A beginner's campaign (post 1)

I filed today as a candidate for a city council office. I don't think I have a snowball's chance of winning and would probably make a lousy councilman if I did. What I do hope to do is a) get an insider's view of what running for office is like, b) use the platform as an opportunity to make the off-year elections more visible, and c) just have some fun in a performance theater sort of way.

I hope to log my experiences here for future reference by myself or perhaps others.

Filing itself was pretty painless. Fill out a simple form and plop down your C-note and you're on your way. The County Auditor provides a nice information packet that explains the legalities of running for office and the PDC gives you a CD of their electronic financial disclosure and reporting program. If you are not going to be receiving any large donations or spending much money you don't have to do the PDC thing at all. But heaven help you if take a big donation later on and don't have the reporting mechanism all set up. I don't plan to run big bucks but for the purpose of the exercise I'm going to set up a special checking account and everything just as if I were.

My campaign is going to be a completely unserious one in the spirit of Pat Paulsen and Mike the Mover with homage to the style of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I intend to be completely uninhibited in what I say along the way because I'm not in it to win. My slogans will be something like, "Don't be stupid, don't vote for me!", or "Don't elect a clown like me, vote for a real candidate". The idea is to thoroughly bury tongue into the cheek.