the day afterwards

Thanks to everyone who supported our campaign-- through voting, volunteering, and giving financially. Thanks especially to my campaign team-- Melanie Hughes, John Harbeson, and Cathy Carman (my little sister)-- for their hard work. Thanks to my parents for their bigtime financial support. We had a nice run, learned a lot, built up some name recognition, tweaked the debate a bit, and at the end, made both Hill and Sodrel sweat a bit!

We had hoped for 4-5% at the beginning-- and with 4.5% in hand, we're happy. We're also content since we ran a good race-- honorable, policy-oriented, and effective given the resources we had available to us. We spent 1/500th of the money they sent in total. A nice votes per dollar ratio! That said, with the recent polls showing us (twice) at 5%, I had begun to dream bigger-- hoping we could get to upper-single digits or double-digits. If so, I think our campaign could have been a national story-- not just good for us, but also good to stimulate discussions about the roles of negative ads and third parties. Maybe next time!

In case you haven't played with the numbers-- or in case you run into people who speculate incorrectly-- I was not a spoiler in the race. My vote total exceeded the vote margin-- but only slightly. Sodrel would have needed more than 98% of my votes to edge Hill-- and as the polling indicated, I may well have taken more votes from Hill than Sodrel, keeping the race closer than it would have otherwise been.

It's not a done deal, but we plan to run again in 2008. If so, I look forward to a more effective campaign-- better organized with stronger resources. Until then, I'm sure we'll stay busy doing other things.

Grace and peace to you and yours, eric