Sean Closson for Congress 2012

In accordance with the laws and customs of our people, the Democratic Pre-primary was held on March 10th unfortunately, much earlier than I had hoped for. The deadline for signature collection is 10 days after the Pre-primary, March 20th. I just didn’t have the money or resources to get the signature-gathering done in that time frame. If I had raised more money I could have had people work for me longer, or if I had gotten onto TV, local or national, I might have generated enough attention to get volunteers. I looked into TV ads, which are shockingly affordable for campaigns, but the political rates don’t start until April. Newspaper advertising was more expensive than I could afford, and neither of my appearances in the paper generated much of a response from the public.

I could try to blame all sorts of things for the campaign ending early, but I’m solely responsible. It was a long shot from the start and with a budget and network as small as I had, mistakes were costly. Despite whatever failures I’ve suffered, I’ve learned a lot. I have a much more nuanced understanding of the political process, engaging the public, and the issues than I did when I first started. The education I received has been invaluable.

However the problems that spurred me into running still remain. Wealth inequality is only getting worse,  and jobs are still largely stagnant. The ones that are coming back they aren’t of the same quality as those that were lost. SOPA is tabled, but there are a thousand other less well known efforts eroding the foundations of the Internet. Civil rights and liberties continue to erode through the militarization of police forces and the ever-expanding surveillance apparatus. These issues haven’t gone away, and aren’t going to go away, until Democrats get serious about what they’re supposed to stand for.

It’s great that we passed a healthcare bill, but we aren’t done there. It’s great that we passed a stimulus bill in 2009, but it didn’t go nearly far enough. The bottom line is we haven’t recovered and we won’t recover until we start addressing our problems like adults. Our priorities as a country are so far out of whack that we’re wasting time talking about contraception instead of how to help out the millions of people who lost their homes and jobs. We have to crush the virulent meme that people who need help are lazy, bad people, or don’t deserve it because they didn’t work hard enough.

We used to be the envy of the world because of our standard of living, upward mobility, and freedom. All of those things are being ground into dust by elitist authoritarian jackasses like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Staving off these lunatics isn’t enough. We have to push back harder than them to gain back the ground we’ve been losing for decades. Complacency isn’t going to change anything and neither is cynicism. We can do better and we have to. My campaign is over, but I’m not done. I’ll return in a few years more formidable and firey than ever.

Thanks to everyone who supported me and helped out with the effort. I couldn’t have come as far alone. Here’s hoping more regular people get involved in the political process. Democracy doesn’t work if we don’t participate.

Saturday was interesting. I bought a table at the Pre-primary delegate elections in the Democratic Party of Santa Fe’s headquarters and set up shop. I’m pretty sure I’m the only candidate that didn’t qualify for the convention that still showed up there. It wasn’t a great signature gathering spot as the whole thing is an exercise in organizational power and 99% of the people there had already signed another petition, but it was a good experience none the less as I got my name out to a lot of people that didn’t even know I was running. I did get the opportunity to meet both of my opponents and give an extremely drowsy off the cuff speech (probably should have let a representative speak for me as I had worked a full shift at the hotel the night before, and had been at the DPSF HQ for another 5 hours on top of that). All in all I think it went well and now I just need to confirm with the head of elections that my campaign is still kosher.

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic and I’ve been focused on organizing the signature effort for the Pre-primary convention. We didn’t get enough, but I learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. We now have until the end of March to get the final number (1,844) of valid signatures, minus however many we already got turned in (Secretary of State should be letting us know shortly).

This isn’t over.

Starting today you can get a whole bunch of Closson for Congress stuff through the campaign Cafepress. There are prints of the poster, buttons, bumper stickers, yard signs, t-shirts, all sorts of stuff. The shop button in the navigation menu links to it now too.

I was interviewed today by Kristine Kubat for Justice Party Radio check it out. I call in around the 2:30 mark.

I’m trying to raise money to hire a few people to help me gather signatures so I can get on the ballot. Even $5 helps keep the sweetness flowing. I’ve been doing almost everything on my own thus far but I’m starting to discover the limits of that approach. I really appreciate any and all support, financial, moral, or otherwise.