Like, fine.

 It’s Wednesday, November 4. Yesterday, if this was a normal election season, in a normal year, in a more normal political climate, we would know who our next President of the United States will be. 

But we don’t know the answer to that yet and we probably won’t know for days, weeks, or months. Instead, Americans across the nation are left with the results of their local and state elections to ponder how these decisions will affect their day to day lives. 

Starting last November, I was a member of a regional campaign for the Colorado House of Representatives. Our candidate was my friend Colin, a local lawyer who works with his wife, an immigration attorney, in our small Colorado tourist town. He’s a democrat. I feel like that doesn’t actually need to be said (if anyone has read anything else I’ve ever written that concerns politics, you could probably guess). 

Over the holidays in 2019, I started helping to plan and organize events for Colin. I was not particularly good at it. This is something I have no qualms about admitting, considering I threw a holiday gathering with very little turn out, something I attribute to my limited knowledge of event coordination (limited = zero). I mean VERY little. Let me clarify: the guest list ultimately amounted to a couple of friends and a couple of guys I’ve slept with (sorry, Mom). We gathered a lot of donated toys to distribute to a local organization, though - many more toys than attendees, I should add. 

I offered to drop the toys off the next time I was near the church where they were headed. I’m a volunteer, after all, so I thought I should do some work. Colin decided to bring them himself, and I came along. When we arrived, the very friendly organizer gave us a full tour of their facilities and chatted with Colin briefly about his campaign. I honestly had no idea what we were still doing there. I didn’t think a church organization in New Castle, Colorado had any interest in what a democrat had to say. 

I helped organize another event, too. This one was (intentionally) attended by even less people, I think. I say intentionally because it was held at an eatery in one of the smaller, more conservative towns of our district, and I used my knowledge of the local clientele from my nearby bartending job to badger a few rancher-types into talking to Colin. I was nervous. I expected them to refuse to listen to him over their coffee and pastries. But they didn’t. I watched him engage in several animated conversations that morning with people that I (and he) knew would definitely vote for him - just as soon as hell froze over. 

We visited local fire stations. I was just waiting for a fireman to tell us he was a tried and true Trump supporter who intended to vote red straight down the ballot, but no one did. Colin had a constructive conversation with an assistant chief (perhaps sweetened by the pastries we delivered), who even agreed to a photo that we were able to later use in online campaign materials. This was going great. We talked excitedly about future campaign events that could come in the Spring. 

That’s right, the Spring of 2020! 

I went from Event Coordinator to Social Media Manager. Nobody was allowed to gather, nor did they really want to, with the risk of Covid 19 looming. Colin recorded one minute videos (ignoring my regular, millennial-style suggestion to “change his angle”) on his phone and we posted them to his internet followers. He continually expressed a message of hope, solidarity, and resilience. Local Republicans began agitating to open businesses and reject mask ordinances. We stayed socially distanced. We posted instead of gathering. Colin made his campaign volunteers our own name tags. I continued to have absolutely zero idea of what I was doing. 

Then we got signs. In the middle of the summer, Colin announced that he had campaign signs and asked me if I had any friends who wanted them. I didn’t. Most of my friends didn’t have yards, or weren’t political enough for a campaign sign, or their landlords said no, or, in the case of my coworker, had a “wife that would kill them”. I took two. I nailed one to the outside of my vinyl patio door, stuck one in the ground in front of my rented condo, and patiently waited for the homeowners association to confiscate them. (They didn’t, by the way. I have no understanding of how HOAs work. At all. But my Colin signs and my other county democrat signs are still out there). 

I started to get excited. I wrote long, impassioned letters to the editor about why Colin was right for our district. He was running on improved mental health services, diversifying our energy industry, increased funding for education, and affordable access to healthcare. In my opinion, none of that is objectionable or arguable. Colin, his wife Erin, and I crafted posts for his campaign page on Facebook, expounding on how he would work for everyone in our district, and listen to all their concerns. Colin signs popped up all over the county. I kept spotting them in unexpected places.  He answered messages. I answered messages. We got back to the community when they asked questions. He was polite, intelligent, likable. He gathered endorsements, donations, and support. 

And trolls. For the first time in my life, I experienced firsthand (by being notified constantly on Facebook) the vitriol that people will spew at their local community members simply because there is a (D) in front of their name. Colin was described as a communist and a socialist. He was accused of being ANTIFA. Of ruining America. He got emails describing just what would happen to the state of Colorado and eventually the whole country is he was elected. One man compared him to a “human fart” (which I found greatly amusing but also had to delete, as we suspected the commenter was drunk). In all honesty, I don’t know how Colin got past this stuff (a conservative who did not like my opinions about another local race called me “stupid” tonight in a public forum and I almost cried). 

But he did, and that’s why he was a good candidate. Colin truly believes he can listen to the concerns of the people who attack him from their keyboards and work to help create policies and changes that will help them. He repeatedly stated in conversations, and debates against his opponent, that he intended to work for ALL the people of our district (which apparently also means the people who think he’s a human fart). 

I haven’t said anything about Colin’s opponent, because there isn’t much to say. As I found myself explaining multiple times throughout the campaign, he is “like, fine.” He’s a genuinely nice man, who inspires no excitement and wants no change. He won the election by telling his constituents that he would double down on preserving our gas, oil, and coal industries. He’s also quite a bit older than both me and Colin (so he likely won’t be around to see the day that all of those things run out in this district, creating an employment void that could cripple the economy in some of our counties). He doesn’t support any variety of statewide healthcare reform and is on board with removing the ACA. Cool, bro. 

So if you’ve read this far then you already know how it turned out. In spite of committing nearly all of his weekends (for several months leading up to the election) to speaking at outdoor events, walking through towns with other county candidates holding campaign signs, and (most exciting for me) amassing more than 500 Facebook followers, Colin didn’t win. The seat went to “like, fine” guy, who will probably spend the next two years doing exactly nothing to explicitly harm or benefit the people of this district. 

It’s not fair, and all over the nation right now, there are people like Colin (and me) thinking the same thing. We worked hard. We CARED. We put in all this effort. He was clearly the more driven, informed, and concerned candidate. In our home county alone, two smart and motivated women lost their races to two Republican men - one who has held his seat for seven terms and prioritizes oil and gas, and another who I know nothing about, other than to say he also strikes me as “like, fine”. 

Colin and his team ran a well crafted, complete, and thoughtful campaign (if I do say so myself). Taking into account the time we are living through, I don’t see how we could have done much better. His wife, myself, and all of our friends are incredibly proud of him for the effort he put forth.

When the presidency (likely) swings the way of Joe Biden in (hopefully) a couple of days, I’ll be very happy. I can not describe how much I want to never have to listen to or worry about the actions of Donald Trump ever again. He’s a dangerous man and has no business being in charge of a board meeting, let alone our country. But Biden being our president isn’t going to fix this issue that seems to have been a problem across multiple states and innumerable races this election cycle. 

If I have learned anything about political campaigning over the last year (besides that I should probably figure out a way to get more people to campaign events - and no, I don’t mean by sleeping with more of them), it’s that you can work your butt off, that people will listen to you, that you can have exciting ideas that will benefit your community - and you can still lose. Sometimes people don’t want change. Sometimes they’re okay with “like, fine”. 

Are you okay with it?