My Campaign Ad

This will be going into the Queen Anne's County Update next week, for their special election issue:

The reason I make note of not being a "member of any slate or faction" is because the election in QAC is fairly divided - there is a group of 7 (including 5 of the incumbent members of the Central Committee) who are running as a slate - the QA7. Then there are a group of others who are running in direct opposition - an anti-development faction.

I was asked to run. I'm not entirely certain that the people who asked me to run understood just who I am when they asked me. Apparently, given my work on expanding Centreville's Town Council, which to me is a good government initiative, left some people with the impression that I'm somehow much further to the left than I actually am.

In the coming weeks, I'm going to offer up some short blurbs about where I stand, philosophically. Most of the faithful readers of the Liberty Blog already know this - know that I'm pro-property rights, that I want to sharply rein in government, know that I approach public policy from a rational and analytical perspective. But some of the folks who are going to be reading my blog are going to be learning all this for the first time.

The point is, I don't wanting people making any assumptions about me moving into this election. I don't want people assuming that because I'm not part of the QA7 slate that I'm ardently anti-growth. I don't want people assuming that because I haven't been endorsed by the "Citizens Alliance" that I've got conflicts of interest preventing me from serving.

It's that last point I'm going to touch upon as well. It's become abundantly clear from looking at how things play out politically here that folks seem to confuse the idea of having a "special interest" with having "conflicts of interest". This is symptomatic of a greater perception problem nationally as well - it's tied into the same misconceptions that people have of "lobbying" and lobbyists".

As you can imagine, I've got something to say about that as well.

Anyway - I'd put the ad up last night, but thought I'd add to the post as well.

- Andrew Lan ger