"May I annoy you for political reasons?"

– My approach when collecting signatures

I didn't tell people to vote for me, but I asked them to vote.

I announced that I had campaign signs available, and offered to deliver them to anyone who wanted one.

I did not do door-to-door canvassing because I wouldn't want politicians to knock on my door.

When I was collecting signatures to get on the ballot, I had to ask strangers in public if they would sign my petition. But I didn't lead with that, I led with an explicit request for permission to annoy them for political reasons. Most people said yes– I think out of sheer novelty and curiosity. Those who said "No." or ignored me, I didn't bother them. In fact, I often told them "yeah that's probably the smart answer" as I walked away.

My friends in local politics seemed a bit concerned about my unwillingness to knock on doors, but they left me to my own devices, which I appreciate. You're supposed to be pushy, it's best practice, I get that. But hey, I still won in a landslide.

Perhaps this approach doesn't scale politically. Perhaps you do have to be rude and pushy to get into positions of higher elected power. But something tells me people are hungry for some decency. Something tells me that people reward being treated with dignity.

You can't give yourself permission to lead.

I think of it like a job interview. When you're interviewing for a position, you explain your qualifications, you answer questions, you might even share your vision for what you'd do in the role. But you don't walk in acting like you already work there. You don't rearrange the office furniture or start giving orders to other employees. That would be inappropriate. You wait to see if you're hired and then take decisive action.

The election is the interview. The campaign is me saying "here's what I can do, here's what I care about, here's how I think." But I don't have permission to govern until the voters give it to me. And if they don't give it to me? That's fine too.

"If they don't pick me, they don't get me" was my admittedly hubristic assessment of the situation.

I was genuinely okay with winning or losing. If I win, great - I can put in the work to help my local community thrive. I can apply my analytical and technical skills to a locality that is in need of modernization. I can use my knowledge of economics and budgets to help balance the books. But if I lose, well, that's less unpaid work for me to do. (City Council is an unpaid office in Shamokin.)

The reason I could afford to be respectful, even meek, during the campaign is that I wasn't desperate for power. I was offering my skills. The voters could accept that offer or decline it. Its their choice either way. My ego wasn't in it.

This is what I mean when I say I'm a "Democratic Descriptivist" - a term I made up. I'm not here to tell Shamokin what it should be. I'm here to see what it is, understand what it wants to become, and help navigate that path if I'm given permission to do so. The community gets to define its own goals. My job is to help achieve them, not to impose my vision.

I think one of the fundamental aspects of democracy is the freedom to make bad decisions. People are allowed to make choices I think are wrong. I sure would like it if they didn't, but the capacity to choose incorrectly is a necessary part of free will.

I thought I was the best option on the ballot, and it turned out the voters agreed with me. That's lovely, and very affirming, but it wasn't mandatory. They could have chosen differently. They didn't.

Now that I've been elected, I can act with much more assertiveness because I have permission to do so. The relationship has changed. I've been hired. The invitation has been extended. I'm no longer a guy with some ideas about how things could work better - I'm a councilman with a responsibility to do the work.

That permission didn't come from my own confidence in my abilities. It came from the community's choice. And that makes all the difference.