This past Wednesday, I was invited by the Republican Party to come and speak to them about my candidacy. The party is struggling in town ... so much so that they are running no candidates for the town council or school committee seats that are up for grabs. Granted, the school committee seats are non-partisan, but everyone knows who is tied to which party. Anyway, they were pretty much hoping to hear from the candidates to see who they might be interested in voting for. I decided it was a pretty good opportunity to get out there and meet people and campaign. It also was a beer and dynamite (kind of a spicy sloppy Joe) dinner.

Ironically, there were only two of us there who are running for school committee. One of them is the fiancé of the Chairwoman of the local Democratic Party. She came too. He went to speak first. He did OK, though he is not a big public speaker. I think he made a mistake when he said that improvements to education should be picked up with funding by the federal government. It is not that I disagree ... heck ... No Child Left Behind is a under-/unfunded mandate from the federal government that states and localities have been struggling to pay for since its inception! You just don't say that to Republicans, though! They are all about small government and budget control! He didn't get any questions.

I was able to follow up. I gave my first (and actually my last) official stump speech before a crowd. I have to admit I was really nervous, and a lot of it came about as a result of the woman's call the night before. She just sort of threw me, and a part of me wondered if I was walking into a lion's den like Daniel in the Bible. Of course, it didn't help that I have horrible laryngitis from a cold I am getting over.

Anyway, I started by thanking them for having me and also for their needing to strain to even hear me speak. I then segued into talking about why I was running since that is the question I always get. That was sort of a combo of the fact that I was raised to give back to the community and my background in youth literacy, education, and management skills because of work and teaching experience. I finished up by saying that my goal was to do the best that I could to include the educational environment in the town for our children while trying to keep costs down in this difficult economic period and that I thought the way to do that was to turn to the community for more than just money, but also for partnerships rather than keeping the school department an organization that only looked inward for solutions.

I was surprised to get two questions. One was about my stance on the teachers' contract dispute, and the other was related to the fact that the sitting school committee reinstituted a D grade (65-69), which many saw as lowering the standards for our kids.

From the reactions I saw in their faces and the fact that a number of them came over to shake my hands, I think I might actually have won a few votes in the crowd, which is pretty exciting.

It turned out to be a pretty good experience, and it helped rebuild my confidence after the call from the polite bigot.