As some of you may know, I was running for office here in Massachusetts. After much reflection and conversation with some of our senior campaign staff, we’ve decided it wasn’t meant to be.
With that, I released the following statement:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 2, 2006After talking to some of the most loyal people I’ve ever known who worked on this campaign, we’ve come to the conclusion that this is not our time and this is not the place. So with regret, we are calling an end to our campaign for the 2nd Franklin District State Representative seat for the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
To say I am not bitter about this would be disingenuous, and maybe that was one of the things that made me attractive to some as a potential politician: the fact that I don’t get all smiley and sugar-coat things.
I was prompted to run because of all the gripes and complaints about how things are out here, but unfortunatley you can’t help others who don’t want to be helped. I’ve also been personally told by some that they’d never vote for a Republican in a million years. If that sentiment can put food on their family’s table, more power to them.
It’s my opinion that some politicians in our area live by what I call the “YOYO Doctrine”; in other words, “you’re on your own.”
I’ve lived in politically competitive districts where politicians feared for their own jobs when The People were losing theirs. With the job losses at Tyco, coupled with job reductions statewide, I was hoping to initiate an economic development plan that would take root without the blessing (or ire) of Beacon Hill. The plan was embraced by many business owners I’ve talked to. It wasn’t rocket science, and could be done tomorrow by our local elected leaders, but as their own jobs aren’t at stake, YOYO.
It would seem those unfortunates who have to drive way out of our district just to get a good paying job, will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. And as for that young woman who graduated from Athol High and wrote in the ADN that her friends plan on leaving the area after college because there’s no jobs here, that’s a sad but true indictment of our district’s situation.
I had a plan to pursue funding needed to build new schools in Athol and Greenfield that wouldn’t require taxpayer monies (outside of donating the land), and would promote themselves.
That, pretty much, was all I planned on bringing to the district. No “radical” conservative agenda. I appeciate the need to keep our communities small and personal, while trying to stimulate job growth and opportunity.
I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to arouse the passion our campaign had. I find it frustrating to bow out to people who voted for a minimum wage increase they know will kill jobs in our area. I find it frustrating to bow out to people who voted to allow illegal aliens to obtain Massachusetts driver’s licenses. I find it frustrating to bow out to people who overrode the governor’s veto thus creating a super commission, unanswerable to any elected official in the state, that can present sexually explicit materials in public school classrooms as young as kindergarten.
Ask your local politician about that one…. They probably voted for it.
I wish to thank the many people who supported this campaign effort.
As for the future, I will not run again. This campaign was never meant to be a job promotion, and for all intents and purposes, it would’ve been a career speed bump. But I care about this wonderful part of our state and the people in it, and with that I gave it my all.
I will remain a voice of conservative activism and will remind us of where we are, and where we could be. Should the Democrats add the governorship this November to their control of state politics, I predict it won’t take long for some to see just how long it takes a million years to go by.
Thank you,
Bob Parks
With that, I feel it’s time for tough love.
Democrats, who routinely call Republicans racists, should catch up and elect their first black governor; you know, an affirmative action hire. So I plan on voting for Democrat and former Clintonista Deval Patrick for Governor of Massachusetts.
He’s been endorsed by Barney Frank, Robert Reich, Barack Obama, Alexis Herman, and who am I to disagree with them…?
Not that I have anything against Kerry Healey, but Massachusetts Democrats need to be exposed for whom they are. As their fiscal and social policies and super-majority veto overrides are chasing more jobs and people out of state, an impression echoed in a current television ad by Democrat candidate Chris Gabrieli, the public here needs to be shown the hard way that those policies are documented to create higher taxes, more dependency, more crime, poorer educational performance, and if you think I’m exaggerating, please look at liberal utopias like Detroit and pre-Katrina New Orleans.
So it’s back to work on the issues of the day. Let’s hope a dark-blue Massachusetts does the trick in making the people here finally see red.
