From Arkansas, to Virginia, to Florida, as a volunteer and as a paid staffer, I've been involved in every kind of political race, local to federal. Every race has its own rules, but the candidates all have one thing in common: you have to run for something.
What is your vision for your district, your city, your county, your state, your country? What is civic life like under your leadership? What is life like for all your constituents, not just the ones who voted for you? What is your vision?
Candidates who don't have answers to those questions, candidates who run against something simply for the sake of opposing it make terrible candidates.
Spoiler alert: they make even worse public servants.
Indeed, for as complicated as we seem to make them, all a political campaign involves is taking your answers to those questions I outlined above to the public. Hopefully a majority of your friends and neighbors will agree with your answers and vote for you on Election Day. It's really that simple.
If you choose not to take your case to the public, then it remains unclear to me why you're running to begin with. More on that in a minute.
I have made an honest effort to understand what St. Petersburg Mayoral candidate Kathleen Ford is running for, and for the life of me, I can't see it.
She has built her candidacy around opposition to the proposed Lens design for the St. Petersburg Pier. Opposing construction of the Lens is a perfectly fine position to take, but then what is the plan? What is the vision? What is life like under Mayor Ford with respect to the Pier?
I see no answers to that question.
Indeed, Ms. Ford's website is fraught with a lot more anti-, and a lot less vision -- and some outright falsehoods, actually.
"Public safety is slipping as the crime rate is increasing."
Crime rates are dropping. This was just run through PolitiFact on Friday.
It's one thing to be the anti-Bill Foster candidate. It's another thing entirely to lie about it.
Ford's website is chock full of no. "No secret deal making..." "No last minute requests for money..." Generic things that sort of sound good, but don't make any real sense. And there seems to be no real plan -- no real vision -- to back any of it up.
All of Ford's anti-ness may go a long way towards explaining why she missed several candidate forums, as well as a meeting with the Editorial Board of the Tampa Tribune. The reason she gave is that she had legal work to do. Ms. Ford is an attorney. But so is candidate Rick Kriseman, as well as incumbent Bill Foster. These are people with full-time jobs, and they found the time to attend these candidate events.
What makes this even more interesting is that this isn't really about whether or not Ms. Ford has the time to make the case for her vision -- if she has one -- to all the people in forums like Tiger Bay and the Tribune Editorial Board. It is about who she has made her case to.
On May 18th, she spoke to the Republican Liberty Caucus of Tampa Bay. That event was promoted by the Tampa Bay for Rand Paul 2016 Meet-Up group.
The apparently bottom line: the public isn't good enough, but the tea party is just fine.
Some questions to Ms. Ford based on the "Statement of Principles" of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Tampa Bay follow:
The Constitution properly limits the federal government to specific enumerated powers. The Tenth Amendment properly reserves all other powers to the states or to the people. We support these limits on government powers and a phase out of all programs and departments that violate these principles, including:
Department of Education
Departments of Commerce and Agriculture
Department of Health and Human Services
Department of Housing and Urban Development
National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities
Drug Enforcement Agency
Transportation Security Administration
Ms. Ford, should we abolish the Department of Education? HHS? The NEA? HUD?
We favor the privatization of all government assets and a transition to free market management and services for all programs that exceed the enumerated powers of the Constitution.
Ms. Ford, do you favor privatization of "all government assets"? Because as mayor of the fourth largest city in Florida, you'd be a fairly powerful figure. Your constituents may be curious if this is part of your vision...
We support the adoption of the ‘Liberty Amendment’ to the Constitution, requiring respect for enumerated powers and repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment.
Ms. Ford, do you support the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment? Do you believe in an income tax?
I don't really expect any answers to these questions. (After all, she hasn't answered questions for anyone else.) And I do understand that this is a non-partisan race. But her choice of venue to explain all of the stuff she is against is telling.
Like her tea party friends, Ms. Ford is anti- everything. If they get a chance, someone ought to ask her what on earth she is is for.
