18 Years Old And Running For Office
The day of the election started early for Charlie as he visited with those out having breakfast at Hy-Vee
Editors Note: The views and opinions expressed in this editorial are not necessarily the views or opinions of Osky News
Oskalooosa, Iowa- On July 11th, 2011 I woke up with a bit of excitement in my system. For me, it was the day that I had been looking forward to for several weeks. It was the day that I planned on turning in my nomination petitions. Around 9:45 AM, my campaign manager and I walked into the School District office and filed my nomination petitions to become a school board candidate. After we were done there, we went down to Smokey Row where we began to get the campaign going.
As far as I was concerned, the second I turned in my nomination petitions, the campaign had begun. We started to look at webspace as I set up my campaign Facebook page. Later on in the week, I received the voter records that I had requested. I began to organize them the way that I thought would work best: in several different spreadsheets according to director district number. I messed up a few times, but several hours later, I had finally organized my spread sheets by director district number, and alphabetically. At that point, I felt that all we could do was wait.
I had already started to receive some campaign contributions, so I had set up my bank account and filed the necessary paperwork with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Committee. By the end of July, I had placed an order with the Victory Store for yard signs. It was also at this time where I began to hear rumors that I would be facing a challenge from the incumbent.
I was afraid to believe these rumors because I was not sure if I had prepared enough for a hard campaign. On August 5th, the rumors were confirmed. I found out that I would be running for the school board opposed. Obviously I was a little angry because the person who had filed to run had waited until the last couple of hours in the filing period before filing. I didn’t let that get me down too much as I started to prepare for a stressful month. That evening, my campaign manager printed off my fundraising letters and envelopes for the mailing. We purchased postage the next day. On the Sunday after the filing period had passed, my mom and I spent several hours stuffing, addressing, and stamping envelopes.
Charlie Comfort stands in the Mahaska County Auditors office shortly after the rsults were announced Tuesday evening
I had worked hard on my letter and I was very hopeful that they would be effective. In addition to where I stood on the issues, I had asked people to attend my campaign fundraising event to be held later on in mid-August. Within a few days of the letters being mailed out, donations started to pour in. I was blown away by all the support I was receiving. We were received more donations than I had expected. As a result, we planned a major two week ad blitz the last two weeks before the election. We knew that those two weeks would be critical. Rather than spreading our ads out evenly throughout the whole campaign, we decided to do two weeks straight of ads on the two local radio stations, as well as the traditional print newspaper.
Two weeks before the election, there was a candidates’ forum. Of the four races listed on the ballot, mine was the only contested one. In my particular race, my opponent did not show up. A lot of people felt that this could only help me. I did not bring any notes to the forum. I felt that that had hurt me but some of the people who had watched the debate felt that it helped me because I had not read off of a paper the whole time. After the forum was over, I felt that I had done an awful job at responding. My campaign manager and I felt that I had earned about a C for my delivery and response. A lot of the people who were watching the debate felt that I did a “very good job.” I will never know if they were just saying this to make me feel better, or if they really felt I had done a good job.
Originally when I had planned out my campaign, I had planned on having a good group of volunteers out making calls and hitting the doors. Things were not going quite as planned as I only had few volunteers making calls and only I had gone to the doors. I was nervous that this was going to hurt me, but I turned out to be wrong. By this time, I had placed about 100 yard signs and had about 4 volunteers making calls. I expected that by the end of the campaign, my campaign would have made around 400 calls. The next few weeks of the campaign flew by. Before I knew it, it was the weekend before the election.
On the Saturday right before the election, I woke up bright and early and met my campaign manager at Hy-Vee where we had coffee and doughnuts with the voters. I was completely surprised when I found out that nearly everyone that came and went that day, said they planned to vote for me. After we were done at Hy-Vee, we went over to Smokey Row and did the same thing. The response wasn’t quite as good but I was still pleased. After we were done at Smokey Row, I walked around the square with my manager and shook hands with people. I had been handing out fliers about me all morning and I continued to hand out fliers. Again, the response was very positive for me.
On Election Day, something unexpected happened. Earlier in the morning, we had had one more coffee time at Smokey Row before the polls opened. The last thing my campaign manager had said to me before I left to head off to my classes at William Penn University, was “are you ready to win this thing?” I started to feel very optimistic. When I arrived at class, my professor spoke to us for a few minutes and then dismissed us. When I walked out of the building, I received a disturbing text message. The message said that the local print newspaper had run a story on the front page about my opponent donating his time to fix up an old stadium in our town. I was very upset and I called them to let them know what they had done was wrong.
They apologized and offered to do a story about me later on in the week, and I initially said yes to that offer. I felt stabbed in the back and figure that this would help me shake off that feeling a bit. However, after thinking about it some and talking to my manager, I decided that the damage had been done, and that a story about me wouldn’t help the election out at all. When I was done with classes for the day, I went and picked up my campaign manager and his wife and we went off to vote. As we walked into the polling location, I was told that turnout was high. This made me feel better considering what had been published earlier. Later on that evening, as a way to thank my volunteers, the campaign bought pizza and pop and had a get together. We ate and then my manager and I went off to the courthouse to wait on the results. We walked in at 8:00 PM, right as the polls were closing.
At 8:30 PM the Deputy County Auditor announced the results that I was hoping for. I had won the election with 434 votes. My opponent received 315 in what I would call a historic election.
