2010-05-02
My First Primary is Around the Corner: Should Politicians Blog?
Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to thank you for your support and patience over the past couple of months. As most of you know, I made the decision to run for local office in mid-February after talking with party leaders, community leaders, and family about the idea. I'm in a tough race against a former County Commissioner; but, thanks to the support of conservatives in this community, I feel like I was able to run a very competitive campaign!
However, to put myself in this position, I did the selfish thing and slowed down this blog considerably. I made it even worse by taking my most active contributor, Travis Gearhart, and making him my campaign manager. As a result, we've been providing less content than I would have ever thought acceptable.
Still, our traffic levels remain at where they were several months ago and we've actually seen an increase in the average number of comments per post. I can't thank you enough for that.
This last week, it was suggested/demanded to me that I quit blogging. This isn't the first time this has happened to me, and I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear that I doubt it will be the last time. I've been posting my views on news, politics, international affairs, and some just plain weird stuff that caught my eye since 2004. Has it been controversial? Of course, that's why people keep coming back. Am I ever going to say something that comes back to bite me in the butt? Most definitely.
Perhaps I'm still too idealistic for politics, but I would really like to have an elected official sharing his or her views on the world with me. One thing that's always drove me crazy is politicians who have "blogs" that just spout off campaign rhetoric with posts that were clearly not written by that candidate and, not surprisingly, the blog posts stop after November.
Having served in the Air Force, I've had all kinds of leaders in my life. Good ones and, yes, some bad ones. The good ones were always the ones who lead by example; who went the extra mile to show us what they expected of us. Part of this campaign is to have the chance to show people what sort of accountability and transparency they should expect from their elected representatives.
Think about it like this, my blogging is giving YOU a level of access to myself that is normally only reserved to political insiders and special interests. The entire system is failing at all levels because that kind of accountability and transparency has left the political process. Could blogging sink my political career? Sure, but is that really what's important?
Not to the voters; and if it's not important to them, it shouldn't be important to me.
KTracy.com will live on. I'm going to try to keep the focus on national and international issues. However, I might start writing local pieces on other websites, such as Hoosier Access and NWI Politics to share my thoughts on local issues affecting my constituents.
