Before the Blog: Petitioning

In January, I got a call from the political coordinator for the BlueState Gay and Lesbian Alliance, asking me to run for delegate to the Democratic National Convention. BS-GALA was trying to get at least one out LGBT delegate candidate slated for each presidential candidate in each congressional district.

After thinking about it a bit, and talking it over with Shrike, I decided to go for it. Based on a brief resume and bio, along with an endorsement from BS-GALA, I was slated by the Howard Dean campaign and approved as a delegate candidate.

At that point, to get onto the ballot, a candidate has about 3 weeks in which to gather 250 signatures from registered Democrats within the our Congressional District.

This part turned out to be a lot harder than it sounded. There was an ice storm in our area the first week, making it impossible to go door-to-door. In the second and third weeks, I knocked on lots of doors (armed with lists of registered Democrats), visited three gay bars, stood in front of grocery stores, attended the county Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, crashed a LGBT club meeting at an area university and ended up with about 150 signatures.

Obviously I was pretty disappointed, and it was little consolation that both the political director and the folks from the Dean campaign told me that I had worked really hard, gone "beyond the call of duty," etc.