A Pragmatists's Approach to Gaining Elective Office

In the 80s, the book to read in Silicon Valley was "The Entrepreneur's Manual" (Chilton, 1977). The author, Dr. Richard M. White, Jr., a business school professor at Santa Clara University, provided a manual for starting and managing a successful business.

The book offered advice on every anticipated need from how to gain financing through to test a new product economically to how to motivate employees. It was filled with examples of ways to establish a sideline income to support a big project.

One example introduced a mother raising three young sons. Her big project was how to afford private schools, tutors, special lessons and college for the boys. She had room on the family property to raise chickens. The boys collected eggs. Each evening before dinner, the family spent an hour cracking eggs and pouring them into 40-inch cylindrical molds. During dinner and dishes, they boiled the eggs, and then cooled the cylinders in water tanks. They refrigerated the cylinders overnight for delivery the next day. Their restaurant customers found consistently large egg slices so appealing in salads that they averaged two cylinders a day, at $5 profit per cylinder to the boys' education fund.

Richard May's big project is to run for public office. His sideline is to own restaurants. You might think that May, as a field organizer for Barack Obama in five states, would have earned a cushy job, say in the border patrol. That isn't his style.

May made his mark locally as campaign manager for the increase in the county library levy that passed with 51.41 percent of the vote last fall. The memorable picture in that campaign was a little girl crying in front of a closed library. That little girl is May's daughter, Ruby.

About the time May let it be known he was planning to run for the state senate, he bought the Master's Blend cafe in Everson. The Lynden Journal applauded with a long article, and the Everson Nooksack Chamber of Commerce elected him their president. He also serves on a number of boards including the County Appeals Board and the Blaine Parks Board. He also works with Habitat for Humanity and Communities in Schools.

Recently, May added Cafe Caffe, across the Guide from Bellis Fair. It is in the Cascade Mall that also houses the Coldstone Creamery and American Eagle Outfitters with the big boot on the roof.

It is axiomatic that one restaurant is a 24/7 business. How could one person manage two while campaigning for office? May shrugs the question off. His college was chefs’ school and it could be that political organizers learn delegation and trust.

At the March 6 Demo Party “grassroots strategy session” in Blaine, I asked May what he had learned from working for Obama.

“Start early,” he said, adding that at the Lynden Fair in August he shook hands with 900 strangers.

His campaign literature mentions that he goes to church in Lynden, which may strike secularists as opportunistic But further on we learn that his mother earned a master's in theology and worked for her church for many years. Richard was an altar boy.

When Doug Erickson, arguably the strongest Republican in Whatcom County, announced he would run for the state senate, rather than for another term in the lower house, May was quick to sidestep, announcing he would run for Erickson's seat for the lower house in Olympia.

We, having worked for Obama in our precinct and being impressed by a young Obama organizer, were excited to learn that another organizer lived in Blaine and was running for state office. However, we were perplexed – actually pissed – to find no mention of Obama in May's literature or on his website, www.richardmay.us.

When he phoned to invite us to Cafe Caffe on St. Patrick's Day – “because I'm green” – May mentioned that a boyhood friend of the president would be speaking at the gathering. Dean Ando, now a labor organizer in the Tacoma area did tell about his friendship with “Barry” during their teenage years in Hawaii. That was at a preliminary gathering before the seven o'clock meeting.

Mr. Ando mentioned there is a picture of Obama and May standing together the night of the victory at the Iowa caucuses, but you won't find that picture on the May website. Instead, there are pictures of May with faces across the political spectrum including Tucker Carlson on the Right.

Jason Heck set us straight. In addition to teaching in the Communications Department at Western, he managed Ken Mann's winning County Council campaign. He is now managing the WTA levy campaign and helping May. Heck got us reading “The Political Brain, How the role of emotion is deciding the fate of the nation,” (Public Affairs, 2007). Author Drew Westen is a political psychologist who has studied how the brain reacts to conflicting stimulus.

This big book will take us time to digest and fully understand. Heck simplified by explaining how Dr. Westen and colleagues assembled 30 subjects after the 2004 presidential election, half declared they were for Bush, half for Kerry. The investigators read the subjects contradictory statements attributed to each candidate. Neither the Bush nor Kerry voters disputed the statements. The short of the example is that emotion trumps logic.

Scans find that sections of the brain controlling emotion are more powerful than the section that provides rational thought. Ergo, a pragmatic candidate wishing to influence undecided voters is presented without identity that might summon negative emotion.

Tom Hanks would be an example.

The theme of May's handout that will likely be followed by TV and print advertising is “I Listen, I Get It! Your legislator should ask what your priorities are...your concerns should shape policy, It's your state.

For those who wonder what May believes, we have:

“A smarter budget can preserve services without creating shortfalls;

“Quality education leads to prosperity;

“Total tax reform is better than just adding a state income tax.”

And there is a picture of May with State Auditor, Brian Sontag, “who exposed 90 million dollars in waste and corruption in Port of Seattle.”
Is there any brain in the 42nd Legislative District that will send negative neurons to these bromides?

In fairness, we should report that May is not all bland. On his website there is a video segment showing May challenging Erickson on his health care proposals and in his remarks at the St. Patrick's Day meeting, he acknowledged that a state income tax is a likely eventually.

He said he knows he has 40 percent and his opponent likely has 40 percent. It is the 20 percent in the middle that he's after.

What this pragmatist needs to gain the votes of the undecided is the reality of the coming campaign. It is as much about Whatcom County in 2010 as it is about Richard May.

ak

Once again, we seek your comments.

Changed policy on comments

In the past, we have declined to print comments from those who did not identify themselves.

But we've seen that most blogs do allow aliases and "anonymous" entries.

So, from now on, we welcome all comments. Use any name, including your own.

Bring 'em on.

Al & Ruth

Understanding the Tea Party Movement

Intrigued by the strength of the Tea Party in Whatcom County, which drew 800 members to Mount Baker Theater on Saturday evening, Feb. 20 – I passed the word that I wanted to talk to someone in the leadership.

Never mind that I am a self-described progressive – who walked our precinct for Obama and put up signs for Laurie, Carl and Dan in the last election.

When I was a freshman at a conservative church college – this was 1948 when Harry Truman was running for reelection – the head of the history and political science department fired two young professors for attending a CIO political action meeting. Their defense was that the union activity was a significant development in politics that behooved them, as political scientists and teachers, to understand the movement. (Truman, you may not remember, defeated Dewey in a giant upset largely because of union support.)

So, it is in this vein that I bring you this report, without distortion, of conversations with Randy Cross, who introduced himself on the phone as the president of the Whatcom Tea Party.

He said first that he and his cohorts are against the progressive aspects of the Republican and Democrat parties, “We need fiscal responsibility and states rights – bad things happen when good people don't stand up.”

He quoted the Tea Party's mission statement:
To reverse deficit spending and the concentration of power in central government in order to preserve states rights and individual liberty for future generations.

Cross emphasized that the focus of Tea Party is on “progressive” trends, defined by Dick Armey as, “Making people do what they would not do voluntarily."
Armey heads Freedom Works, the umbrella support organization for Tea Parties nationally, which boasts 800 thousand members.

“George Bush pushed some progressive ideas...John McCain is concerned about global warming and is for cap and trade,” Cross said.

I have read and heard comments that Tea Party members, most of whom are white, are aroused because Obama is black. After hearing Cross, I think their objection is to “change,” the big word in the presidential campaign.

“Progressives want to tell people how to live, they want to redistribute the fruits of my labor,” Cross said.

He quoted Thomas Jefferson, “When the government fears the people you have liberty, when the people fear the government, you have tyranny.” (If that seems absurd to you in the 21st century, talk the man who has a yellow, “Land Grab” sign on his property.)


Cross has been self-employed most of his life. First, he operated a business that distributed Amish art through 300 sales representatives who covered 27 trade shows a year. When imports destroyed that business, he conceived and developed Laser Point of Origin. That business, inscribing metal – think plaques – has been operating for 15 years. While the native art distribution was national, his present business gets most of its sales in Whatcom County.

For a dinner last Saturday night, honoring people who support military families, Cross and his wife donated 13 inscribed “Oscars.” For a refinery that wanted to recognize six thousand special workers during a turn-around, he put together a gift bag that included a t-shirt and laser inscribed water bottle.

A visitor to his studio is struck by a giant poster of Einstein and a row of books about cosmology. Cross said Stephen Hawking's “A Brief History of Time” changed his life. He pulled out a worn and highlighted copy that he said he's read 14 times. He has read more than 150 books on physics that he considers equal to a college degree.

Pointing to a small poster on the chronology of “The Big Bang,” Cross said, “Then God stepped back and let us run the universe.”

He attributes his political awareness and insight to his eight-year subscription to the Weekly Standard magazine.

Cross traces the formation of the Whatcom County Tea Party movement to February 2008, when friends decided to meet at the Five Columns restaurant. They expected five people. Forty showed up.

Last April 15, four thousand gathered across from Bellis Fair. Another demonstration is planned for this year's tax day.

National Republicans he approves of are Tom Coburn, Eric Canter, Mike Pense, Lamar Alexander, Lynn Cheney and Sara Palin.

In Whatcom County he approves of Pete Kremen and Sam Crawford. “Barbara Brenner--70 percent,” he said.

Locally, he is concerned about infringement on property rights, “our absolute right,” and the proposed WTA levy that he considers unnecessary – “WTA doesn't need that many empty buses running around.”

Cross does not see the Tea Party movement becoming a third party. “The intent is to reform Republicans from inside. Our role is to inform and educate, not endorse – let the voters decide.”

While he thinks there are members of the Whatcom Tea Party who are qualified for public office, he says that he has no interest in running.

ak