What It Really Looks Like to Run for Office

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They say all politics is local. I say local politics is a lot of work. Also, it is affected by lying national politicos with lots of money, which is not fair, as well as local volunteers who help or won’t help.

I learned all this and more when I supported my husband, Peter, in a run for state representative in Colorado during 2024.  I’d like to offer a few observations.

Local politics is still important, and we’re glad Peter ran.  We’re not sorry that we both put in time, effort, and money for the project.  Even though Peter lost — no fun — we still think it was worth doing.

We both felt led to challenge the status quo of Democrats governing in Colorado.  We wanted to stand up for our state.  Also, we prayed about whether to do it or not, and we felt led to go ahead.

It was Peter’s campaign.  He did not want his district to go without a candidate for state representative in 2024, and so he stepped up to run.  He wanted me to be his communications person.  We were partners.

We hope that our efforts prove useful, added to the previous efforts of other candidates who tried and lost, too, so that a future Republican candidate may be boosted into office next election.

Lord knows we and our volunteers knocked enough doors and Peter talked to enough people.  Also, we distributed our literature to all those people, made thousands of phone calls, and paid to have tens of thousands of texts sent.  We wrote and placed radio ads.  We posted on social media and drove people to our website.

Here’s what happened with media. There were a couple of good eggs in the local alternative press who covered Peter’s race and what he had to say.  Most in the local legacy media leaned toward the Democrats and did not give him the time of day, which was not surprising.  We didn’t expect that some conservative media outlets would be unresponsive, too.  That was a disappointment.

Many media outlets missed out.  Peter was a good, knowledgeable candidate, and an honest one.  Also, when we were getting ramped up in the campaign, someone called him about a problem with a piece of legislation his opponent had sponsored.  Peter looked into it and found a legitimate problem — and corruption at its most basic level.  This had created a big mess for many people across the state.  Peter decided to support the people who were being hurt and to run on the corruption of the incumbent.  Turns out that all corruption in politics is local.

You can still read about this problem at Peter’s website, BoddieforColorado.com/Big-Backflow-Blunder.  Basically, the incumbent legislator was asked by a special interest to change a piece of legislation to bring that interest more business.  At the last moment, she obliged.  That special interest just happened to be her third biggest contributor.

 Hundreds of small businesses and individuals would potentially be crushed and municipal water suppliers statewide put at risk of public health violations.  It was a huge mess.

 We figured — and as a journalist, I knew — that people should know what their legislator had done.  Unfortunately, local press was largely unwilling to cover what we had found.  Why not?  Good question.  We thought it was important for voters to know about the corruption by the incumbent, so they could make a good choice to take her out and put in a representative who was not going to bow to special interests, but work for the people.  Maybe they believed the smears against all Republicans that have been going around for at least a decade.

The only way for us to get the story out was through a couple of interviews, one on radio and one online, about what the incumbent had done.  We were grateful to have that.  We also put the facts on the campaign website and drove people to it with radio ads.

Meanwhile, the Democrats started mailing flyer after flyer with lies about Peter.  They did the same about other candidates in our county. We were trying to state the truth about the incumbent.  They were publishing falsehoods and twisting the truth.

We only had $5,000 to send out one mailing to a part of our district, and that was our truthful literature telling why Peter would be a good legislator.  Turns out, a Democrat-supporting independent expenditure group spent over $200,000 to put out mailers and digital ads slandering Peter.  Their money came from corporations, unions, and special interests, many from out of state.  That was the worst part of the experience of running for office.  It made us feel helpless.

However, voters told us they were not fooled and that they voted for Peter because they hated the mailers, which also raised his name ID.  Nevertheless, we think the mailers might have been effective with Democrat-leaning unaffiliated voters, whose votes we needed.

The best thing about helping Peter run was to see his gift with people rise as he talked to individuals in our community.  He is an exhorter who inspires others and makes them feel as though they can be better, have better lives.  He was led to doors where he could help people with a listening ear and a warm heart.  It was a God thing.

Our volunteer corps for the campaign was small but mighty.  We had good volunteers, but we also encountered a spirit of apathy in Colorado.  No matter what Peter said or how he asked, repeatedly, most people wouldn’t help or support, though Peter tried to communicate that we had a chance to win the seat.  Lots were good at talking, though, or giving advice.  We certainly learned who our friends were.

That said, we had three women who knocked on door after door and really contributed.  Others invited people to their backyards for meet-and-greets.  We also had several enthusiastic financial supporters and friends.  There were some lukewarm supporters and more than one cynical bystander.  There were also a couple of bullies in the background who tried to cause trouble.  We tried to ignore them.

Leadership at the Colorado GOP and the county GOP made our bid for office harder by creating controversies to distract everyone, and by not really engaging with Peter’s race until the end.  Peter did better than they expected him to do by his diligence and hard work.

By the way, another foible of local politics is that leadership tends to judge a book by the cover.  A candidate is not what he looks like — or how much money he can bring in — as much as what his heart would tell you, if you could read it.  For example, would he do all he could to win?

We learned all this and more when my husband Peter stepped up to run for state representative in Colorado.  No regrets.  We are proud and happy that Trump won at the national level, but we still need to turn Colorado red again.

CS Boddie writes for Meadowlark Press, LLC.

Image: cagdesign via Pixabay, Pixabay License.