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Sarah's avatar

Garrett?? It’s me, Sarah!! :)

My friend sent me a link to this Substack tonight and I just can’t believe it!!! I’m humbled and giddy and shocked and touched. (I was told my website message was too long and people probably wouldn’t read it, and then this??)

Thank you, thank you for taking the time to learn about me and donating and expressing an interest in volunteering. Here’s my email address so we can stay in touch: sarah@keyeskiforwi.com.

You made my day! Wow.

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BikeWalkBarb's avatar

You have me thinking back to my run for the Idaho state legislature, of course, on more than one level.

This is tl;dr and I really should write a blog post (oh wait I did https://biketoworkbarb.blogspot.com/2011/01/representing-aryans-political-speech.html but I wrote this long message before realizing how much of it was in the post so I'm keeping it). Every person who runs can make a difference. You may not win but you're building capital and you might win the next time.

It matters. If you do win you get to do some good. Whether you like it or not this IS the system we have and giving up on it means we'll always elect the greater of two evils, if you think that's your choice set.

So much of what I did is reduced or gone. That isn't a reason for people not to do the work. What else will produce results *within the existing systems*? "Burn it all down" simply isn't an answer. Who gets burned?

So, yeah, I've been an elected official. This was pre-e-mail campaigning, my children, back when we chiseled our campaign literature on stone tablets using MS Word's mailmerge function and personalizing as best we could based on voter ID because you hadn't told us your every last interest and concern and inseam size by clicking on ads and answering fakey Facebook surveys.

And I *was* invested in my community in a very hands-on way. That's a great point, Garrett. I had volunteered on a trail committee and had written sincere letters to the editor. I picked up trash on a mile of highway and had my name on the sign as the volunteer maintaining it.

As a member of the very rapidly created Idaho Pro-Choice Network I had stood outside the post office gathering signatures on a petition asking Gov. Cecil Andrus to veto an anti-abortion bill, HB625 (yes I can cite that bill number from memory with no help from Google or your search engine of choice). Before that I wrote letters to my elected representatives telling them I'd watch how they voted on HB625 and I would vote accordingly in the fall. Later one of those same House members welcomed me into the caucus meeting by saying, "I *remember* your letter. That last line! 'I will vote accordingly in the fall.'"

I ran as a pro-choice candidate who cared about human rights and the environment and beat a four-term anti-choice incumbent by 313 votes out of over 20,000 cast. I wasn't supposed to win. No interests put big money into my campaign. My first donation was a $500 check from an attorney active in the local Democratic Party. My second was $5 from a lady who didn't even live in my district. She got my pro-choice fundraising letter and sent me a $5 bill in an envelope with a note written in shaky handwriting that told me she remembered pre-Roe days.

Yes, I told my personal story. But I mostly ran on the issues that differentiated me from the incumbent. I worked hard to find common ground with people who might not identify as pro-choice but who could get very worked up about the government invading your bedroom and your personal decisions.

I doorbelled the heck out of the district and got in all the walking you're supposed to do when you're pregnant because guess what, the day after my papers stating my intention to run were filed in Boise the little test strip turned pink and I was starting a family that year. Not that I would tell everyone to plan their lives this way but a pregnant pro-choice candidate made for quite a package. (Although don't tell a reporter "the baby was planned, the campaign was an accident"--it's too quotable to leave out of the story.)

I was elected to represent the district that included the Aryan Nations compound that is now gone thanks to a brave family and great legal work (super short story https://www.splcenter.org/seeking-justice/case-docket/keenan-v-aryan-nations and a longer story https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2000/aryan-nations-verge-collapse-following-judgment and https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2000/victoria-keenan-discusses-run-aryan-nations). I didn't doorbell that precinct. I knew exactly where they were because they had a swastika posted by the road. I supported the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations before, during and after my time in office (https://www.idahohumanrights.org/history.html).

I won that first House seat, ran for an open Senate seat and won that, ran for re-election and lost. It was 1994 and Newt Gingrich was really good at messaging and framing. I was supposed to be a safe seat because I'd worked hard, did constituent service, got bills passed, held lots of town halls and engaged with constituents every chance I got.

I was then recruited to run for a seat on the governing board of North Idaho College because a right-wing candidate had filed. I had name ID, ran hard and won. Served on the board for 5 years, chaired it for two, had the privilege of signing an accord with the Coeur d'Alene Tribe naming the actions we would take to improve recruitment, retention and success of Native students attending the college built on their ancestral lands. We improved funding for women's athletics by pointing out that we weren't in compliance with Title IX--that's what you can do when 3 of the 5 trustees are women and ask those questions.

I'm angry, and I don't live in Idaho any more.

I'm angry that the state I was born in that was home to many independent-minded people has fallen for so many flavors of rhetoric. It was there when I was there but we could win campaigns and we could make a real difference. I'm angry that the current governing board of NIC seems to be determined to lose the college's accreditation and ignore the fiduciary oath they took when they joined the board as they "MAGA-fy" the school. YES it matters to run for those positions no one thinks much about! They've been playing the long game and that's why they're winning https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/us/politics/north-idaho-college-republicans.html?smid=url-share (gift link).

I'm angry that the wins we made are all threatened or lost again. We defeated an anti-gay initiative in 1994, people. 1994! This is before all the marriage equality campaigns started succeeding. People didn't feel safe being out. Our slogan was "Idaho is too great to hate". My older daughter still has my T-shirt from that campaign. Maybe standing up for that was one of the reasons I lost my re-election bid that year. I don't know. So be it. I didn't run to hide from my values and beliefs. Dammit.

Keep working, keep voting, keep running, keep donating even if the ads aren't awesome, keep building those small local efforts that one day you'll put on your bio page when you run, or someone who volunteered because you started the thing will put it on theirs.

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