This week I was interviewed for an article to be posted on NPR\u2019s national website. The story is about independent presidential candidates who continue to run, election cycle after election cycle. Reporter Linton Weeks said to me that some would categorize such candidates as perennial losers. \u201cHow do you respond to that?\u201d He then asked. I said in our \u201ccampaign wake\u201d over the past 12 years (and 125,000 miles), there are more people in the country now helping: save the environment, curb crime, welcome the immigrant, stand up for the unborn, aid the poor\u2026 In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, I gave a talk to a church youth group about the abject poverty we\u2019d witnessed on Native American Reservations across the country in our travels. The youth were so moved, that shortly after the talk they planned a two-week \u201cwork mission\u201d into the poorest Native American Reservation in New Mexico. \u201cLoser?\u201d I responded to the NPR reporter. \u201cBy whose measure?\u201d \u2026This week (besides updating our website), we\u2019ve been doing some grassroots stumping in northwest Ohio. In Columbus Grove (pop. 2,118), I talked with one of the owners of The Gas Station. You read that right: \u201cThe Gas Station.\u201d While it\u2019s not clear how many actual seconds it took to come up with that, I do have to admit that in all our travels — I\u2019ve never seen another gas station with that particular name. I mean it\u2019s so obvious, who would think of it? The kids and I then went to Kohl\u2019s Grocery Store up the street to put up a \u201cJoe flier.\u201d A cashier named Debbie noticed our campaign vehicle, which I had strategically parked right in front of the front windows of the store. (And we continue to do this all without paid consultants.) Debbie took a flier and asked about our platform. What\u2019s more, she earnestly said she would go home that night to do research on our website. She added that she takes politics seriously. I said so do we. Note: Our son Jonathan, 8, is playing his first year of Midget Football. The first practice, they lined him up at outside linbacker. And on the first play, he raced in and sacked a quarterback that was twice his size. He stood up smiling, turned to me and exclaimed: \u201cI really like this Dad!\u201d Ya gotta think Clay Mathews III, the middle linebacker for the Green Bay Packers, probably said something similar to his Dad after his first hit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week I was interviewed for an article to be posted on NPR\u2019s national website. The story is about independent presidential candidates who continue to run, election cycle after election cycle. Reporter Linton Weeks said to me that some would …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}