11 January 2016

Memo to candidates for public office

Filing for the legislature? A statewide or regional office? Flathead Memo would like to hear from you. Please send your press release, which should contain the URL for your campaign’s website, and a coherent explanation of why you’re running for office, the photograph of yourself that you’ll use as your standard campaign mug shot, and if you like, your résumé or CV.

A couple of quick points:

Please explicitly describe your education. If you graduated from high school or college, say so. For example, “Graduated from the Western University of Politics in 1999 with a B.A. in gladhanding.” If you say, “Studied at the Western University of Politics,” I’ll interpret that as meaning you took courses at that institution, but either dropped out, flunked out, or were not admitted to a degree program.

I don’t care whether you sign the campaign fair practices pledge. I would not sign it — not because I would be planning to campaign unfairly, but because I believe the pledge is insulting and has no bearing on whether a candidate will run a clean or dirty campaign.