The Phuture of Pho

My one-week declaration of “becation” having dragged on for five extra days without explanation, it is time to come clean with whatever readers I have left. Like Redhorse at Psychobilly Democrat, I have accepted a position with the Tom Sawyer for State Board of Education campaign. I will be running internet outreach, among other duties. We struck the deal Friday and since then I have been scrambling to tie up loose ends and starting to ramp up.

As for the blog. I’ve decided to put it in more or less suspended animation for the duration of the campaign. I have several reasons for this. I fear the usual conflict of interest charges any time I brush up against the race. Some in the audience are satisfied by no amount of disclosure, believing instead that the only fair move is to give up one position or the other.

Second, I worry about writing something controversial on the blog that will blow back on the campaign. Or conversely, I am concerned about pulling punches too much here. Neither is a good option and backing off is superior to both.

But ultimately the conflict of time will swamp any real or perceived conflict of interest. I will be devoting every spare ounce of energy and moment of time to getting Tom elected. At the same time, I will be maintaining my position with Ohio Fair Schools, trying to discharge my existing volunteer duties and taking care of my family. I simply will not have time to blog.

I am hoping – hoping – to post a few clean-up pieces, mostly about MTB events. And perhaps I will drop occasional posts here if I do some blowing-off-steam writing and it looks appropriate for publication.

Well, as far as this blog goes generally, that is. We are planning to run a blog for the campaign – the URL will get a post once its up. For that matter, I will probably be cross-posting major announcements and may try to publicize events and volunteer opportunities for Tom’s campaign and others here.

One last bit of business. Back when I posted about Tom’s candidacy I mentioned deleting some posts. At that time, I had not been approached by the campaign, and indeed didn’t in my wildest imaginings consider the possibility that I would. In fact I was on vacation when the news came of Tom’s candidacy and deleted the posts at that time. I genuinely believed what I wrote – that his decision to run in this race gave lie to the street-level grousing I heard. I had never been comfortable with the posts at issue and didn’t need much impetus to dump them.

And in fact, I can tell you this race has energized Tom. Where he seemed fairly subdued during the 13th race, he now bristles with energy. Where he says publicly that he is excited by the potential of the position, privately he overflows with that excitement.

So if you want a strongly progressive, pro-public schools Board of Education member surf on over to VoteforSawyer.com, read up and consider a contribution. And if you just really like Pho’s Akron Pages and wish I would install a tip jar, come on over and donate to my guy instead.