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In case anyone was wondering why more good people don't run for office, I'm going to share a big reason that goes beyond "it's difficult" with you all right now: I've been to three events today. At the first, I had three different people share stories of personal tragedy. 1/
2/ They recounted losing family members, jobs, and livelihoods, thanks in no small part to sitting legislators unwilling to support the working class. At the second, I ran into some of those very legislators, who were patting themselves on the back for being such great people.
3/ When they got around to congratulating one another for all the "great things" they'd done to support Tennessee schools, right after a session where they voted to remove $300m from public schools, I had to leave. It was disgusting, but my day didn't end there.
4/ I had one other event, during which I encountered another story. A man who risked losing much of his pension, and with it faced losing his house. He turned to another of the legislators from the earlier event, whose office promptly did exactly nothing to help.
5/ These were just a few of my experiences today alone. The campaign trail is full of exactly these exchanges, and I share them to get to my point, which is: being a candidate is incredibly taxing for people with any measure of empathy.
6/ We hear these stories all day, and we know it's only our good fortune that separates us from their exact scenario, and we then have to turn around and ask those same exact people to donate anything they can to help us have a fighting chance at providing them...
7/ better representation. Someone who actually does care and understand their suffering, and will fight for them. Because while money doesn't win elections alone, they can't be won without it. And because fighting for the little guy means forsaking big money...
8/ we have to ask the people who we already know are bearing an unfair burden to bear that much more, all for a gamble that we just might be able to make a difference for them. It always, always feels bad to have to do that. But we must, to keep operating.
9/ Because campaign staff, software licenses, paraphernalia, and everything else from pens to gas cost money. And that's not coming from the people who benefit most from the status quo. So we put on our best faces, talk about all the things we want to do...
10/ to help their suffering, then turn around and ask the very same people who just told us they were living paycheck to paycheck for money. And that is a huge weight to shoulder, to know every single person who donates even $1 is usually giving everything they possibly can,
11/ all in the hopes that you win against the odds and can actually go represent them as they deserve, and provide some improved quality of life that they desperately need.
12/ TL;DR: What stops us from having more good candidates isn't just red tape, it's also that being an empathetic person is very difficult to reconcile with doing what needs to be done to be a winning candidate.
Adding one more to this thread, to thank everyone for the amazing response. Many people only see the front end of being a candidate, and I thought it was important that more people get a look behind that curtain to help understand, and I'm happy to see it's done exactly that.
