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‘Out on the Independent Campaign Trail’

October 6th, 2008 · 3 Comments

An intriguing story was posted on Gather.com about Cathy Church’s campaign, who is running as an independent running for the prosecuting attorney position in Marquette County, Michigan. The piece was written by Church herself, and takes a kind-hearted look at the “David vs. Goliath”-like process of unseating an established incumbent as an independent.

An excerpt is posted below:

(Marquette County, Michigan) - We all have ideas of what it means to be a candidate for public office and how a campaign should be run.

I know I did before my name appeared on the General Ballot as an Independent candidate for the Marquette County Prosecuting Attorney position.

Candidates are those starched white shirts layered with spiffy red ties all wrapped up in custom made suits.

Campaigns are a seamless and effortless series of photo ops and fundraisers, where the candidate is always fashionably late and donors pay $100 or more per plate to patiently eat wilted lettuce while waiting for a personal appearance.

Get the picture? Well guess what? Those images are wrong. All wrong. I am a candidate.

No starched shirt here; hell, I can barely keep the red linen shirt carrying my embroidered name, Cathy C. Church and slogan Your Vote is Your Voice free of wrinkles for more than 5 minutes.
Do you know how hard it is to iron linen?

And how quickly it wrinkles? So far, half a dozen of my supporters have ironed this perpetually crinkled shirt on my kitchen counter.

I have no idea where the ironing board went. I run my campaign. Nothing about it is effortless and the seams are more like fissures and crevasses.

Filed Under: Independents

3 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Mike Theodore // Oct 6, 2008 at 10:00 pm

    She seems like she knows what she’s doing…

  • 2 Ross Levin // Oct 6, 2008 at 10:16 pm

    Yup. She’s running a campaign on the scale she needs to, it seems, and she’s doing it in a way that people connect to. She’s not shooting for anything out of her league, and she’s doing it because she’s passionate about the issues. Not to mention, people know her around the community for being a great assistant prosecutor. Good for her.

  • 3 Ross Levin // Oct 8, 2008 at 5:33 pm

    Here’s the second installment:

    http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977468007&nav=Namespace

    Out on the Independent Campaign Trail #2 - Which way do we go? Which way do we go?
    October 04, 2008 07:34 PM EDT
    views: 7
    October 3, 2008
    By Cathy Church - Out on the Independent Campaign Trial #2

    Republic Township Community Services is having a 50th anniversary celebration all day long in the scenic, yet small town of Republic, MI - located 45 miles to our west.

    One hundred 32 x 48 signs are ready for pickup in Escanaba, MI - 60 miles to the south.

    Ads needs to be approved and paid for if they are going to make next week’s Action Shopper.

    Northern Michigan University is having a Homecoming Parade. Where are the bags of candy to pass out to the kids?

    We need 200 metal stakes and 400 zip ties to secure the signs to the poles.
    Simon and Cosmo are getting cranky.

    I need to order plane tickets for out of town family.

    Absentee ballot requests are flooding each of the 3 cities and 19 townships- how do I get them? By fax? The fax machine answers voice calls and ignores fax signals.

    The Churchmobile needs to go to the repair shop for four hours one day soon.
    TV commercials must be reviewed and authorized.

    A dear friend’s child is facing serious surgery.

    Victims are emailing saying they support the campaign.

    What is, and how do we get ‘tagged’ on Facebook?

    How is the letter campaign going?

    When and where and how do we plant all these signs?

    Team members want to know where we are going tomorrow. Are we going to take the

    Team’s dogs and rabbits to the Blessing of the Animals? Will they all get along during the ride to the church? Harvest dinner in Big Bay? Tailgate Party at NMU? Farmer’s Market? Church Bazaar?

    Come on, come on.

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