As I came to to know John Bonifaz, I recognized him as the exact sort of person we need in an important position of power: He's exceptionally bright, well spoken, hard working and forward thinking. However, with Deval Patrick stealing all the grassroots thunder, a powerful incumbent who wasn't willing to engage in a campaign and a media that was - for the most part - complicit, John Bonifaz's campaign never really got off the ground. Now we have this: 8 missing precincts in an important write-in campaign. Eight missing precincts in a race that's hanging by a chad - just 141 votes. I just can't, for the life of me, imagine a situation like this happening with John Bonifaz at the helm - especially if he had years in office behind him.
To my readers and fellow bloggers: John Bonifaz is a man who deserves to be in an office where he can work on electoral reform. He's one of the nation's leaders on the issue - and he has the core values that make for a healthy democracy. We need a man like him reforming the system from the inside - a process far quicker than having to fight court battle after court battle that can take months and years to complete.
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2 comments:
It's really unfortunate, but this just wasn't the right year. I hope both he and Dunkelbarger give it another try in '06. I personally feel guilty for not helping their campaigns out more, but I barely had time to do everything I was supposed to do for Deval's campaign. Grassroots campaigns just take so many volunteers, so much time and effort, and it just was impossible to concentrate on three things at once.
That's what I think was the biggest reason Bonifaz could never catch wind - he was a strong candidate who just didn't have a big base to reach out to voters. He's an excellent, extremely engaging and bright speaker, but he didn't have the volunteer base behind him because the people who normally would have helped were already too busy helping Deval.
If he runs again for another office, a lot of the people who helped Deval are going to be looking for their next candidate to help. I'd love to see him as the SoS, but I don't think he should wait another 4 years to run again. He should run for a seat in either the State Senate or State House of Representatives. From there, he could help a lot of his issues and take up a real leadership position in them too. Furthermore, he'd be bulking up his resume for an SoS run.
He's too talented not to be elected - and exactly the kind of person we need in office. If he stays active and engaged with the internet, he'll have the support he needs next time and be doing a lot of good informing citizens of what's going on.
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