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.

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