Confessions of a Former Dumba$s

I don’t look back on my 20s with a lot of fondness. I wish I did. I hope most of you do. I mean, on the surface it’s a great time to be alive: there’s no arm flab yet, no wrinkles around our eyes, no grey in the hair. The things I spend hours on now to just “maintain,” like arm strength and overall stability (trying to watch me do some of the strength exercises meant to help with that is hilarious – the Leaning Tower of Pisa has nothing on me!), but that was all taken for granted when I was in my 20’s. It wasn’t my body that was the problem, although, like a lot of women, I thought it was, but that’s a whole other topic. No, it was the fact that I was a total dumbass. And an opinionated one at that. So, not only was I wrong a lot of the time, but I was also steadfast in my wrongheadedness. I must have been insufferable. I have sometimes marveled that I made it out of that decade. But stumble out of it I did. If I look back on it at all, it’s to appreciate that my 20’s taught me a lot about what not to do to successfully navigate modern life. One of those things is how I participate in politics. Specifically, local politics.

In the book I’m currently shopping around to agents, I speak to how I believe I came to my political belief system, and that happened back when I was still living at home in Montana. That part of my worldview has never really changed. I was told, as many of us who grew up leaning left probably were, that I would become more conservative as I got older. Well, now at retirement age, I think it’s safe to say that’s never going to happen. If anything, I am a bit more liberal, having moved away from a very conservative state like Montana and been exposed to issues I never considered in my teens. But where I have changed is that in my 20’s I didn’t bother much with local politics. I voted in the “major” elections: presidential and congressional, even gubernatorial, but skipped over the “down ballot” races. In other words, I wasn’t interested in judicial seats, city council races, or anything at the county level. I haughtily thought that I didn’t care about living in Austin, so I didn’t care about who ran its government. I would participate in the “important” elections that placed people in seats that mattered to where I wanted to live, which was practically anywhere but hot, humid Texas. Don’t send me hate mail about that POV; remember that’s my dumbass 20-something self talking there.

Wow, right? The positions that probably impacted me the most on a day-to-day basis were the ones I thought I was too busy to care about.

What changed me was my boss at the time, but in a way you might not expect. He meddled. One election- I can’t tell you precisely the year, but mid-80’s, which was a very different time when there weren’t many guardrails on how men in power could act toward their subordinates- so I was in my mid-20’s. Shortly before a local election, he came around and handed each of us a sheet listing the candidates he wanted us to vote for. He didn’t really explain his reasoning; it was just a regal command that we weren’t supposed to question, simply obey. I was plugged in enough to know the names on the paper, and they were all conservative Republican candidates. I didn’t say anything, just kept the list, memorized it, and went to vote that election day, casting my vote for the opposition to every name he’d listed.

What he taught me was that local elections are of the utmost importance. Or else he wouldn’t have pressured his entire staff to vote a certain way. They impact local business, which I’m sure is why my boss, as a business owner with commercial real estate holdings in downtown Austin, was endorsing the individuals he did, but they also impact citizens’ day-to-day lives in large ways and small: when the bus runs, how our trash gets collected, street repairs, tax rates- it goes on and on. Even if I wasn’t thrilled with living in Texas, I did live there, and everything the local government worked on impacted me. I should have a say in it. Perhaps more importantly, I have an obligation to my neighbors to work for the best government possible for all of us. I didn’t miss any election after that. I even once voted for a Republican I knew for a local office, which would probably have shocked the people who knew me. But I thought she was the best candidate for the position.

Yet it’s not enough to participate in those elections; we need to know who those candidates are and what they stand for. Sometimes that’s the harder part in some of the local races where there’s not a lot of money to spend on flashy campaigns and rallies. I find the judicial races particularly challenging to learn about candidates. It’s easier now than it was in the 80’s with the internet, but the trick is to try and filter out what’s real versus what is spin and misinformation. I found a non-profit site that lists candidates running based on my address that is helpful: Vote411. Of the sites I’m aware of, it was the most up-to-date and easiest to use. I also rely on the information my party disseminates on local races and candidates, and I pay attention to whom they endorse and why. I do engage with the candidates when they canvass door-to-door, which I realize opening doors to strangers in today’s day and age can be risky, but that’s how I met and learned about my district commissioner. You can tell a lot about a person when you’re looking them in the eye. So even if you don’t want to open your door to solicitors, find out where they will be speaking and go so you can meet them face-to-face. If you have a local party committee, they will invite candidates to speak, and even if you can’t make those meetings, they often will send recaps via email or post them on their website.

In short, it can take a bit of work to learn who the people behind the names are, but it’s well worth it when there’s a blizzard, and you rely on their governing of your township to make sure the streets get plowed.

Take it from a former – hopefully anyway - dumbass: all politics are important!