations to make a sufficient dent. Besides, no one I knew -- except me -- was particularly interested in me running again. So, in a Wile E. Coyote genius move, I decided to bypass the two 10th Subcircuit races in 1996 and throw my name in countywide. I really, truly, "just ran." I was simply hoping for lightning to strike. Just as Anonymous now advises.

I had my pride, I thought. I took pains to dot all the i's and cross all the t's necessary to get on the ballot. My petitions were not challenged in 1994 or 1996. I appeared before the county slating committee, too. It was a Hooda Flock moment.

You know... as in the committeemen muttering hooda flock is that guy? But I kept blundering on -- just running -- just as Anon is urging my readers to do now -- going nowhere, but going there every night. I wasn't raising money, but I was still spending some... and I still had those snazzy buttons, didn't I? Not that anyone wanted them....

Meanwhile, my wife was house hunting. Our fifth child learned to walk during the 1994 primary season and our starter home was, in my wife's opinion, finished. We needed more space.

One night I came home and my wife told me she'd found our new home. I didn't want to move. I wanted to get elected judge. That was the priority. That was the quest.

"Look at it this way," my wife told me, finally, "now you will have two houses where you can put your lawn signs."

The sad, inescapable truth is that there weren't too many other lawns where I could put my signs. We bought the house. We live there still. And I finished last again in 1996.

There's a darkly humorous denouement to these campaign misadventures, one that bitter, cynical observers of Cook County politics can surely appreciate. I'll share that in my next post on this subject, coming soon.

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jack,
You lost because the lettering on your button was not green. Duh. Did you use pink lettering?

Anonymous said...

Uhm, Jack. Hate to tell you this, but I think the better way to deal with this in the first place was to simply flush the posts. Now you really have created a monster. A monster (or monsters) who apparently just want people to just . . . .

Anonymous said...

Just run didn’t say buy billboards or all that other dumb stuff. I have a whole crate of Maloney-Laytin pens and chapsticks. But plan to recycle/repurpose them in 2022. And just run.

Anonymous said...

I have multiple houses in different Subcircuits. But I also plan to change my name to “just run.”

Anonymous said...

Don’t hesitate or back. Who beat you? Some former government lawyer with three Irish last names who has already retired from the bench?

Anonymous said...

Just Do It!

Anonymous said...

When will Evans he reopening the Daley Center?

Anonymous said...

So people shouldn’t just run? They should hire advisors? And bankrupt themselves paying Def Party? What should they do Jack? Should they hope and beg Big Papa Tim to be an Associate Peon? Or that Theis and Neville will “elevate” the at ceremonies attended by U.S. Senators to scare the other tribes away? Nah. Just run. That’s what the Sagaunash Gals plan to do and we all know who they plan to target. That’s why I have McGrath, O’Leary and an entire new set of shills ready to pop. And Injustice Watch hack “reporters” can interview Rod all day and still won’t scratch the surface about what I am up to.


Just Do It!


Rod M, Jr.

Anonymous said...

Nice button. I’ll buy what’s left and retool them.

Anonymous said...

Hooda flock moment?

Anonymous said...

Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true or is it something worse? Everybody’s got a Hungry Heart, down here in Jingleland so no retreat or surrender. We will just bring our wrecking balls and just not run?

Anonymous said...

“What do you do for a second act, Doctor?”
“I win.”

— Tom Baker, Seeds of Doom (1976)

Anonymous said...

Perhaps you should stop giving this person or these persons a forum by posting their comments or engaging them with posts. Don't give fire oxygen and it dies. Or at least that's what Donald Pleasance said in that Backdraft movie -- the original one. Not that bad sequel that was released just as the pandemic began to rage and the courts were shuttered and the judges went scurrying to their summer homes in Wisconsin and Michigan. Speaking of Wisconsin . . .

Anonymous said...

What does hooda flock mean? I'm not originally from Cook County and don't speak your native tongue.

Anonymous said...

There are bigger problems in the world. I mean, Mr. Potatohead is now gender neutral. WTF!

Anonymous said...

It's terrible advice if they do it the way you apparently did it.

Albert said...

Also, the 1994 winner outspent you by 2 1/2 to 1, and outspent the rest of the field by 8 to 1 or more. And unlike in countywide contests, spending does matter in subcircuit contests.

Anonymous said...

Don’t be sheeple, people. We have all been conditioned to not believe in ourselves. Si se puede!

Anonymous said...

Hey Anon 2/27, I think you meant Jungleland, not Jingleland.

Anonymous said...

Go big or go home.

Anonymous said...

You lose twice, so other people running is a bad idea? How so? People win every cycle.

Anonymous said...

So say we all! Run!

Anonymous said...

Stop discouraging the masses, Jack. There are also winners every cycle. Not just losers.

Anonymous said...

Run rabbit run.

Anonymous said...

Vito and Michael Corleone say run. Screw the big shots. Hold your own strings.