The Morgantowner: The Campaign and Purim

I planned an event for last night (Wednesday March 23) not realizing that it was Purim. Technically, Purim didn't start until sunset, which as far west as we are in the Eastern time zone and with daylight savings time, was about 7:40. The event was 6 to 8.

Last December, I attended a training session in Wheeling for new candidates, run by a community organizing group called Our Children, Our Future. They said that to be successful, a candidate needs to start a year early, and have a committee of, ideally, twelve people to take care of the campaign. Then you have to call everyone you know personally and ask them for money.

I had already pre-filed to run when I attended this session. Actual filing had to be during a few weeks in January. I asked my friend Dee to be my treasurer. She agreed, and also put together a website for me. I've done everything else. People have offered me money, for which I am grateful, but I can't bring myself to call people and ask them to donate.

There are eight Democrats running in the primary; five of us will run in the general election. Five of them, including the incumbent, are friends, or at least acquaintances I respect. I've met one more, who seems nice enough, but hasn't run much of a campaign, and the eighth I have never met. People in town know him; their opinions of him are mixed.

I had an interview with the Mon/Preston Labor Council the first Saturday in March. They were friendly, and I took their side on issues with no strain on my conscience. Then they asked me how much money I would need to win in the primary, and what was my organization like? I told them I had raised about a thousand dollars, and that there was no organization. Last week, Dan Doyle, the guy in charge of endorsing candidates, called to tell me they would not endorse me, because I had no organization.I perfectly understand that, and don't resent them or the people they endorsed (the five I like). Not that I wasn't depressed about it.

So I had a campaign event last night. Most of the other candidates, and the candidates for other offices, have had these at a sports bar near our house. One had his event at an out-of-the-way working class bar, and one had his event downtown at an Irish bar. I didn't want any of those places. Joe suggested Terra Café, a place on the river with good food, a little too "quinoa salad" for me.
I settled on Black Bear Burritos, a locally owned joint with good food, a branch downtown and one out by us. I chose the suburban location because parking is free.

In addition to Purim, West Virginia University has been off this week, meaning that lots of people are out of town. I didn't have signs or bumper stickers to give out. I tried to make a WANTED! poster with my picture in the middle, but I couldn't get the picture on it correctly. I finally asked Joe to do it, and then it was good. The event, called "Premiere!" because Joe doesn't like sports metaphors like "kick-off" was advertised by the local Democratic Party. I advertised with G2H2, the gay men's group we go out with every month, several Facebook groups for local activists, my main Facebook and Twitter feeds (mostly people who don't live here), and the LGBT Equity Commission at WVU, of which I am a member. We planned for sixty people.

We had more like forty people. They ate one-third of the food I ordered. I collected enough cash to pay for about three-quarters of the event. The local tax assessor came, two women from the Democratic central committee, two Bernie Sanders organizers, many people from temple, a woman from the LGBT Equity Commission, a parent whose son was in "Fiddler On The Roof" two years ago when I played the rabbi, and a few other local Jewish or gay or political friends.

Everyone got along well, people mingled and had a good time. I played "We're All In This Together" from "High School Musical" on Joe's boombox as the intro to my speech.

I spoke about how Joe and I came to Morgantown and were instantly accepted, how I teach at OLLI, and how Joe has become the go-to person for Jewish knowledge in eleven counties in West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. We were told that Morgantown was the college town liberal bubble in West Virginia.

How is it then, I asked, that Republicans could grab four of our five local seats in the legislature, and vote for bills to allow home schooling by parents with less than a high school education with no reporting requirements, support charter schools, vote for a "religious freedom" law to allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT people and "right-to-work" to bust up unions, and a bill to allow anyone to carry a concealed weapon without any training or a permit despite the fact that law enforcement throughout the state opposed this. It's easy to attack this year's legislature this year. They did not pass a budget or fix the state's hopelessly non-maintained road system. Instead they passed a law mandating that state business be conducted in English (no one had proposed anything else) and that welfare recipients be drug-tested if the worker thinks they look suspicious, a lawsuit against the state waiting to happen.

I pointed out that the other Democratic candidates were sticking to a pro-union agenda, but were afraid to talk about social issues like guns, God, gays and abortion. I suggested that they lost last time because people were not inspired by their caution. I came out strongly for gay rights, women's reproductive rights, and sensible gun regulation. People said I spoke well, and had nice clothes.

People have said in the past "Too bad you didn't get to use all that acting training." Acting training helped me as a teacher, a politician and a public speaker.

I'm happy with how my event went. I proved to myself that I do have a base here in Morgantown, people I like and respect. At this point, I will probably come in sixth and not qualify for the general election. But like that other old Jew, Bernie Sanders, one of my role models, don't count me out yet.

Joe showed up late at the event after tutoring bar mitzvah kids. We packed up the five trays of food we didn't get to, and walked out to a giant, beautiful Purim full moon. The Chabad rabbi in town called Joe and invited us to hear the megillah last night, and come to dinner tonight. It feels good to be invited, but it was already late last night when we left Black Bear, and we have plans tonight. Still, even the Orthodox rabbi in town is our friend. On Purim, it is a commandment to bring food packages to the poor. We called a local homeless shelter, and they agreed to take our four trays of gourmet wraps and one of veggies and hummus. Thus we fulfilled, without thinking of it in advance, one commandment of Purim.

Purim is also the anniversary, on the Jewish calendar, of my mother's death in 2003. I thought of her as I was dressing to go to the event last night, about how important it was to her, no matter what, to dazzle people with her stylish clothes. We got home after nine, lit a candle in her memory, and despite the lack of ten people normally required, I recited the Kaddish prayer.

Here are the pictures;