A Sign of the Times (or several) is on Our Porch

The leftover lawn signs for our losing candidate are on our porch.

We had a chance today when the garbage folks came but we didn’t move fast enough. So, the signs still lean against the wall, about twenty of them. If we’d gotten them all planted in yards before the election on August 13th, would the outcome have been different?

Nope.

We had a great candidate. Young guy, attorney for a nonprofit, health care advocate, and also very personable, good listener, good speaker. And – this is what’s really important in today’s local elections – he knocked on every door in our very large Assembly district at least twice. But he was running against an incumbent. Not a really popular incumbent but an incumbent, nonetheless.

But he had what turned out to be a fatal flaw. A three-year resident of Milwaukee, he’d not voted in three recent, very important, elections – for Governor, U.S. Senator, and Wisconsin Supreme Court. We didn’t know this at the beginning of the campaign, no one did. The incumbent searched voting records, which anyone can do in Wisconsin, and found that our guy hadn’t voted. And, boy, did the incumbent ever make hay from that discovery.

It was mortifying for us, my husband and me, because we’re uber voters and we’d been very public about our support for the new guy, parting ways with incredulous longtime friends. How could we not support the super-progressive, hardworking incumbent? We had our reasons, good ones. But here we were, with our necks stuck way out, supporting a challenger who hadn’t voted in really big, important elections and, maybe worse, hadn’t told anyone. So, we thought, should we hang with him or bail out?

We stuck with him. We figured everyone is flawed, although we really didn’t like this particular flaw and honestly thought less of our guy for not voting. That said, he was way better than the other guy. Not even close.

But he lost and we still have his signs. We turn our attention to another election, for which I have a brand-new sign in the yard. The beat goes on. Democracy.