Knock, Knock, Knocking On 10,000 Doors

“Dream great dreams, embrace great principles, renew your hope, but above all, believe in the Christ who alone can give total meaning and an ultimate goal to your life.” – Billy Graham

After running for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008 – winning the Republican primary but losing the general election – I was approached by the local GOP county chairman about running for a different office. Since I was a political novice and this congressional race had been my first campaign, he suggested that I run for a local office to get some experience and burnish my political resume. Specifically, he wanted me to run for town council in Barrington, NJ.

Barrington is a small town with roughly 7,000 people and, although it skews Democrat, our party chairman figured that I could flip one of the seven council seats. After all, he reasoned, I had knocked on 10,000 doors during my congressional campaign and garnered more than 70,000 votes. Applying similar math… and estimating that every household had at least two voters… he figured that I could knock on every voter’s door twice.

The only problem was that I wasn’t the least bit interested. Maybe if I were younger (I was 49 at the time), I would have time to climb the political ladder, I told him. And besides, I simply wasn’t motivated by local issues.

“I couldn’t care less about whether a stop sign is placed on this corner or that corner,” I stated matter-of-factly. “What really fuels my fire are state and national issues, such as abortion, reducing both taxes and spending, and restoring the Judeo-Christian principles upon which America was founded.”

And so, I ran for Congress again two years later with my chairman’s full blessing. We both hoped that I could build on my previous performance, which had been the best GOP showing since 1972. But, although I did 9% better and my opponent – a 10-term incumbent – did 9% worse, I still came in a distant second in one of the most heavily Democrat districts in the country.

Should I have listened to my party chairman the first time and run for town council… or followed my heart and campaigned for an office I was passionate about? I did the latter and have no regrets, mostly because I was able to share my faith with tens of thousands of prospective voters during my 2010 campaign. I also exposed my opponent’s corruption, which led to him resigning two years later amidst a House Ethics Committee investigation.

Follow your dreams, my friend, but make sure you do it for God’s glory and not your own.

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or empty pride, but in humility consider others more important than yourselves.” Ephesians 2:3 (NKJV)

- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President