Either I do this all the way, or I don’t do it at all. There is no version of this campaign where I run a careful little race, lose by eight points, and feel good about how respectful I was on the way down.
I’m running for Congress in Tennessee’s 5th District. The primary is August 6. And I’m going big, or I’m going home.
Going big means I’m not going to cosplay a politician for the next ten weeks. I’m not going to run the same campaign Democrats have always run – good positions, careful tone, the standard list. That campaign works fine as a campaign. People vote for it. It wins races. I’m just not interested in running it and hoping that this time, somehow, winning it adds up to something different. I’m getting off that merry-go-round. I’m looking at this whole thing in a brand new light.
I am also not playing by the standard rules. I am not going to pretend to be virtuous or sell you a story about how justice always prevails. My tactics have already been called out – and that’s fine. You should know up front that I plan to use every tool at my disposal. No one gets a medal for taking the moral high ground when they lose.
I’m also not going to go after other Democrats. The fights Democrats run on are the right fights. Healthcare. Affordability. Ethics. Public schools. I want every one of them. The problem was never that we were on the wrong side. We’ve been on the right side, we’ve won elections being on the right side, and it still hasn’t moved the needle – because the system is built so it can’t.
You can win on healthcare and still watch every real bill die in the Senate or come out gutted by the drug lobby. You can win on housing and still get outspent by the developers and landlords on every fix that would actually lower the rent. Being right isn’t the missing piece. The rigged machine underneath is.
So I’m not going to run a campaign that pretends otherwise. I’m ready to get in the mud and do the real work that should have been done a long time ago. My top priority – the thing at the very top of the list, before any of the rest – is tearing the machine down and rebuilding it. Term limits. The stock-trading ban. The lobbying revolving door. The gerrymander. The money in politics.
Fix those, and the fights we keep losing finally become winnable. Skip them, and we’ll be standing in the same spot in 2030, on the right side of everything, still nowhere.
That’s the difference between going big and going home. I’d rather go big and lose than run one more campaign that wins and changes nothing.
So here’s the math, no spin on it.
I’ve got about $20,000 of personal runway and no donor class behind me. The already crowned Democrat in this race has roughly a million in the bank. To run the version of this that actually moves across 17 counties in the dead of a Tennessee summer, I need 10,000 people to give $25. That’s $250,000. You can watch where it goes. That’s the deal.
We’ve already raised 5k – so I know there are people out there who want someone like me to fight for them. I won’t disappoint you.
I’m not pretending the odds are good. They’re long. I’m running from a travel trailer, three days a week in Memphis and three days a week out in the counties most candidates never bother to visit.
I’m a divorced, childless, post-menopausal 52-year-old woman who is sick of everybody’s bullshit and has nothing to lose by telling you the truth. Turns out that’s a qualification, not a liability.
If you want the standard pitch, it exists, and you can go vote for it. If you want someone who’ll tell you why the standard pitch keeps coming up empty – and then go to Washington and be a stubborn pain in the ass about fixing the actual problem – that’s me, and this is the moment.
If you’re in, give at least $25 and share this with one person who’s ever sat on the couch and thought somebody should fight back.