It all starts from a kitchen cabinet

First, thanks for exceeding Chafee's numbers on your votes at www.rifuture.org. Our next goal is to surpass Laffey's numbers by this Friday, so get voting!!! It was a good day. I discovered I had been the Entrepreneur Educator of the Year at Bryant University and we have our first launch of "touches" to the media.

I've been asked how I come about the decision to run for U.S. Senate? First, it started when I was campaigning and stumping for State Senate in a Republican enclave of District 34. I hated that our double-digit property taxes were being driven up by unfunded education mandates, redundant bureaucracies, cronyism and how little our state elected officials were doing about it. I was frustrated by no vision and no plan for energizing our state's economy due, in part, to the few members in the General Assembly with practical and formal business backgrounds. Yet, they were/are spending our tax dollars like it was monopoly money. To say the average citizen is fed up is an understatement. Most have little respect for politicians and little confidence in things being improved for them or their families. This explains many of their (dis)approval ratings.

I found two-thirds of voters were independents in my district, which covers one-fifth of the state geographically because they didn't want to be associated with a party. They voted the candidate and not the party. In the process, I have met with many state and community leaders (regardless of party affiliation) to get their viewpoints. It's clear the partisanship within and between the parties is a large contributor to some of our state's woes. There have been successes, but for the most part this train has yet to leave the station. There's a disconnect between those with political influence and the people they are supposed to represent.

The reason for running is straightforward. I am tired of elites who have not been in the trenches and lack vision. They assume to know what is best for our country and fail to show the level of competency and compassion to do what we all know is right on behalf of our public. They have created a wall that insulates themselves from reality to secure their own promise of a better life that clearly benefits the wealthy and most large corporate interests. The formula is corrupted and the system is damaged.

Time is a critical issue as many sit passively on this run away train clearly traveling in the wrong direction. In short, there's a lack of responsive leadership that is accessible and has the wisdom to listen and learn and the vision to make progress and avoid past mistakes. I want the top 1% of the country's wealthy to stop furthering an agenda of greed and preference that is primarily aimed at gutting our system of more federal revenues for the same public benefits they enjoy.

It seems fair when one considers how few actually have placed themselves in harms way wearing a uniform. This would begin by a repeal of their 2001 tax cuts which burdens the middle class and is the cause for our country to borrow $20 billion MONTHLY from China.

This travesty is now occurring with the wealth tax and the House of Representatives has already voted to repeal a source of funds equivalent to over $300 billion during the next ten years! Ironically, Katrina may have derailed it in the Senate, but then again this natural disaster is earmarked to cost our taxpayers $200 billion! I want large corporations to balance their loyalty to shareholders and their officers with the benefits and freedoms derived in the U.S. and pay their fair share of corporate taxes instead of avoidance with offshore havens. In 1960, it was 28% of our federal budget. It's now 7%.

These influences caused me to hold a kitchen cabinet meeting with a diverse group of people in late June. This group was made of a long time friend, attorney, venture capitalist and something of an energy guru, the Dean from one of Rhode Island’s College of Business with Republican leanings, a Columbia University MBA with global knowledge of business and a shirtsleeves management perspective (born from somewhat similar humble beginnings to my own), a good friend and a fellow adjunct professor at Bryant with management and small business experience and a solid feet on the ground perspective of the challenges of middle class family with children, an honors student at Bryant University with a cogent ability to express her sense of what is wrong with representation of youth in America and was an excellent policy researcher and drafter, the founder of Bryant's Global Entrepreneurship Program and a 20-something leader in his own right, a creative mensa -type diehard Democrat centillionaire from Philly who was wiped out by an embezzler and has once again flourished with a mission to help democrats to regain a balance of power in DC, a Latina who has an excellent ear to the Latino community's successes and struggles, the editor for a regional RI newspaper (for the purpose of recording the event and providing perspectives as a long time Rhode Islander), several of the architects and directors involved in the Howard Dean presidential and Paul Wellstone's U.S. Senate campaigns and last, but certainly not least, a very good friend of mine who is a retired fire chief and deputy fire marshal and was also involved in my senate campaign. He has a personal story that is so classic of many Rhode Island working families.

To the point, we identified every reason I should not run. We then looked at all the weaknesses I had. We looked at my strengths and then we looked at the existing and likely candidates' strengths and weaknesses. The strategy is straightforward. Remain below the radar, let egos prevail. Be strong on military issues. Be strong on business and economic issues. Give a voice to the disenfranchised. Don't be a politician. Run for the office as a public servant - a working U.S. Senator. Speak what you believe and don't be afraid to differentiate from the other candidates’ views. This is when we realized I held many of the socially progressive, fiscally responsible views that were consistent with 70's era Democrats..

My mission is putting power back to the people. It is to help them see they have some degree of control over their families' future with small, collective efforts. It's to show communities they matter and can make a difference. In short, "Your problem is my problem." My promise is I will work only for the voters and not special interests, but my savings/equity of about $150,000 will need to be augmented with many contributions to run against some candidates set upon buying their way into office and duplicating the failings we see term after term. This is not a journey that can go anywhere without active involvement by others in Rhode Island and around the country.

Up to this time, the costs have been almost exclusively exploratory. I spent a few bucks to host this gathering and paid our consultants for their guidance and advice. We sent mostly bulk rate letters to about 600 Democrat leaders and 7,000 Democrat military veterans who we then telephoned. The purpose was to meet and greet and get a sense of their interest should I run for office. The gathering was a cookout with the goal of raising awareness of childhood cancer and the needs of the RI Food Bank. My blog and our website are all the product of my wife. Between working for a living, raising a family and giving a lecture in China this summer, my efforts to put a campaign in motion were stalled until September, where I hired one full-time person to reach out to women and members of the minority communities. We have also had the good fortune of several unpaid volunteers. Before this time, I had two honors students mapping target areas in Rhode Island and working on tweaking my web site and its contents. I was recently told that the creator of the rifuture.org blog (who is a new officer of the Young Democrats Association) had posted in his blog that my campaign had violated FEC regulations by not filing at the end of the third quarter. I was flattered that we had even been a blip on his radar.

Anyway, the financial threshold for reporting was not met and hiring a second person to help on my announcement did not occur until late September, where the threshold was still not reached. We will be filing in October, as we start to make known our announcement to a selected sample of loyal, everyday people. I make no secret that the amount of funds I am able to afford is lower than the other candidates, which is sort of my point that with the absence of free media, the "best" candidate is often denied access to the public to share his or her message with "success" often defined by who raises the most money without any thought to the sources of the funds and what frequently adverse influence these donors have on candidates' decisions. Let's hope the number showing on October 25, 5:30pm, Hope High School changes that perception! You can make this difference!