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About 15 years ago, I decided to run for Congress...
I had been involved on and off with politics since 1976 when I was the campus co-coordinator for Carter's presidential campaign...
This was 1992, the year of the outsider...
I ran against Mary Rose Oakar, a very decent congressperson who got herself all entangled in the bounce check scandal...
There were five others in the race, including a former County Commissioner and a personal friend of the Kennedy Clan...
Well, I had separated myself from the fringe candidates and then the Plain Dealer decided to endorse me over the incumbent and the County Commissioner...
Suddenly, my phone was ringing, people recognized me in restaurants, Indian baseball games, I was on TV almost every night...
I actually started to believe I was on to something...
And then, election day...
I came in a distant fifth...
Suddenly, I was a nobody again....
It took some getting use to and I'll admit, I missed the attention...
Also the ten grand I spent after I got the endorsement, but that's another story...
Anyway, I brooded for a while and then I sucked it up and went out and campaigned for Mary Rose...
The only candidate from the primary who did...
That was the start of 10 more years as a local political figure who was interviewed from time to time and even had a seat on a local cable gab fest...
The point of all this is that it is awful hard to give up that fame once you have had a taste...
I was lucky, I didn't piss anyone off too bad...
I worked myself almost to death, but I left on my terms...
I didn't lose a son...
I didn't become, in the span of about five months, a poster child for the left and then the right...
But I still feel for Cindy...
I really do...
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