Run for Political Public Office as a Republican

Video Transcript

"When somebody finally decides that they want to run for state wide office whether it's governor, whether it's US Congress, whether it's a US Senate seat. A major effort and an energy. That person has made a commitment that they want to do a couple of things. One, they want to try to raise ideas and if we didn't have people who are willing to step up, we would not have good elections and we wouldn't have the exchange of ideas that occurs. Unfortunately, we have this whole thing on incumbents. It's hard to ever beat an incumbent. Voters vote for somebody that they know. It's almost like brand identification, like choosing Colgate over Crest. It's that kind of thing but we need people who are willing to challenge incumbents so that you can have an exchange of ideas and that's what makes the election process work. For a person to decide to get into that, because I run against incumbents, I ran against Bernie Sanders and I ran in a primary against Rut Dwyer in order to run for governor. I was, I did that because I wanted to raise ideas and make people aware of different issues. I think that that's an important part. I learned an awful lot about the state of Vermont but it was probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life was to run for state wide political office. To put my face out in front of everybody and to try to introduce myself and get people to know who I was. That comes from a deep commitment of the democratic process and wanting to make the world a better place. Anyone who runs for state wide office is a person who really does see public service over self. We all, to often I think, paint the established politician who's been there for 30 years like a Pat Lahey, as somehow or other, not appropriate. I will tell you once you're committed to public life and you want to make the world better, that's what you're doing. You're committed to it. I applaud every single elected official because of that commitment to try to make it better. It's unfortunate that we don't have good, strong candidates who are running against incumbents because I think that that's what necessary for the process. One of the reasons we talked about term limitations was so that we could get new blood and get new energy and get people involved in taking a look at what's going on on those state wide offices. I think that's why it's good to have term limits for governor so you get some new energy and new things occurring. So, to run for state wide office you need a lot of intestinal fortitude, courage and self confidence. But, the people do it because they really want to make the world a better place."