In the words of Inigo Montoya, "I'm sorry father, I tried"

[hfojvt]

Suppose you had $4,000 to spend. There are many viable choices. You could, for a few examples

a) take a trip to Europe
b) buy a decent used car
c) repair your sewer line
d) buy a new furnace

or, you could, instead, try to run for Congress.

I chose to do the latter www.koch2congress.com . I had some basic ideas that I thought would sell to the voters, certainly that would sell to the Democratic Party. The first is that Reaganomics has failed. The second is that, because Republicans, like the incumbent Lynn Jenkins, continue to embrace Reaganomics, they do not represent ordinary working people. When it is crunch time, they put the wishes of the millionaires ahead of the rest of us.

As it turns out, my idea seemingly did not sell well even with Democrats. Or, I lacked the finances to even get my message out to more than 500 voters in the district. Perhaps my opponent's message sold better, which was not issue based. It was that she had more work experience in community development which would make her a better congressperson.

The media seemed to assist her message, since the papers mostly talked about our resumes more than our positions on the issues. But looking at the voting results it sorta looks like neither of us got our message out. Voting seems to be more geographical than anything else. I beat her in my territory, the north, and she beat me in her territory, the south. That has nothing to do, at least in my end, on work. I did very little work in my own hometown, nor in Atchison, where I won handily and I visitied the south much more than any other place. I went to Iola about 8 times, mostly for band concerts, trying to connect with fellow fans of city bands. And I got slaughtered in Allen County (by 78 to 208). I may try to look up what the Iola Register wrote about me after the forum there.

Both of us also suffered from low turn-out.In the 2004 primary there were 3272 votes in Leavenworth, compared to only 1866 in this one. If another 2,000 of my neighbors had shown up to vote for their local boy, I would be in. But Cheryl fared no better in Crawford. In 2004, 4012 people voted in Crawford County but only 2313 people voted in this election. For the entire district, turn out was down by 43%, dropping from 39,095 in 2004 to just 22,000 this year. This in spite of a big race for the Senate and for Secretary of State. Maybe people just do not think about voting in non-presidential years.

But back to the message, I still believe in that message and think it is too bad I will not be able to push it in a campaign. Right now the KC television market is being flooded with ads from our old pals at "Americans for the Prosperous". Their ads push the talking point that Democrats like Skelton and Moore need to represent Missouri and Kansas and not Pelosi. I would be pushing back hard on that. My point is that Republicans like Yoder and Jenkins need to represent Kansans and not billionaires and oil companies.

As I said a number of times. Jenkins voted to cut veterans benefits, voted against money for Kansas roads and Kansas schools and against a $500 tax cut for working people, and against health care for children. All this in the name of deficit reduction - we don't have enough money for those things. At the same time though, Jenkins feels like we DO have enough money to extend the Bush tax cuts for high incomes, to abolish the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. She cuts millions from veterans and children and working people to give billions back to the already rich.

The ads also hammer on the deficit and the bad economy, and I tried to push back with the facts. That the deficit and debt of the last 30 years have been caused by tax cuts. $1.4 trillion that went to the top 1% between 1986 and 2006. Also that the bad economy started in 2008 when Bush was President. This recession belongs to Bush and to the Bush policies that preceded it. I think we Democrats need to remind the voters of those facts, or make them aware in the first place.

Those were my messages, but they got defeated on Tuesday, or the unattractive and socially awkward guy selling the message got defeated and now the burden is on Cheryl to battle an incumbent and the treasure chest of Americans for the Prosperous. I wish her well. Heck, after running myself ragged over the last three months, sometimes I can even be glad that I lost and can relax a little bit for the next three months.

Obviously I should have done a number of things differently. Clearly, driving all over the district did not prove to be an effective strategy. I had some videos I wanted to make, but never did, and maybe should have accepted help on my website. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. But I tried, at least I tried.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oi8RMG_DQbs&feature=related