Monday, November 13, 2017

"I'm running for public office since 2004. It's just that I never had a chance to develop my campaign."

That's Jose Vasquez, the Democratic Party's special election nominee for state representative in Florida's 58th district. Vasquez was also the Democratic nominee in 2012 and 2016, and ran as an independent write-in in 2008 and 2014.

Maryam Saleh, writing for The Intercept, isn't covering Vasquez's campaign so much as the campaign of "progressive Muslim" Ahmad Hussam Saadaldin, an independent candidate trying to stir up some Bernie Sanders style mojo in a district the Republican Party has owned for years. At a recent meeting, each candidate (or at least each candidate's supporters) suggested that the other should drop out of the race. And of course both candidates declined to do so.

Which is neither here nor there to me -- I don't live in that district, and I doubt that I could in good conscience support any of the three candidates in the coming election.

But that quote caught my eye.

When you've run for the same office four times, "I never had a chance to develop my campaign" doesn't seem like a very good excuse for four losses or very good justification for a fifth shot. How many campaigns does this guy have to run before he "has a chance to develop" one of them?

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