Month: July 2023

PART 2 of THE TWIGHLIGHT – CHAPTER 31

Published by Richard Kimball on July 31, 2023

After reviewing my little brother’s business inventory, I didn’t take time to re-pack; I just bundled up everything in my arms and threw it all in the back seat of my car. I started the engine, looked down the street and saw the not so inconspicuous car of plain clothes officers watching my house and realized I had forgotten something. Two minutes later I drove away and pulled in behind The Bombaro bar and heaved the bricks of marijuana into the dumpster.

That night, about 2 a.m. my baby brother found me at a friend’s house on the other side of town and wanted to say, Hi with a ballpeen hammer. In some drug induced insanity he came at me brandishing the hammer and stammering about his young daughter’s welfare. She had just turned three and was to be the beneficiary of his drug sales. I got him to drop the hammer and then let him swing away at me. Finally, he hit me square in the mouth, popping off two caps on my teeth and saying, “This is going to be a lot easier than I thought it would be.” Realizing he really intended to hurt me, I ended it.

The campaign stubbled on and re-election was in serious doubt, not because the Republicans were aware of much of this netherworld I had come to live in, but because they had cleverly chosen a candidate who had both the industry and ethics of a Praying Mantis in heat. The candidate they had chosen had the same name as, and was a close relative of, a popular and very well-known Phoenix Democrat named John Haldiman. Joe Haldiman, the candidate, was making good use of it and a half-hearted effort to walk the streets as I did.

I had heard stories about what he was saying at each door but thought them so absurd as not to be believed. Then with a bit of good fortune, I was going door-to-door one afternoon and saw him turn the corner. I ducked behind a bush to watch. As he made his way down the street, I saw him walk up to the door of Fay Weidman, one of my campaign volunteers who I had nicknamed Mother Superior for her penchant to dress me, feed me, and protect me in all that I did. I quietly made my way up behind him with my index finger across my lips so that Mother Superior would know not to give me up.

His pitch went something like this: “Hi, I am Joe Haldiman running for the State Senate and I wanted to talk to you about Richard Kimball, that embarrassing bum currently representing us. You must have heard by now that he is a baby killing abortionist, that he never graduated from college, that he is a pawn of labor, and is lying when he says he was born in Arizona. He moved here from Illinois with the backing of their unions. We need to send him packing. That is why I agreed to run for this office.” I looked over his shoulder at Mother Superior. The demonic expression now roasting on her face forced me to intercede, less she add to the mounting pile of shit that my life had become.

“Hi, Fay,” as I put my arm around Haldiman’s shoulder, “This is my good buddy, Joe.”

Election Day was getting close, and they still hadn’t found the assassin who had threatened the President and me. His wife, who had become a good friend, and I were still in hiding. Then for some inexplicable reason Broom walked right into the Democratic Party Headquarters as if it were just another day on the job. Everyone had been given an emergency number on the unexpected chance that he might appear. I happened to already be on my way there for a meeting but wasn’t as quick as the various forces looking for him. When I arrived, Broom was sequestered in a back room surrounded by a couple of Secret Service Agents and the local police. After an hour or so an agent came out and I asked if I might see Broom alone for a minute. The agent, thinking me naive, said that it wasn’t a very good idea. “Listen,” I said, “He was my trusted friend, he is not armed and if I just have a minute, I might find out some things that would be helpful to all of us.” Surprisingly, they agreed, which instantly suggested that they were far more interested in protecting Jimmy Carter than they were me.

As I entered the room, Broom was sitting in a lone metal fold-up chair with the four or five officers standing around. The agent said, let’s give Senator Kimball a minute and they all walked out and stood just beyond the door, which they left ajar.

Broom, who was not scared, sad, worried, or flustered in any way, just sat and stared at me. I went over to a stack of folded cafeteria chairs and set one up right in front of him and sat down. ”Broom, what is going on, this is absurd,” I pleaded. His expression did not change. He said not a word, just sat comfortably and looked at me. “Listen, do you want me to get you a lawyer, or some counseling? I know some good people, some good programs where we can get you some help. Whatever you need, I can help. Just talk to me.” Broom Hall’s eyes had never left mine; he just looked a bit burdened but resigned. Then he leaned forward a little and in a soft perfectly calm voice said something that you do not hear every day but was definitely a talk ender. “I am sorry Richard, but I must kill you. I have been ordered to kill you.”

The officers came back in and although the authorities could never get enough evidence to imprison Broom, I never saw him again. I would on occasion worry about where he was and if I would get another early vote in the mail.

Three days before the election, which was becoming an acknowledged loser for me, I was spent and went straight to bed in spite of an unsettling phone call from someone claiming to be one of my supporters. He spoke so loudly and angrily that I had no difficulty making out these words. “What a lousy bastard you are. You lied to me and everyone else.” He then hung up. I took the phone off the hook and slept. At first light I was up and walked outside to get the paper, only this time I found it amongst a half dozen of my yard signs that were broken or ripped and strewn on the lawn. Scribbled on the back of one, “I thought you were a decent man. You’re scum.”

I went back inside and put the phone on the hook, it immediately rang, “Did you see what Haldiman did?” a campaign volunteer bellowed.

As it turns out the opposition had mailed a hit piece to every household in my district saying essentially what I had heard candidate Haldiman say to Mother Superior at her door, only with emphasis on the “fact” of my having moved to Arizona from Illinois with a bundle of labor money. There was one important difference: this time it lacked crudeness. It was done professionally, in a polished convincing way that had clearly been drafted by the best the opposition could hire.

The campaign was over; even some of my volunteers were calling to ask if the hit piece was true. We called the Arizona Republic demanding that they correct the lie by doing a story. But that same editor who was later caught masquerading as a highly decorated warrior refused.

My campaign was broken, and I was broken in just about every way I could be broken. But even if we had the money there was no way we could create a response, mail it, and have the Post Office deliver it to everyone’s door before Election Day.

With all good hit pieces there is usually a grain of truth somewhere to lock in its bite. In this case, it was the backing by labor charge. The local fire fighter’s union was one of my strong supporters and the opposition was about to find out just how strong. Turns out, they can put out more than one kind of fire.

Down the street from my home, Pat Cantelme, President of the Phoenix Firefighter’s union owned that firefighters’ hangout called The Bombaro. By 2 a. m. the night after the hit piece arrived at homes all over my district, I had become the best customer The Bombaro had that day. I was tired, resigned to my election defeat and well into my bottomless glass of scotch. Pat leaned over the bar and said, “You know, Richard, we don’t need no stinking postage stamps, if you can think of a way to respond I will have every firefighter in this city and most of the policeman turned into Postmen by the time the sun comes up.

By 3 a. m. I had my idea. It would be a wild crazy shot into the dark. I was about to wake up a person I had never met in the middle of the night. I pulled the phone over and asked for a phone book. Luckily, unlike most insurance company presidents, particularly wealthy, prominent, honest ones, John Haldiman, the patriarch of the Haldiman family had his number listed.

I dialed, a women’s sleepy voice answered. She was clearly concerned as anyone would be from a call in the middle of the night and said, “Who the Hell is this?” I told her I was so sorry to wake her but that it was an emergency and I just had to talk to her husband.

The next few hours ended candidate Joe Haldiman’s hopes of taking over my seat in the Senate and any future in politics.

Not only did the prominent, honest Haldiman support me, but he thought less of his namesake relative than most people do of maggots. I told him what had happened. By my third or fourth sentence he interrupted me, “Be at my house by 4:30,” and hung up.

I arrived a few minutes early amongst a stream of other cars. He had essentially ordered every Haldiman in Phoenix, a very large group as it turns out, to wake up, get out of bed, get dressed and come to his house – NOW!

By 5:15 am I was at one of my brother Bill’s shops. He had yanked himself out of bed, ready to go to war. As fate would have it his shops were printing shops and they were up and ready to run. I handed him a card and he was off and at it, saving my ass, just as he did back when we were kids. By 7 am firefighters getting off duty from throughout the city started showing up and taking out crates of brightly colored yellow cards, all of which would somehow manage to be delivered to every door in my district before supper time.

Although I no longer have a copy, something I have kicked myself for years over, the card essentially read:

A PUBLIC APPOLOGY TO SENATOR RICHARD KIMBALL FROM THE ENTIRE HALDIMAN FAMILY

All of us in the Haldiman family strongly endorse the re-election of Senator Richard Kimball. He has been an honest, strong, and honorable Senator.

We also want you to know that we are embarrassed over the outrageous behavior of Joe Haldiman, a member of our family who has lied to you and has dishonorably and dishonestly attacked Senator Kimball with a series of vicious lies.

Please re-elect Richard Kimball a good and decent man to the Arizona State Senate!

A dozen signatures splashed over the card.

All with the last name of Haldiman.

Some years later I heard that candidate Haldiman unsuccessfully tried a second career in fraud and ended up with a number tattooed to a prison shirt.

OH YEAH!

Somewhere in the Twilight Zone there was a Gary Marston, a one, maybe two-day long Kimball for Senate Campaign Manager, hired either just before or just after Broom.

It was a sweet elderly woman that came to me at a barbecue I held at my home for volunteers. She said, “I feel funny and am not sure I am well.”

Turned out that Gary thought it a good idea if one of the side deserts was marijuana brownies. Of all that happened those miserable months, it was Gary I most wanted to kill.

I do not think I have given my experiences in the Twilight Zone justice, but it is the best I could do. To Carole, my first wife, I weep to this day. To the rest of you that may be offended by my recollections, go frig yourselves!

(New chapters will be added roughly once a week)

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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THE REPUBLICAN SPLITS

Published by Richard Kimball on July 30, 2023

I stand tight with Republicans on the battlefield slashing at half their number with stupefying fealty to an American horror.

Like Mark Twain, the older I get, the more clearly I remember things that may never have happened and tend to forget those that did.

So it is with that Republican half, who either ignore or believe that:

Blackmailing the Ukrainian President

Advising us to use ultraviolet light and disinfectant in our bodies

Attacking NATO and friendly democracies

Slathering praise on barbaric dictators Putin and Kim

Grabbing pussy

Violating the Emoluments Clause

Separating children from their parents

Subverting the 2020 election

Inciting insurrection

Politicizing the Justice Department

Befriending white supremacists

Firing whistle blowers

Refusing to divest to profit from his election

Stealing classified documents

Obstructing justice

Nepotism

Espionage

are the qualities to seek in our leader.

—

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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RE-ELECTION-PART I – CHAPTER 30

Published by Richard Kimball on July 23, 2023

RE-ELECTION – PART I – CHAPTER 30

WARNING: You are about to enter an alternate universe.

It was during my campaign for a second term that my recollections arrive in the Twilight Zone. So surreal I do not imagine you will believe, but they are so, and although my memory might confuse the exact order of things, they all happened just as I will describe them.

I had not enjoyed being a State Senator but without ideas leading elsewhere I decided to run for re-election. Besides, my favorite part was coming up, meeting with thousands of voters in a re-election effort, a goodly number of which had become friends.

It was in that happy spirit that my first mailed vote arrived, a few months early, in a plain white envelope without any return address or markings. When I opened the letter, its sole contents, a shiny, heavy lump dropped out and landed in my lap.

Now, I had not been much interested in hunting since I was about 10 when I hit a dove with my Christmas BB gun and watched it die. As result, I cannot tell you the caliber. I wasn’t worried and didn’t even report it. This was long before such threats and shootings became common place. Asking around, no other Senator had received such a gift and I just shrugged it off.

I was more concerned with the pending flop. The flop being my major re-election fund raiser that disabled my toilet plunger and completely unable to handle the mountain of crap to come.

It was about two days before the fundraiser when I pointed out to my wife that no one would be attending. The “no one would be attending,” remark was referencing the event’s dismal ticket sales, and I thought served as a punch to her midsection, since it was she who was managing my campaign and presumably the fundraiser. She wasn’t hurt or concerned. She had her own life to run and had handed off most responsibilities to a campaign manager she had hired with the kind of skills and experience we could afford. His name was “Broom” Hall. Broom, a name he earned for an ability to beat all comers in pool halls using only a broom handle.

Anyway, the flop had been advertised as vaudeville, and as it turned out there were more people signed up to be on the stage than there were people in the audience. It was a bit humiliating, but partly saved by the local firefighters and my brother Bob.

The firefighters, who adopted me during the campaign, went backstage and put on pillowcases in such an unusual way that they made them all look like four-foot-tall Pillsbury Dough Boys without elbows or knees. They humored the seated dozen or so with five minutes of relief, and then we all went back to waiting for a crowd that would never appear.

I walked over to my mother, who never wanted me to follow my father into political life and now stood there, as only my mother could, with that same cocked, rigid look that used to say, “It’s your bedtime.”

Concerned or just embarrassed for me, my brother Bob, who spent a few months on the streets singing my praises to anyone that would listen, didn’t like such events or crowds suddenly stood up. Bob was not supposed to be part of the program, but he marched up to the stage and began an impromptu 15-minute monologue that had the lucky few howling with laughter again and again. More importantly, he made them and me feel all was right with the world despite the empty room. It was a peerless performance that would later that night make me cry, and as unassociated as it was, tell my wife I wanted a divorce.

The fundraiser had little to do with my decision to separate from my wife. The fundraiser failure was only an event, but I felt it made as good a catalyst as any, to make my long agonized-over position known. I was just coming to recognize a flaw in my character: no activity, no matter how initially exciting, ever sustained my interest. I would get bored with most every game, sport, hobby, friend, or person I ever knew. I inevitably just wanted to experience something else. However, as it applied to people, this did not mean I did not care or was not loyal. I was perhaps offensively loyal, always struggling to sustain any and every relationship, but much the way most keep the relics of their past in pictures, to recall how much fun it once was, I wanted to keep the people themselves, only at a space apart.

I had not yet come to grips with this character flaw and so duped myself into believing that there were two episodes that caused the breakup.

One was coming home early one day, some weeks earlier and overhearing my wife tell her friends how she had demanded that she be able to keep her own last name when we married. She did not know I was there.

For days before proposing, I had agonized over the precise words and arguments I would use to persuade her to keep her maiden name. I had never understood why women gave up the name they had been born with and so closely associated with for their entire lives. A woman keeping her maiden name was still unusual, but I was pretty sure Carole would want to but might feel a little uncomfortable talking to me about it. I wanted her to feel great about keeping hers and thus in my marriage proposal I included a virtual insistence that she do so.

My often-unforgiving nature in the face of some perceived injustice could not forgive this violation of trust. This indirect condemnation of me in front of ultra-liberal friends was minuscule but impossible for me to choke down.

More fundamental and perhaps not entirely as self-duping was that we were entering our thirties and she had informed me that she still did not want to have children. I wanted them badly but was in no position to force her cooperation.

My handling of the divorce was unconscionable. I would not make the slightest effort to reconcile or talk to anyone about it. She could have everything (which was nothing) and within a day she had moved to her parents, I had thrown out my campaign volunteers, locked the doors and went on a cowardly three-day binger, drinking as heavily as one can and remain breathing. I had desperately wanted to make sure I was more miserable than I imagined I had made Carole, who I loved and greatly admired to this day. I just could not live with her.

When I did come out filthy, unshaven, and not particularly coherent, volunteers asked if I would see a doctor. Being there “leader” and still in my self-absorbed early years, I refused, instead deciding to give a little more door-to-door a try. It was then that one opened into the Twilight Zone.

Getting close to home, maybe three blocks away, I knocked on a final door. A heavy-set woman, maybe in her 60s, in a coffee stained and tattered robe, threw the screen door wide open hoping to hit me. The hatred smeared across her face was real, possibly dangerous. She backed me up the sidewalk with her thundering voice, “You bastard! I heard what you did.” She kept coming at me. “What are you talking about?” I blurted. “You liberal commie bastard! You think we all do not know what you did. Everyone knows your wife caught you sleeping with that blond bimbo. We saw, we all know she chased you out with a frying pan.” She kept coming at me. “I knew you were a lying bastard when I heard you moved here from Illinois with all that labor money. You lying, fucking bastard!”

It was, of course, difficult to know exactly how to handle this particular voter, who had gotten her information from the Klingon Star Ship. But getting her vote was not likely, so I kept backing away. Bodily harm was her desire, but I was pretty sure I could out jog her slippers if need be.

Her bit about a blond, money and Illinois, a state I had never been to – what the Hell was that all about? I wouldn’t find out until sometime later when tens of thousands of leaflets arrived in voter’s mailboxes. For the moment, I was just thinking of an escape route. She continued to rant as I back peddled. I heard sirens approaching on our street and thought, please hurry. My hands were raised palms out in a gestured effort to pause the onslaught and protect myself from any knives or hatchets that might suddenly appear. I made it to the corner and my chance to escape. Spinning around I jogged down the street toward my house and it was then that I entered the Twilight Zone.

The pace of my escape was as in a dream, where try as you might, with all of your might, you just can’t accelerate in the goo. For as I gazed down the street, I saw a number of police cars at my house with two more squealing around a corner, doors popping and guns out.

Starting with no supporters coming to my fundraiser, the kind of guilt that only comes from hurting someone you love, piled on by a neighbor and constituent’s revulsion of everything that is you, and now this massive police presence: Exactly how horrid a creature was I?

I slowed as I approached home. What I thought must be a policeman, only very nicely dressed in a suit, approached me. He explained the scene around my house as well as anyone could. “Senator Kimball, you and the President have been threatened.” The President of what I asked. “President Jimmy Carter,” he said. “Huh!” was the best I could manage. He repeated himself and I struggled in vain to digest the comment. It was as if all the parts of my brain had suddenly become unscrewed. I didn’t feel worried, threatened or concerned about anything that he said, I just couldn’t grasp it. I was only concerned with the crazy lady who I was certain must have tracked me and about to pounce from behind. Thankfully she had vanished.

Oddly, as I began to mull over what the officer had said, I noticed that I felt a tiny twinge of pride. “The President and me you say?” Some wacko put us in the same category. “I am with the Secret Service,” he said, “Please come with me.”

We walked over to a group of Phoenix’s finest, who informed me that I couldn’t go into my home right now, that they were searching for the suspect and evidence. “Do you know who it is?” I asked. “We are looking for a fellow named Broom Hall.”

Admittedly, Broom was a little strange and I had learned that much of his money came from an adorable little wife who made itsy bitsy stage outfits for strippers, but an assassin? No, this was all wrong. Despite his oddities, he seemed such a nice, even thoughtful fellow. “Listen there has to be some mistake here,” I said to the various badges now surrounding me. “NO! There is no mistake,” the agent barked. “We deal with threats all the time; we had him on the phone for some time and this one fits the profile we do not mess around with. We have to find him, now.”

An hour later I was to learn that Broom owned a number of guns that were now missing from his home, that he had gone after his pregnant wife because she knew too much. She was now nowhere to be found.

The warning or threat began with a police caller, who the Secret Service, with little difficulty, figured out was Broom himself. The caller had said that I would be taken down at a Democratic Party fundraiser scheduled for later that week by a man pretending to be and made up to look exactly like my campaign manager.

The various officers in charge insisted that I not sleep at home for a few days while they staked it out. After hearing about Broom, the guns and his wife, and the event to happen at the party fundraiser, I thought the idea of my sleeping elsewhere a good one, so I picked my jaw up off the pavement and dragged it down the street where my little brother had just moved into a little house.

Out of the blue, just as I was packing up a few things, Broom’s pregnant wife showed up. She was scared as hell and after the Secret Service interviewed her, she asked if I could help her find a place to hide out. I found a place that the officers thought a good one on the other side of town and then got us out of there.

I didn’t have to go far, which was good, because I would still have access to my home office and files when needed, but what had been bizarre was about to go freakish.

My littlest brother, who if anything spent more time in the Black Hole of adolescence than his four siblings had a surprise of his own. My brother’s place was perfect, I thought. He wasn’t involved in my politics at all, few knew him, his house was just few doors away, and no one knew him. Perfect I thought, the police could stake out my house, try to trap Broom and I could still access my campaign files when necessary.

A policeman escorted me over and agreed it would be fine. An hour after the officer left, I was putting some my stuff on the top shelf of my new bedroom closet and discovered that my baby brother was in the drug business. He had a little marijuana trouble with the law years earlier and spent months in a Mexican prison for it. There were two rather large foil-covered bricks of tightly packed marijuana.

The coming headlines scrolled through my imagination!

The Arizona Republic, the state’s largest newspaper, was led by a heavily-medaled military leader, who no longer served in the military but greatly enjoyed his uniform and commendations and wore them at formal occasions. It would later be discovered that he had never earned those ribbons or medals, or even served in the military, but unfortunately for me, this absurd masquerade had yet to be exposed and for the moment, he possessed real power and a lack of affection for me.

When he got wind of all that was going on around my house, I thought he would have a difficult dilemma. What headline would he choose?

KIMBALL IN SEX SCANDAL

KIMBALL CAMPAIGN MANAGER PLANS HIS ASSASSINATION

KIMBALL CAUGHT IN BROTHERLY DRUG DEALS

It would all be bullshit but that never seemed to matter to this fellow and his paper. I imagined that an after the fact simple headline might be the best result for me:

KILLED DEAD – CAMPAIGN MANAGER CHARGED

—

(New chapters will be added roughly once a week)

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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HUNTER BIDEN

Published by Richard Kimball on July 20, 2023

**Years from now honey I will be blamed for everything you do!**

You would do well to have a Maxine Christy Kimball as President.

She raised four boys alone. By rough calculation she had changed almost 5000 diapers, prepared 65,700 meals, swept, vacuumed, and scrubbed 10,200 rooms and laundered a pile of clothes, that if neatly folded and stacked (not always the case), would have roughly equaled the cruising altitude of a 747. The number of motherly events she shepherd, Sunday masses, birthdays, holidays, PTAs, Cub Scouts, football, baseball, basketball, swimming, science fairs, school shows, doctors’ visits, teacher conferences, summer camps, picnics, vacations, and at least one enema on yours truly, were more numerous than my memories can reasonably be expected to calculate. Not to mention the budgeting, taxes, investments, house maintenance, debts and such other adult fare we never knew about. (excerpt from my Autobiography of a Nobody).

As for the four boys she pushed into college: Well, with them there was alcoholism, thievery, drug use and smuggling, which got one a bit of prison time.

She was qualified to be President, we weren’t!

— —

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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BOZONE(n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

Published by Richard Kimball on July 12, 2023

Not a real word yet, but used enough, and it will be. Comes from a Mensa Lexophile competition and perfectly describes the impenetrable mucous protecting Trump supporters from thought.

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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CONTAGIOUS NONSENSE

Published by Richard Kimball on July 9, 2023

All religions are cruel, their perversity of an afterlife embezzles your ability to enjoy the short life you have.

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016.

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A DUMPSTER LOAD OF THE SMELLY STUFF

Published by Richard Kimball on July 5, 2023

Richard Kimball

7 min read

Just now

Carole and I moved to Phoenix, where she studied for the Arizona Bar while I tried to do anything I could to help pay some bills. When she passed her Bar exam, I knew I was in trouble. My talents were miniscule, my education little better than that of a performing monkey, fortunately the one profession left to me needed no training and most monkeys could do it and actually do, do it — politics.

It was Christmas 1979, I was sitting in the living room with Carole, now a lawyer, and Steve, her former boyfriend, a talented artist, teacher, and good friend to us both. What should I do with my life was the question and run for office became the answer.

We knew a bit about politics, or at least enough to know that voters would elect just about anyone. None of us knew anything about local Phoenix politics or had any money. In fact, Carole and I had just moved to Phoenix, where her family lived, had no idea who the State Legislative incumbents were, let alone whether they were doing a good job or not. That not knowing, made us no different than you, or close to 100% of you who wouldn’t recognize your state representatives if they dropped in for dinner. Despite these impediments, we made 2 decisions that evening that 11 months later would remove a nice guy and pretty fair legislator from office.

First, was a catchy slogan. Every new, first-time, unknown candidate should have a good slogan I thought, some message that helps people remember the name. A very big deal when running for those little offices that few citizens ever go to the polls for. As with all local candidates we would largely be dependent upon the spillage from those on the top of the ticket, the Presidential, Gubernatorial or Congressional candidates who get the ink, resources, and attention necessary to be known and stimulate the electorate. All of which is completely backwards. The top of the ticket gets all the glamor while it is the bottom, those little candidates, the state legislators, city councils and school boards that have the power to impact you, and your family’s everyday life. Constitutionally the president may decide what to do with the people of Iraq, but he can’t do much about your neighborhood and most of us spend a lot more time there.

Anyway, after much discussion, I decided on, “Richard Kimball is Running.” An absurd slogan for sure, but political success is often built on the absurd. In this case, my name happened to be the same as a popular Hollywood TV series and later movie called the Fugitive, where an innocent man named Dr. Richard Kimble, is forced into running from the law. It was perfect. We even put a little running man logo on our signs so the point wouldn’t be missed.

It was an instant hit. And arguably, the only popular thing I ever did in my 7 years as a politician. The second important decision we made that night was that I would run for the State Senate against a popular Republican incumbent who also happened to be a local television personality. It would clearly be an uphill slog but a person who has a lot of energy and nothing else to do, can do a lot as a political candidate.

I would spend the next 11 months going door to door, thousands of doors, speaking to an amazing assortment of beings living in anything from dumps to palaces, but all with two things in common — They all lived in my district, and none knew who the Hell I was.

I distinctly remember the four doors I knocked on early that first morning. The first two, I was a little nervous and to my relief, no one was home, so I wrote out a note that as it turned out, I would write thousands of times on my campaign brochure. It said, “Sorry, I missed you. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call me at my home.” Signed Richard with my number.

She was home at door number three, and the image is forever etched in my memory. She wasn’t more than 22 or 23, with tangles of long blond hair sweeping over her shoulder and sleep still dozing in her beautiful round blue eyes. She stood barefoot, dressed only in a bathrobe that was gloriously snagged on the doorknob. This vision launched my desire to knock on door number four and the thousands to come over the next eleven months.

Door number 4 was different, a whole lot different, and a revelation that would steel me for all the doors to come that would close in my face, beginning and ending with me in mid-sentence about my running for office.

My mind still smothered in the delights of door number 3, I knocked. “Who is it?” the voice barked. Shocked out of my dreamy fantasies, “Sorry to bother you Mame,” I stammered. ”My name is Richard Kimball, I’m running for the State Senate. I just wanted…” Suddenly the door swung open. Her hand grabbed to secure the lock on the screen. “I just have one question for you,” she huffed. “Great, what is it?” I said. Glaring at me, she jammed her words into my ears, “If elected, will you promise to support a law requiring the castration of all men accused of rape?”

Now I had given a great deal of thought to many issues, but castration of the accused had not been one of them. We talked for quite a while. I was pleasant, sympathetic but never told her that I could support mutilation before conviction as a proper punishment. None the less my concern convinced her that I was a sympathetic friend, and as I imagined what horror this woman must have suffered, she became my first vote.

For a pitiful few, it is a most valuable lesson. It isn’t so much what you stand for as it is what you feel, the language you use and manner with which any normal human would instinctively respond. All of this came very naturally to me, I did not need to pretend, be bombastic or solicitous in any way. I needed to follow Franklin Roosevelt’s advice, “Be short, be sincere and be seated (or in this case quiet).”

Never liking to draw attention or talk, I was a gifted listener and empathizer with almost anyone’s view no matter what it was. It was where it came from that was of interest to me.

Going door-to-door suddenly became fun, often stimulating and endlessly educational. In fact, it would occur to me some years later that I may have been the only candidate ever who truly enjoyed campaigning but hated serving. When serving, I would learn, real people were part of your past.

In the months ahead, door after door, with my passion and interest clear to all I slowly gained support. I walked the streets of central Phoenix seven days a week, every week, from 8 in the morning to 8 in the evening for those 11 months. At some point a few people started to welcome me, they had heard I was coming from friends or relatives in neighborhoods I had been through weeks before. Sometimes they would offer me a soda or a sandwich and actually seemed to enjoy talking to me. One day a photographer showed up and wanted to take a picture of all the shoes I had worn out. I was having a good time. Most of the people were kind, thoughtful and full of all kinds of notions, and it was clear that no one had ever shown any interest in what they thought.

NEWSPAPER PHOTO OF MY WORN OUT SHOES

My little running man went up in yards and on street corners. On Election Day, State Senator Tim Hayes, a popular television personality, a good and decent man and fair Senator was gone. I don’t think he ever knew what hit him. For me, winning was one of those precious moments in life never to be repeated. The experience was pure joy.

Thousands of Arizonians took time out of their day to go to the polls, grab a ballot find my name and say, “Ya! You’re our guy!” That is the nonsensical notion that germinates the “BIG HEAD” all politicians grow. It is a complete dumpster load of the smelly stuff, as I said, people are drawn to the polls by the top of the ticket and just blindly vote for one party or the other on down the ballot. My funny little running man nudged me over the top in what had been thought a Republican district.

The experience of winning with family, friends, and supporters all about, was the purest joy but had sobered by morning.

Now what?

(New chapters will be added roughly once a week)

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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