[jamaicabound]

I was just curious if anyone has ever run for office or had an interest in doing so?

I remember when I was in college some kid who had a party house wound up running for Mayor. He wasn't really serious just more doing it as a stund type deal but none the less actually got a decent number of votes seeing as how the college students made up probably half if not more of the town vs townies.

Fast forward a few years I was pretty interested in politics as well as disgusted by it. I thought about runing for Mayor. Not only to stop wasting tax money but also it's a pretty decent salary for a PT job, my city consideres it a PT job and honestly though Mayor is officially part of city council its more of a your the face of the city more so than actually running the city. Anyhow, I picked up and submitted a packet and was going to start getting signature when I was contacted by a local newspaper who thought it was interesting a 23 year old kid was running for Mayor, wanted to talk to me. Well he comes out asking about my "checkered past"

Long story short got in a lot of trouble when I was younger. Had I not lived in the same city as my parents would have pressed on anyway and said fuckit, but being that I lived in the same city wanted to spare my parents any embaressment and also my father has the same name as me so wound up dropping it there and not pursuing.

ANyhow, was curious if anyone has ever run for any office or thought about it? I notice there's some positions that only one person runs for and they automatically win. I remember one particular story about some kid who ran for some position, was the only one running so automatically won, wound up getting like a 65k salary for some bullshit position he maybe has to show up for one meeting a month for.

I know we got a lot of smart dudes on here so definately people have the capability to but we know politics is a dirty game, people try to dig stuff up and you hear some crazy stuff about politicians having forum or blogs posts they wrote dugup years later or even stuff like so and so once had a profile on adult friend finder. Wondering if anyone is interested but turned off because they don't want their dirty laundry brought into the light.

[Alpharius]

I worked for a big name politician for a bit, also got involved with local politics, ended up knowing half the politicians in the state on a first name basis.

It's not all fun and games. You have to deal with every crazy person with every crazy complaint you can think of, put out press releases, attend events sun up to sun down (if you're lucky), turn down requests for every type of event you can imagine, manage staff, be ready to maintain a low profile because people will recognize you every place you go, and on top of that you need to keep your nose clean. That last one is super important, it may seem like a lot of politicians get in to trouble and are just fine, but no one is going to stay on the school board very long if pictures of them getting hammered at the club surface. That's all in addition to actually doing work!

Being mayor of anything bigger than Smallville is going to require trying to attract business to move to the city, working with city council members (many of whom may have an eye on your spot), working with local business owners, union reps, non-profit leaders, academics, neighborhood, city, county, state, and federal officials (elected and appointed) to improve where you live. Remember that you'll be making real decisions that impact peoples lives and they will hold you accountable at the end of the day.

That's all if you get elected, which is a whole different ball game.

Some of those positions - sure you could run for, but are you really going to be able to do the job if you are elected? It won't end well on the campaign trail if you give voters the impression you're just running for the hell of it. There are often age, geographical, and experience qualifications to be met before you can qualify to run.