Officially a Candidate

A trip to the city-county building today confirmed that I'm officially a candidate with 183 signatures. All of the legwork with hot, sweaty days knocking on doors paid off. Not only meeting people and hearing their concerns and thoughts, but with a candidacy confirmation.

The next step, the campaign, sounds equally as challenging, since none of this is remotely familiar, despite having read numerous books and studies about social movements and political sociology.

Since it is feeling more real, I checked out a book from the public library, "Mayor of Castro Street," by Randy Shilts. He tells the story of Harvey Milk, who won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. I thought the biography would give me insight not only into city politics, but being an out, gay city politician.

I soon hope to arrange a meeting with my two competitors to get a sense of what the next 4 months has in store, and ideally, arrange a public debate between us, so the public can get a sense of who we are, what we think is important, and how we might differ in our approaches to city politics.