Running for office became a nightmare

Election day is getting close. It will be held on May 17. Several signs are posted and some of the candidates are making the rounds soliciting votes.

Don Estep is publisher of the News Journal.

The candidate’s name on a sign in a yard is okay but it tells you very little about the person running for office. That is why our news department is sending out questionnaires to candidates so you can get to know the candidate a little better.

When you don’t know the candidate do you just pick out the yard sign you like best or the one who has the most? I don’t think so. Personally I know very little about the candidates. So, perhaps our efforts, and even the candidate’s ad in this newspaper will help you decide.

I ran for office once. I also used yard signs. But unlike many of the candidates, many voters knew about me because of my many years on radio and in the newspaper. That may be the reason I lost. No, I don’t really believe that.

I ran a close second to a person who had held public office and had a good organization behind him, plus he worked at it harder than I could. There was no shame losing to this person and he was a good magistrate.

Why did I run for office? I gave in to an appeal from a friend. The night before the filing deadline I received a telephone call from a person who had held the office and he convinced me that I should run. Prior to that call I had not given a thought to running for office.

After I said yes to this person, I started thinking, “what have I done?” But the next day I waited until the final hour and paid my fee to run for the office of magistrate.

What was to come was a nightmare. It started out fine, but after I had gone to some pie suppers and given talks to civic clubs the campaign started to get nasty. One of the candidates, not the one who won, started running small ads in our competitor’s newspaper trashing me. For a few weeks when I would leave the newspaper office at 3:30 or 4:00 a.m. I started noticing headlights following me home.

At that hour of the morning I knew somebody was trying to scare me off.

Then one day I was alerted that somebody had spray painted insulting words about me on a building, the underpass and the 312 bridge. The city took care of the underpass and the building owner painted over the vulgar writing on his building. I took spray paint and covered up the wording on the bridge.

I had never said or done anything to the person we suspected of doing these things. But it did make me nervous.

On election night when the numbers started coming though I was hoping only to make a good showing, but I didn’t want to win. I had enough of running for public office.

I don’t expect many candidates have horror stories like this. But I do know the toll it takes on those running for office and they have my sympathies.

This is the first time I have written about this. I am pretty sure that the people we suspected of doing these things are no longer around.

When a candidate hands me a card and solicits my vote, I listen with respect. Usually those who work the hardest, contribute and advertise the most win. And advertising in this newspaper is the best way to get your message out because we have the largest circulation and the best way to reach the voters.

Asking a voter to hire you for a job is a rough way to make a living. Very few voters know much about you and you sit on pins and needles waiting to see if you have convinced enough people. Good luck, you have my respect for showing the courage to run.