Comment on How does someone run for office in todays time without selling out? by seathesailor

Parent Post: How does someone run for office in todays time without selling out? · In Reply To

seathesailor · 5/8/2025, 1:03:29 AM · permalink

I ran for congress in 2022 with about a dozen other folks - mostly veterans and military family grassroots campaigns, I'd have to track them all down, but I believe Benancio Garcia is still running. We probably spoke to a million people over our collective campaigns... it was a lot of door knocking 😅  
  
Actually, the more local you go in politics the more dirty it is going to get. Federal elections are way more straight forward than state, municipal, and district. You have to think about it in terms of whose wheels are getting greased in terms of the incumbent you are challenging as a grassroots candidate - once you directly threaten a groups potential grants and kickbacks even if you're in their union it's not a game...  
  
On the federal level once you make some noise you'll have some beltway "think tanks" feel you out and give you unsolicited "policy advice" but all in all they know the game. The political animals, advisors, and industry behind the duopoly will see right through you most of the time, and what you have to think about is which committees your incumbent federal politician is in charge of. That is where their actual lobbying payday comes from, not the silly nonsense that Fox/MSNBC/CNN/ABC/PBS/CBS will report on them.  
  
I'm focused on the community building aspect right now of alternative economic systems. I championed "distributive economic policies" that favored federal income tax deductions for local spending, and things like right-to-repair. If you can get things through your state legislature, you can get it through federal.  
  
Over the depression era, bartering aaccording to my elders in the 90s was a favored alternative to banking. We're too brainwashed into over-reliance on cheap credit and assurances like "FDIC" backing to see the reality of value that exist in our own neighborhoods. There is something like 26 trillion in farmland on the market right now, and a reason even billionaires and private equity are scrambling to obtain it. They don't have the foot-power that each of us has to talk to our elderly neighbors that you do.

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