| Jill Terreri of the Democrat and Chronicle is reporting today that Jon Powers has notified the New York State Board of Elections of his move out of New York, which allows Alice Kryzan the chance to have a second line on November's ballot.
I had the chance to speak to Powers today. He is doing well and confirmed to me that he has moved out of state. He did say that he would be sending out an e-mail in the next day or two to talk a little more about what his future plans hold, so I will let him break the news in the coming days.
What I can say is that Jon is doing well. He is going to be doing something that keeps him involved with two things he knows plenty about: Politics and veterans' issues.
That said, I find it very intriguing that he is still drawing media attention and there have been numerous calls for him to endorse Kryzan in order to save his political career. There have been jabs leveled at Powers over the last month for his silence and for disappearing.
While I like Jon and I'm a friend of Jon's, I don't see how this attention does us any good in the 26th congressional district. We are supposed to be talking about Alice Kryzan. She was the victor on Primary Night and she is the Democratic candidate now.
Many people, including some friends of mine in the blogosphere, have called for Jon to endorse Alice. Why? So we can some sort of Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton-like moment? I don't think we need that. Powers proved that endorsements don't matter much. The only endorsements that matter are on Election Day. I would rather see Kryzan and the Democrats in NY-26 working on getting those endorsements (votes) rather than waiting to see what Powers is going to do.
One last note: It is easy for people who have never campaigned and ran for office to say he should just come out and endorse Kryzan. I had a friend who ran for a local office (his campaign lasted four months) and he was shocked and drained at the end when he lost. Whenever we would talk, that's all he would talk about. He did this for over a month.
Powers ran a campaign for 15 months. He said at one point that it was his "full-time job." He poured his heart and soul into it. Was he tired at the end? You bet. Was he drained? Definitely. Did he need a break? No doubt about it.
We need to realize that the longer our campaign seasons are, the longer we need to recover from them. Tony Blair was on "The Daily Show" recently and made a couple of jokes about how long our campaigns are. When you put all that energy into it, you're not going to just wake up on September 10 or November 5 and be ready to move on and endorse someone. It takes time. |
