I’m suspending my congressional campaign
October 11th, 2012
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To put it bluntly, I ran out of money and did not have enough contributions.
I suppose this can be expected to happen the first time around, but I made some good connections and I hope that in the near future I’ll be able to take things further. It’s rare to win a Congressional race when coming at it as an outsider, but if I choose to run again, I won’t be an outsider, so things may go much better.
I may reverse this decision if I get some more contributions, and in any case, any contributions I do receive on the Congressional site will certainly be helpful in paving the way to a 2014 run.
I’m not likely to be posting on here much for at least a few more days, however. I just need a breather.
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2012 at 1:44 am and is filed under Politics, personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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October 11th, 2012 at 1:42 pm
Sorry to hear it, man – I know I was rooting for you.
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October 11th, 2012 at 1:53 pm
The U.S. House of Representatives and the voters in your district are the real losers here.
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October 11th, 2012 at 2:53 pm
I’m glad you tried. People complain about politics all the time but only by being active in one way or another can you do something about it. At least you tried to do something.
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October 11th, 2012 at 7:22 pm
It’s fine. I am not unhappy at all.
Very few people make it as far as I did on their first go. I made a big impression and I’m now well known in the area.
I never expected to win on my first shot, but I am now well equipped to navigate local politics. I picked up some important and helpful allies.
I just need a couple of days to relax.
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October 11th, 2012 at 7:30 pm
Actually, there is one thing I want to bring up, and feel free to discuss this further: When running you have to reach out to lobbyists and PAC’s. Being so unknown and new, I did not have a lot of luck getting money or support from them.
But the thing is I had an especially tough time with the nuclear energy lobby. The nuclear energy group (especially one large one, who shall go unnamed) were just very inept.
The job of a political action committee is to build bridges to elected leaders, make allies etc. For this reason, they tend to be very receptive to being approached and talked to. Like, even if they do not give you money, if you ask any PAC for support, they will be very polite and quickly return your calls. If they will not support you, they tell you right away, and don’t give you the runaround. Because they obviously don’t want to make enemies. They want to keep their bridges open. They are very diplomatic.
Well, the nuclear energy group was not. They did not return my calls. When I got through to them, they told me to write an email. I did. They did not respond. They expressed interest and then backed off.
My consultant, who works with PAC’s was blown off too. Not just for me. He works for some other candidates too and said that the nuclear group blows them all off. He told me that when he went to a PAC convention, all the other PACs were trying very hard to get attention from the various candidate committees. But the nuclear pac was giving a lot of people the cold shoulder.
It’s very unprofessional and really not a way to do things. I have to say I’m quite upset to have seen this. It’s not just for me, but it may well explain why nuclear energy has not been doing as well as it should legislatively. They may just have very inept lobbyists.
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October 11th, 2012 at 8:39 pm
Good grief that sounds like Abbot & Costello run a PAC not anything else. I would have expected a Pro Nucler energy PAC to be at least a bit interested in supporting you. It isn’t like your opinion about nuclear energy in general or specific is exactly a secret. I mean all they have to do is look at Depleted Cranium to have an idea on your very vocal opinion on the topic.
Amazing, simply amazing.
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October 11th, 2012 at 9:07 pm
Well, I did send them links to some of my articles on nuclear energy. But I don’t even know if they read that e-mail. I sent it to one of their people (not their general email) but never got a response.
I would have been okay if they dismissed me by saying they don’t back new blood or something. I mean that’s not it. More to the point that they blew me and my consultants off pretty much consistently.
I don’t know if they ever realized I was even pro-nuclear.
Unfortunately, I need to stress, this was not just me. They were supposedly not easy for anyone to warm up to.
Now, the clean coal PAC… they were inviting everyone out to dinner…
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October 11th, 2012 at 10:16 pm
drbuzz0 said:
Why am I not surprised? It’s been clear for years now that the industry is its own worst enemy and it is really unclear to me why this is the case. I understand from Rod Adams that they make some effort to do outreach in the D.C. area, but elsewhere in the U.S. they are conspicuous by their absence. In Canada I have never seen any efforts by the industry to get the message out.
Something is not right here and I suspect that the explanation is not just that they are inept.
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October 12th, 2012 at 3:14 am
DV82XL said:
So if they aren’t inept what could be going on?
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October 12th, 2012 at 4:29 am
what a ****wit you are – **** off and die
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October 12th, 2012 at 7:15 am
Anon said:
Generally speaking, I am loath to ascribe to subterfuge that which can be adequately explained by incompetence, however the only other explanation I can come up with is that the official industry organs in North America have a death wish. Frankly I do not understand the indifference and I am open to suggestions as to why this is so.
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October 12th, 2012 at 8:13 am
The anti-nuclear industry often accuses anyone who doesn’t believe their nonsense of being on the payroll of the nuclear industry, maybe the people running the nuclear lobbies are unjustifiably scared of that accusation.
Though the possibility that the big nuclear companies could get more money from their other interests if nuclear weren’t an option could go a long way to explaining things.
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October 12th, 2012 at 8:44 am
Anon said:
This is more likely. Owing to the rather bizarre way the hourly price for power is set in most North American electric markets, nuclear is actually at a disadvantage and that may be at the root of this.
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October 12th, 2012 at 10:20 am
Anon said:
To give some context to this: The primary lobbying organization for nuclear energy in the US had, as of a couple years ago, an annual budget of 13-14 million dollars for all political activities. This includes everything from campaign contributions to fees for political events they attend to printing up pamphlets.
By industry standards, this is very small. The oil industry spends a lot more (although it depends on how you could it, since it’s more per company than from a single group and there’s overlap with oil and gas.) In fact, I believe I read that the cement industry spends a bit more on their major trade organization.
In addition to the industry group (I may as well just say it, since it’s obviously NEI) there are a few company PACS. USEC (The United States Enrichment Corp) has one, but their really only focused on securing loan guarantees and building permits for their enrichment plants. Areva has one and there are others from GE and Westinghouse, but these are not nuclear energy pacs – they are pacs that are run by companies that make a variety of products, including nuclear products.
As I said 13 million is not a lot of money in this game. But NEI can and does make some contributions to candidates friendly to their cause.
I was disipointed they didn’t give any to me. The thing is I’m the kind of candidate who is very much on their side. Not only that, I tried to make it clear to them that even if I do not make it in a given race, I will go to bat for nuclear energy. I will work my contacts (and I’ve made a few) to promote it. I will run again. I’m just the kind of person they should *WANT* to be as politically involved as possible.
But it’s not that they didn’t give me money. If they had said “Look, we appreciate what you are doing, but we have limited funds and we are concentrated on a few key races and candidates who have pending legislation we like.” That would have been ok. I could have accepted being turned down.
It’s not that. They didn’t return calls. They didn’t return e-mails. They gave the runaround to me and to my consultants. My consultants told me they had trouble making inroads to them for other candidates as well.
That’s just not a good way for a PAC to behave. It’s unprofessional. It makes politicians and consultants think “Screw these guys. I’m not going to waste my time with a PAC who won’t even give me a solid yes/no answer when there are plenty of others who are a lot more receptive.”
One of the main jobs of these trade organization PACS is to try to make inroads to as many elected leaders as possible and to make as many friends in Washington as possible. Even if they don’t end up supporting a candidate, they are usually still very diplomatic and responsive, because, again, it’s part of their job to be well liked and known.
I’m just damn concerned that they are not doing a better job, because these industry groups really do matter. They have a legitimate purpose, which is to present the concerns of an industry to politicians.
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October 12th, 2012 at 10:35 am
drbuzz0 said:
And so you should be. Again this is not a minor issue, and certainly it deserves to be questioned and answers produced. If this is the only thing that your attempt at becoming a candidate for office has accomplished, exposing this shortcoming is a very important result and one that should be pursued.
It is not my place to tell any American how to act in regards to the behaviour of lobby groups active in your country, but I would think that it is obvious that this matter should not be ignored.
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October 13th, 2012 at 1:41 pm
I think this is quite a generic problem for the nuclear industry worldwide. The ineptitude when it comes down to informing the public and politicians about the advantage of nuclear power is probably due to the limited resources generated directly by the industry.
To be frank, nuclear power is a secure longterm investment but does not generate the profits seen in other industries like oil/gas/coal. There is a huge turnaround of money yes, but it ends up in the pockets of the industry that is dependent on cheap and reliable electricity. The industry itself does not generate the profits that allows it to spend like mad on political influence and lobbying, 10-15% of invested capital seems to be pretty good and average for the industry but is far off what the fossil industry gets (this is from my local knowledge from Europe). And the fossil industry does not have the same amount of legal hoops to jump through to build an energy generating plant.
However, lack of funds is one thing, wasting it on people that are not able to make the best of it is a waste, better off not bothering if they are as inept as you describe!?
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October 14th, 2012 at 9:36 am
No, they have never been good at politics and PR and I think at this point the best thing the nuclear industry could do is just hire people who are. I’d go with “When in doubt, farm it out” on something like lobbying. There are plenty of professional lobbying and consulting firms and experienced people who know how to do it properly.
The other thing is I really think more money would help. $13M is just not a lot in the energy lobby sector. They spent billions on R&D, they can afford a few million more in lobbying. Before anyone says “but it’s expensive,” remember that companies don’t spend a lot lobbying because they expect that money to just go away. There is a return on it. Every dollar spent lobbying should, in theory, make you back even more money in the long run as a result of more favorable policy. It’s how the system works.
One of the problems may be that few companies have a strong vested interest in nuclear energy but not other competitors. But there are a few. Companies like GE have nuclear energy subsidiaries with discretionary budgets. Then there is Areva, which is primarily nuclear energy, USEG, General Atomics, which has nuclear energy systems.
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October 14th, 2012 at 12:58 pm
Here’s a profile of NEI’s CEO:
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=34586447
Apparently one of his major “successes” is in the storage and disposal of nuclear waste … in a country that still hasn’t restarted reprocessing. He personally has a lot riding on the belief that what he got was a success.
Here’s the Chairman:
http://www.energyfutureholdings.com/about/john_young.aspx He’s not a professional lobbyist. He has a full-time day-job.
Their communications-director, Scott Peterson, seems to be focused on speaking directly to voters to change the culture, rather than try to get pro-nuclear legislators into office despite a hostile culture.
Then there is the other, other problem with the relevant politics. I have seen another major political organization run into this problem: They believed that since the facts and figures were so thoroughly on their side, they did not need a media-campaign. Their PR is easily among the world’s worst. (I have not identified the other organization because, with its PR so bad, its issues quickly become political hot-buttons and can dominate discussions.)
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October 14th, 2012 at 1:33 pm
I’m not going to be critical of any given person in the organization. As far as I know, they may all be well educated, competent nuclear energy professional.
Unfortunately, that’s not what you need for a lobbying organization. It’s more important that they know how to lobby, are familiar with the organizations involved (the American Association of Political Consultants, for example) and are well connected to candidates and parties.
A nuclear engineer does not necessarily make a good advocate for it or a good political person. It’s like sending an automotive engineer to sell cars at a dealership – technical expertise and experience is less important than people skills and salesmanship.
I get the impression they don’t consider political outreach very important. At the very least they need to return the phone calls and emails of anyone reaching out to them.
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October 15th, 2012 at 5:27 pm
I think it goes beyond that: What you need for any organization to perform a particular function at a professional level is full-time workers with the necessary skills and background, and no conflicting interests. When the CEO has already declared victory on a topic, he does not want to support somebody who can explain publicly how badly he failed. Even that might not be a serious issue if the chairman were in a position to intervene, but he has a separate full-time job. Returning candidates’ phone-calls, at least, would definitely happen if the VP Communications had that as a priority, but he appears to concentrate communication-efforts elsewhere. It just looks like responding to you was nobody’s job.
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