To Run or Not to Run

I create this blog now to pour out my thoughts on whether to run as a candidate for counsellor (Ward 1) in Seguin Township, Ontario.

The very idea strikes me as a huge ego trip - the presumption to represent the people where I live in council. I'm confident I could handle the administrative acts required in council due to my business training and work as a management consultant to government in the past.

But the problem of knowing the opinions of constituents on the issues of the day is at the heart of representation. How could I or anyone properly represent constituents.

I've become so cynical of the motives of politicians in general, the arrogance of presumed knowledge, the power of lobbyists, special interests, the influence of a few loud voices.

It seems to me that every 3 or 4 years in come the clowns and there's only a moment for people to vote for the least contemptible option, or simply boot out the latest scoundrel at whatever the cost. Then, whatever the vote, people are stuck with the vote winner and whatever he or she decides to do without recourse from the electorate.

If I were to run for the 2010 fall election in Seguin, I'd have to...find a way to know what people in my ward want me to do as their representative, and simply do that. It couldn't be about me and what I want to do. I would have to take myself out of the equation. An honest broker of the constituents. This all sounds like the same old phoney talk.

I don't know the incumbent, but I would like to try something new. If I'm to believe what I read in the newspapers, and a handful of people I've met, things are not working very well for the ward at the moment. All I could do is offer an alternative way of representing people in the ward.

How the hell did I come to seriously considering this? Public office is the last thing I could ever think of. A few years ago I was at The Albany Club and that old devil, Mike Harris, shook my hand over drinkies, said I should run. Me? I laughed like a donkey. Harris was a charming bastard, but way wrong about my interest in running for office.

Boy, the things you think in middle age....