A family member recently commented on my #idontrun tag that
I have been putting in my posts with more and more frequency these past several
months. He asked if I secretly wanted to get back into running, and was simply
trying to push myself past my self-set boundaries. Knowing how important
charity work is to me, he suggested I start with a 5K for a cause. I laughed,
and told him that there are two meaning to #idontrun.
The first is the obvious and most understood meaning: My
legs don’t move me faster than 4.0 miles per hour. I hate running. I have my
reasons, and they are personal, so let’s just say that if you see me running,
you had been run, too, because it means something evil is giving chase. The
second meaning, one that is getting more use as of late, is political.
I was raised on politics. For as far back as I can remember, my
parents, both proud and registered Republicans, believed in educating their
children about the electorate. At age 6 my brother sang hate songs about Jimmy
Carter, while I (age 5) put my Christmas money in an envelope and asked my
parents to mail it to President Carter, “for the starving children in Africa”.
I had no idea what a “bleeding heart liberal” was but my parents, afraid that
they were raising one, started limiting my exposure to the evening news.
I volunteered for my first political campaign at age 19
during a gap year (gap semester?) between college transfers. My brother was running for the
state General Assembly, and while we still disagreed on just about every
political football out there, he was family; he needed my support, and I needed
the free “plus one” tickets to the fundraisers he was invited to attend. I
claimed it was because I wanted to meet the VIP’s in attendance – Senators and
the like, now all dead, but no less impressive for their work – but the truth is,
I wanted to meet the bartenders who did not check ID’s at the open bar. It was
at one of these events that I was first asked when I was going to run for
office, and my simple answer was, “I don’t run; I work behind the scenes to
support those who do”. Over the next five years, I volunteered for many more
campaigns, and I repeated that sentence so often I landed in Marketing after
graduating college, working behind the scenes to support the sales people who
ran product.
For me, it didn’t matter if the candidate sported an (R) or
a (D) after their name; I supported the person, not the party (my brother said
it was people like me that caused electoral gridlock in the Capitol. Like I
said, we agreed on nothing). I was proudly Unaffiliated…until I met my match in
my mentor, my Atticus Finch - a man I would have followed to the ends of the earth (and did
follow across the Eastern US on two Presidential campaigns) simply because I
believed in him. When he asked me to run for the same State Senator position my
brother had run for eight years before, I told him I would think about it; he
gave me the 20 minutes it took to drive from his house to mine before he showed
up at my door with my candidacy paperwork. It was the first and only time I
ever ran for public office, and I learned more about political science than I
was ever taught in school.
At first, I was excited to run! If I won, I would be serving
at the State House, doing my part to make a difference in my own corner of the
world! And then, the phone calls started…
The first was from a self-titled Image Consultant. She
wanted to give me a makeover, to make me look older (I was 27, and still looked
about 17). I turned down her services; I wanted to run on my record of skills
and accomplishments, not my looks. It turns out, when you are a woman, you run on
your looks whether you want to or not (just ask Hillary Clinton).
The next call was from a photographer, who offered to do
some head-shots of my for my campaign literature. He made me look like a cover
girl. Everyone who saw the photos told me I looked beautiful (even my brother).
I hated the photos. I looked like a supermodel, not a politician; not someone
the world could take seriously.
More calls came in, these from local Pro Life and Pro Choice
agencies – as if the issue can be boiled down to such simple terms – asking me
where I stood on “the murder of the unborn” or “a woman’s right to choose”. My
response was always the same – that the matter of Roe v. Wade is a Federal
issue, and I was running for state office; therefore, the issue had no bearing
on the election in which I was running. I was accused of dodging the question;
the truth is that I was trying to educate. I spoke of my pride that Rhode Island was
one of the first states to eliminate the death penalty (on February 11, 1852), but
apparently Rhode Island Right to Life and I had differing opinions of what “right
to life” meant. My conversations with Planned Parenthood went no better, and in
the end I refused to request the endorsement of either group and made an enemy
of both. Lesson learned: Politics forces you to make a stand on one side of the
line or the other, even if you prefer to walk the line.
Other lessons learned were not as much fun as listening to random
pollsters lose their composure over what they considered my vague or off-topic
answers. I learned that politicians often have to nod and smile at personal
insults – for me, the most memorable was the oft repeated play on my last name (Manchester) perverted into “Man, What a Chest on Her!”, but there were many others, including some from
my fellow candidates who questioned my qualifications due to my age, but had no
such concerns about the 18 year old man who was running for office that same year.
The most important lesson I learned from running for political
office was that it was an experience I did not want to repeat - a lesson I must frequently remember in this new political climate. I like my
personal privacy; I like being able to act the fool when I am feeling silly,
and not worrying about whether or not it will affect my chance of getting
elected. I like being able to voice my personal opinion and not receive hate
mail for having done so. Most of all, I like being able to support causes on
both sides of the political spectrum – from the Women’s March started by Ashley Judd to the
Mother-to-Be Hope Chest run by the Rhode Island Right to Life – because when
all is said and done, when the political malice has cleared and we can all see
clearly, I am not a Red or a Blue, but a beautiful shade of purple.
KJM
01.11.18
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