The 16th and 17th of April were spent at the DCU Center in Worcester in an effort to get Kamal Jain onto the Republican Primary Ballot in September as he will be an amazing State Auditor!  Our goal accomplished, I’m going to give a small post mortem of a very surreal two day whirlwind.

Friday midday saw me packing my luggage into a van and taking the drive out to Worcester for the Massachusetts Republican Convention.  Once we had dropped off our luggage at the hotel and some supplies at the DCU we were to pick up more supplies from a nearby building.  Dropping off the luggage was easy – the people at the Hilton Garden Inn rock!  Dropping off supplies at the DCU was not so easy.  Arriving at one entrance to pick up credentials to allow us access to all the necessary campaign related areas, we were told to go to another area – that had no one even remotely Convention related in it.  After finally locating the people with the credentials they were unconvinced that campaign teams were different than delegates and we almost didn’t get our credentials until 5pm.  In retrospect that isn’t as far off from when we were given access to the areas anyway but at the time was a major setback to our carefully planned day.

We donned our credentials and successfully delivered the contents of our van into the DCU Center and headed off to pick up more items.  The next few hours were spent loading and unloading vehicles, delivering supplies, hanging signs and running.  Yes, I actually ran without anyone but the clock chasing me!

Our goal for the evening was all preparation for the following day done and everyone at the hotel showered and changed for the pre-convention party at 8:00.  Some of the more important folks made the party on time – like oh the candidate and his campaign manager – but I was a little late.  Did I mention how wonderful the staff at the Hilton Garden Inn were?  I’m going to mention it again then.  They were wonderful!  There was good food and good folks and lots of political chatter which I’m horrible at but I really believe in our candidate so I did my very best not to embarrass him or myself.

After not nearly enough sleep we headed over to the DCU Center for the convention itself.  The volunteers spent a couple of hours finishing our preparations and then it was showtime.  The keynote speaker was Scott Brown.  Then the Candidate for Secretary of the Commonwealth, William Campbell, spoke.

Kamal Jain spoke third and my task here was to advance the slides so the correct slide showed at the correct time with his speech.  For those of you who are interested you can read his campaign day speech here.

After both Auditor Candidates gave their speeches the delegates voted.  We patiently listened to them approach the podium by county and read off the totals for each candidate.  Kamal’s campaign manager dutifully plugged the numbers into her spread sheet and we watched the percentage points work towards the magic number that would trigger a primary vote in September: 15%.  The live numbers indicated we had accomplished our goal of getting Kamal onto the ballot.  The “Official” totals read a number of minutes later indicated we had not.  A lengthy recount followed, which I will not detail here – but understand that I have much sympathy for election officials everywhere -  and finally resulted in Kamal Jain earning a spot on the primary ticket.

I would love to have more to speak to regarding the other candidates and the convention in general but while the author of this post saw more of the panini vendor than the podium – I saw more of the recount room than anything else once the Auditor nominations were done.  Once the final tallying was finished we had to scurry about and collect the detritus of our campaign lest the DCU center keep our damage deposit.  Signs hung carefully the night before had to be removed, delegate gifts left behind needed to be picked up and basically anything we brought with us had to be repacked and taken home or stowed in the proper trash and recycle bins.

When my husband plucked me from Classic Pizza in Bolton, MA after some trouble with the van I began to fill him in on the story of my weekend.  Each time I tried to wrap my brain around a cohesive time-line I could not believe I had left our driveway for this Convention Adventure only 33 hours earlier.

Friday morning I will be joining my friend Kay on an excursion to the DCU Center in Worcester to support Kamal Jain in his quest to become Massachusetts State Auditor this September.

If I was surprised, and I was, to find myself excitedly attending her “coffee with the candidate” a few months ago – then you can imagine how I must feel about being a campaign volunteer.  Just last week my husband and I took the kids to the Jain Campaign Headquarters in Worcester and helped assemble a mailing for supporters.  We were dutifully rewarded by the sincere thanks of Kamal and his campaign team and an added dose of pizza and soda for all.

I have enjoyed learning about how a campaign works on a state level.  There is certainly much more involved than my local run for School Committee.  Instead of the 50 signatures I needed to be on the ballot, Kamal Jain needed at least 5,000!  And all of the signature papers needed to be submitted to the individual cities and towns for verification of registered voters and then turned in to the state.  There are 351 municipalities in Massachusetts where supporters had to collect and verify signatures!  That’s a lot of support and a lot of legwork.   This is also just one small part of the campaign process.

This weekend I will participate in another aspect of campaigning.  I will be at the DCU center for the Republican Convention in Massachusetts to help Kamal earn the percentage of votes from the delegates required to ensure his place on the ballot.  In order to be on the ballot as one of the “Major Parties” in addition to the signatures of the voters you also need the support of at least 15% of the delegates at the convention.  The candidate with the majority delegate support also receives the endorsement of the party – which is very helpful in fund-raising and campaigning.

I never realized the amount of money needed to conduct a campaign.  Everything costs money.  Even volunteers cost money by the time you’ve supplied them and fed them.  Campaigns require signs and paper and stamps and envelopes and pens and food and name tags and t shirts and bumper stickers and business cards and web space and dozens of other things.  This election is a mini boon to the Massachusetts and specifically Worcester, MA economies!  There will be people traveling to Worcester, staying at the hotels, eating at the restaurants and shipping in campaign items like flyers, signs, shirts, stickers and other goodies.

Of course all of this means that between being away last weekend for a fun scrap booking retreat and being away this weekend for the convention that there are fewer posts from me for now.  I will have a full accounting of the weekend’s events and I will spend some quality time with my DVR to re-watch and write about the fiasco that was the April 8th meeting of the Haverhill School Committee during the upcoming school vacation week!  Your patience – dear readers – is appreciated!

Two email missives have landed in my inbox this week that I think bear publicizing.  In the end they both come down to the same thing – tell our state government we’re done with budget cuts that paralyze the cities and towns we live in.

The first one I received was from a parent at Golden Hill Elementary.  There is a rally at the Statehouse in Boston on March 23rd from 9am – noon.  Whether or not you have children the education provided in your city affects you.  It affects property values and the attitudes of surrounding towns regarding doing business in or with your city and it affects the willingness of businesses to locate themselves in your city.

The second is from our Mayor, James Fiorentini.  He is urging everyone to contact your representatives and urge them not to cut local aid further.  I will not post the entirety of his message but the contact information he provided for Haverhill’s representatives is this:

House of Representatives

• State Representative Brian Dempsey, Rep.BrianDempsey@hou.state.ma.us, Telephone: 617-722-2370(Rep. Dempsey has always supported adequate local aid for Haverhill)
• State Representative Barbara L’Italien, (represents part of Bradford and upper Broadway) Rep.BarbaraL’Italien@hou.state.ma.us, Telephone: 617-722-2380
• State Representative Harriett Stanley, rep.harriettstanley@hou.state.ma.us, represents a portion of Bradford, Telephone: 617-722-2430

State Senate

• State Senator Steven Baddour SBaddour@senate.state.ma.us,  Telephone: (617) 722-1604

You might think there is nothing the state can possibly do.  The budget has to be cut and you cannot get blood from a stone.  I thought that too until I learned that the budget accounts for only 55% of the money spent by Massachusetts.  In 2009 Massachusetts spent approximately one billion dollars a week.  We desperately need to have knowledge and accountability of that other 45% and decide whether that money can be used for local aid instead of this “off budget spending.”

Thank you Kamal Jain for the education and my copy of the CAFR.  (Warning extremely large pdf behind that second link.)

In a front page article in Friday’s Eagle Tribune the headline reads “Governor Patrick Promises Full School Funding.”  In reading the article you soon discover that is wishful thinking.

What the Governor has said is that Chapter 70 Funding will be left uncut, this round, at the $4 billion dollar mark.  Sounds great right?  He hasn’t promised anything and the house and senate could still make cuts.  Too bad they couldn’t tap into some of that un-budgeted cash the State spends every year. Thank you Kamal Jain for giving me new directions to look in to follow the money trails.

If only Chapter 70 funding were the only funding stream for education.  The cuts to Circuit Breaker funding are anticipated to be deep and painful and will leave many School Systems struggling even with level funding of Chapter 70 monies.

Level funding is a joke anyway because level funding does not mean you will have level services from year to year.  If you fund the teachers at say $10 million in 2009 – their contractual raises and the ever increasing costs in health care and pensions will guarantee that same $10 million in 2010 will not buy as many teachers.  So the Governor gets to look good by saying he’s level funding a system when in fact that system still needs to make cuts because those same dollars don’t buy as much.  If I just level funded my grocery budget from week to week since 2005 for example – well we would only be able to feed our family for a fraction of the days each week here in 2010.

The paper sums up some of my issues with level funding in this article about the impact of the Governor’s “Promises” and there’s a notation about how the cuts in circuit breaker funding have hurt North Andover.  If these cuts are hurting an affluent town like North Andover – imagine how they are decimating an urban district like Haverhill.

Then there is the Stimulus Money that really wasn’t.  For Haverhill, once you factored in the cuts made to education funding from all sources, the net stimulus gain for the town was about 10% of the dollars the State meted out.  This stimulus funding is a short term burst of cash meant to boost local economies and instead the state used the money to replace funding streams – hardly a stimulus!  The stimulus money also came with strings attached as to how it needed to be spent.  If those strings kept the towns from spending the money to cover needs created when the cuts happened… no one at the state level cared.  They could report that dollars went to your district and that’s where their concern ended.

So thank you Mr Patrick for telling us we’re still not going to get the funding needed to run our towns and schools but hide those facts behind terms like “Level Funding” and “Full Funding” and “Stimulus Money” when in reality its politics as usual.  I can only hope Massachusetts’ voting proclivities include ousting our current Governor in November!

Two years ago, if I had received an invitation for an event to meet a political candidate, I would most certainly have rolled my eyes and declined the invitation.  Even to meet the President.  Really.  I absolutely would not have arranged childcare and extended the invitation to others.  Nor would I have stayed past the end time of the event – leaving only because I needed to retrieve my children from aforementioned childcare before they were perhaps sold or otherwise disposed.

Much has happened in the intervening time to change my attitude towards politics.  Being a candidate for office myself certainly gave me new insights and respect for the work, expense and red tape involved.  But what made me decide to run for office?  I always voted – in every election since my 18th birthday I have gone to the polls and made some not always educated choices about the candidates listed.  But I never felt my vote did much.  I’ve also never felt I was choosing a great candidate for the position.  I always chose the person I felt would do the least damage while in office.  The catalyst for me happened while sitting in the audience during one of the budget meetings hosted by our illustrious School Committee.  Apathy.  The entire country suffers from an extreme case of apathy.  If no one ever breaks this cycle we will go through 2000 more years of the same.  I decided I could not simply vote but I needed to be involved.  I needed to stop talking about what I hoped my elected officials would accomplish and to start working towards those hopes myself.

But what does this have to do with coffee?  Or with Kamal Jain?  Well, Kamal Jain is running for Auditor in the State of Massachusetts.  He spoke to a small group over coffee Sunday afternoon about Transparency in government spending.  He spoke about wasteful spending by the state with what is essentially our money.  He also spoke about Total Spending.  I learned the number the state bandies around and fights over publicly is the budgeted number.  That number is only 55% of the total dollars spent by Beacon Hill.  What do they do with the other 45%?  This is part of what Kamal Jain is looking to expose as auditor.  Total state spending in 2009 was 51.8 Billion dollars – approximately one billion dollars each week – despite being in a recession state spending did not drop from previous years!

After meeting Kamal Jain, I was impressed with his eloquence and knowledge on the issues we discussed.  He gave us interesting information and the direction to do our own due diligence.  Expect to hear more about this man – and not just from me.  Kamal Jain for Auditor – remember this when casting your vote in November 2010.