by Jack Lee, not a consultant…
For over 40 years I have been the voter, but now I am venturing to the other side, as a candidate for the 3rd Assembly District. It’s been a long and difficult decision making process, but it’s done and I’m running. It’s pretty exciting as a whole new dimension to my citizenship has opened up, one that I always knew existed, but never fully appreciated… at least not until now. It’s also been a humbling experience too as I took a hard look in the mirror and weighed what this commitment means to me and to you.
I can take failing myself, but I can’t take failing you. That’s not an option and I had to be sure I would be the kind of guy you needed in Sacramento and I really think I can do this job. I’ve got a very diverse background from law enforcement, small business owner, real estate politics and farming and thats a combination that could serve us well in Sacramento. It gives me a very real perspective on the challenges we’re facing in this state.
Today, I was at One Mile in Chico for the 4th of July celebration and I was wearing my “Jack Lee for Assembly button” for the first time. I was trying to acclimate myself to randomly shaking hands with potential voters and handing out my first election brochures, (which were nothing more than my ideas on typing paper) and all was going really well. Then I think, I’ve just spent the last 4 hours walking around this event to talk to a total of about 30-35 voters, and that was great don’t get me wrong, but there are roughly 63,000 more voters I need to meet! Worse yet, they are spread over seven counties!!! If you figure that a typical work year has about 1920 hours in it and the primary election is 11 months away, then I’m about 4 years behind in man hours and I’m just starting as candidate! lol Well, thank goodness for a great staff of volunteers and the internet. No way can this race be run without a lot of good people behind your every step. Research says I can expect as much as 20% of my support to come from the internet, but that still leaves 50,000+ contacts to go and go we will, but, we sure have our work cut out for us!
It costs a lot to communicate with the voters, for instance to do just three strategic mailings and calculating the
costs for postage and brochures, it looks like about $110,000 is needed in the coming months. And you wonder why we don’t have a lot of people stepping up to run for Assembly? Ha! And there’s many more hurdles ahead and they all cost money, a lot of money.
Big money in politics just seems like a bad combination to me, but its sure a reality. The Supreme Court has held that money equals free speech, so it’s not likely we’re going to take big money out of elections anytime soon. The upside to raising our money is, I still have total ethical control over what money I will or will not accept and exactly how much money we should raise to get our message out. (FYI, I have signed a voluntary spending limit with the Secretary of State, seemed like the right thing to do.)
However, if we do it right, we can run our campaign on about 35-40% less money than the competition and still be very effective. For starters a professional campaign manager is going to take about $110,000 or more in fees and commissions…we don’t have one of those guys and it’s for darn good ethical reasons, not a lack of money to hire one! We see this professional manager as driving up the costs of elections far beyond mere inflation and in that sense he’s preventing a lot of good people from running because the costs are growing prohibitively high. This guy is also keeping you from really getting to know who you are electing. See, in a professionally managed campaign this character decides what the issues are and he creates the candidate’s imagine to fit the theme. He manages almost everything they (candidates) say and do, based on his scientific research and polling data. All this might buy an election, but it’s not good for a democracy! So, we decided this is not for us and we know it’s a risk to do away with the professional consultants, but it’s a risk done for good reason….ethics.
I’m not hiding behind a consultant. What you see is what you get. We’ll likely make some mistakes as a result, but we’re trusting YOU to see and appreciate why we’ve taken this grassroots approach and thats where we earn YOUR trust back. Bottom line, this is going to be an clean race based on good ideas and critical issues and we will not turn to mudslinging and character assassinations, no matter what.
Want to see a little of what I’m going to run on? Here’s my contract with the voters, we may ad more to it as things progress:
I will work for a secure border, responsible immigration reform and fight to change the baby anchor rule.
I will work for lower taxes and reform in our tax codes.
I will work towards restoring fiscal discipline, by cutting waste, fraud and abuse and paying down Californias bond debts early to protect our children from an unfair burden.
I will support legislation for more affordable, quality health care.
I will work to provide every child in California with the best possible education.
I will support police and fire through responsible funding and fair salaries.
I will fight to protect our water rights provide strong levees to prevent flooding.
I will fight for the public interest and against special interest legislation.
I willrespect and uphold rights of individuals and support and protect our Constitution.
There’s more I could have said above, but I am trying to prioritize on what is most important to you without going too far out on a tangent. I wish I had the space for all the details too, like my thoughts for a performanced based budget where we quantify the value of a given program based on in-put verses out-put. However, that will have to save that for another time. I would be happy to discuss any issue that is important to you off site or privately in comments.
I owed it to you to make my candidate announcement here since many of you have been with me since the first time I writing about my decision process. You’ve all been a great help to me and your words of encouragement, advice and ideas were truly the deciding factor to run. Thank you and have a happy 4th of July!
Now let’s roll! Lee4assembly@dslextreme.com
NOTICE: As part of the equal time rule, if another candidate for the 3rd Assembly District wants to share space here, this your one and only opportunity, because this is my first and last personal political post.