Old Dog, New Tricks: On the Campaign Trail.

~ Laura

With a fist full of flyers and door hangers, I smiled at the NEST doorbell in case anyone was looking. A young woman with a chubby toddler in her arms answered the door. I immediately went into my spiel. “Hi, Laura McKenna. I’m running for Board of Education this November,” and handed her my highly photoshopped campaign flyer.

After a quick glance at the flyer, she said, “I’m trying to get him to poop.” 

The toddler looked at me and blinked. His blink said, “there is absolutely no way that I’m going to poop on that scary potty. I’m going to keep it all inside me for three days.” 

Last spring, I decided to do something totally new, something scary. I decided to run for office in my town. It’s been a MASSIVE learning curve. I’ve learned about the cost of lawn signs (errors were made here), the steps needed to get Facebook to run political ads, the absolutely necessary campaign finance forms, the best way to give a three minute speech, and more. Like Madonna, I like to reinvent myself, so here I am at the tail end of my 50s, doing something totally new.

Read more at Apt. 11D, the newsletter

Published by Laura

12 thoughts on “Old Dog, New Tricks: On the Campaign Trail.”

  1. Good luck! I have a friend who ran twice for state rep and he also loved the door knocking part of the campaign. It gave him a sense of what people were really going through – lots of poverty and isolation in our rural area, which is easy to forget if you live “in town” and talk mostly to people right here. He did really well compared to other Democrats in the region, but lost twice. It was a bummer for him and for all of us who worked the campaigns, but it was interesting.

    I have several friends who have run for school board; it’s competitive here but maybe not quite so competitive as where you are. I believe some years there have been single-digit margins between the cluster of winning candidates and the losing ones, so every vote counts!

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      2. Sorry about the race! I hope in the end you felt like it was worth it. My friend who ran twice for state rep and lost – after a really, really hard fight, lots of door to door work – was able to transition into some related nonprofit work. Hope you can get some rest now!

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      4. Sorry about the election and hope you enjoyed the campaign. Also, hope the winner wasn’t a “Mom’s for Liberty” candidate.

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  2. I knew Nests existed, because once my sister-in-law scared the shit out of me with one when I didn’t know they existed, but until 2020 I had no idea that close to half the houses have them.

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  3. An off topic psa: you should be able to get down on the ground and stand up. I was recently driving with my sister, and something happened under the car. I had to help her up checking underneath the car. She’s older than me, but do your body weight exercises. Really. This is important.

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