The first of July marks many things.  It is early summer, the kids are out of school, cook outs and firework outings are being planned.  Vacations are nearing, and thoughts turn to sun, sand, and swimming.  The hammock in the back yard swings invitingly, and the lemonade is in the fridge.  Time to sit back and dangle one's toes in the water . . .

But hold on - It is also campaign season.  As others are winding down, candidates all over Connecticut are out door knocking, lit dropping, and doing their best to make their case to the voters.  Connecticut's local conventions have been had, and most candidates have their place on the ballot and have filed their citizens election forms.  With all of this already done - is it too late to decide to run for office?  No, it is not!

Candidates can still use a petition drive to get themselves on the ballot, and can still participate in the Citizens Election Program.  In order to be listed on the ballot, candidates need to garner petition signatures equal to 1% of the number of votes cast in the last election for the office being sought.  But why stop there?  If the candidate keeps going and gets signatures equal to 10% of the votes cast, he or she can get a partial grant from the CEP program.  But heck, now that you have your team in place to get signatures anyway - go for broke!  Signatures equal to 20% of the votes cast in the last election will get a candidate the full Citizens Election grant.  This is really an unprecedented opportunity for petitioning and minor party candidates to be on equal footing with major party candidates.

So all of you folks who ever thought of running for office, get motivated and get out there! With such a great opportunity in front of you, now is not the time to dangle your toes in the water.  Now is the time to get a team together and get signatures and run for office!  There'll be plenty of time to sit back and have a beer in November.

In 2004, inspired by Howard Dean's amazing campaign, I ran for State Representative in Connecticut's 149th assembly district.  I had never been involved in politics to any great extent before Governor Dean's Presidential bid, and yet when I got interested in politics, I fell hard.  Initially a complete political novice, I ended up running the house party program in Connecticut for Dean, and served on the Dean for CT steering committee.  When he ended his campaign, Governor Dean asked his supporters to run for office.  My husband looked into the races in our area, and found the State Rep seat in our district had been unopposed for almost 10 years.  So I threw my hat in the ring.

I quickly found that running for office is time intensive and exhausting - but surprisingly not that difficult, with one exception.  That exception was fundraising.  I had all sorts of help in terms of strategy and campaign advice.  There were free campaign trainings available in Connecticut, and I had a very helpful mentor in the legislature.   Volunteers from the Dean campaign in Connecticut were generous with their time and helped me out a great deal.  I had all the pieces in place - except the money.  I am naturally a pretty shy and reserved person, and it was very very difficult for me to call people and ask for their money.  Intellectually I understood that the money wasn't for me personally, but it was still very very difficult for me to make those calls.  As well, I was fairly unknown in the district except among the local grassroots community (who unfortunately were not wealthy enough to fund my campaign).  I tried my college alumni list which produced some results, and raised some money over the internet.  It was a struggle to get past about $5000.  My opponent, meanwhile, a well liked incumbent, had no trouble raising almost $40,000 in the blink of an eye.   I was extremely fortunate in that Governor Dean ended up coming to my house to host a fundraiser for me, and we ended up raising about $9000 total - enough for a couple mailings and some lawn signs.  

The Connecticut State Elections Enforcement Commission just unveiled their new electronic campaign reporting system (eCRIS) today to a crowd of about 100 people at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford. To read the CTCC press release, click here.

If it lives up to the demonstration they gave, I think everyone -the media, advocates who probe into campaign contributions and even the campaigns themselves -- is going to be happy with this new system. First and foremost, it lets you download the campaign contribution data. That's key. There are a lot of good websites out there that let you search campaign contributors, political action committees, special interests, etc. But, in every follow-the-money research report I've done, I've needed the flexibility to sort and query the data in ways only a desktop application like Excel or Access can provide.