I’ve reached the point in my county council campaign when voters ask why you’re running – for real.  Don’t gimme the sound bite, they say.  Why would anyone put themselves through the whole…you know…running for public office with a sex felony conviction…thing?

First, let’s talk about why I quit smoking.

Being a smoker is a full time job, often the only job a Clevelander can find.  Not some “social” smoker, bumming cigs outside a bar.  A smoker who buys packs.

You’re suckin’ ‘em down at least once a half hour like a supervisor is watching. What moves you along from one cigarette to the next is a noticeable and tacitly acknowledged, often commented upon level of stress, however small.   This “job” reduces every high stress event to an excuse for a smoke, but elevates the low stress events to the same level.  All stress is equal, so it’s manageable.

Thus, I became a pack a day smoker after my arrest.  Leveled it all out.   Life was reduced to the intervals between cigarettes, their only distinction being how frantically you puffed.

For example, when I emailed State Senator Shirley Smith in January to ask about the “screening process” I’d heard she was setting up to “endorse” a candidate in County Council District 7.  Who knows how, or who will be endorsing via Senator Smith, but Senator Smith responded as if I were an applicant for a job over which she had hiring authority.

“Thanks for your interest in the county council seat for District 7.  While we have not yet completed the process by which candidates will be screened, we welcome your interest…”

You “welcome” my “interest”?  Marlboro country, here I come.  Did Shirley Smith ever hear of, you know, voters?  Another cigarette.  Heaping amounts of profanity strewn end to end like Christmas garland.  More smokes.

Compared to the daily stress over 8-plus years of wondering when you will be fired from which job you begged for, watching your friends disappear one by one, wondering who will take a shot at you from what anonymous email to whom, State Senator Shirley Smith is small potatoes.  But I made State Senator Shirley Smith an occasion for a cigarette, a legitimate measure of my life’s stresses.

Enough.  Churchill once said when you’re going through hell, keep going.  The smoking, among other wallowing behaviors, kept me standing still.  Merely coping, not living.

Time to start moving.  Little steps at first, like writing about it all on a blog, or walking into a room of people without staring at the floor.  Maybe lead with the conviction in job interviews, rather than wait for it to come up.  How can I expect anyone else to treat my conviction as irrelevant, old news if I don’t do so myself?

Get a haircut, shoot some Youtubes, start wearing nice shoes, maybe don a sport coat, take on the nicotine and kill it, one thing leads to another, next thing you know, I’m campaigning in a well known establishment in Little Italy watching a prominent business owner reflexively, upon sight of my last name, put my campaign flyer in the front window of his Mayfield Road shop, and I stop him, myself, with other people looking on, saying with a laugh, “um…ya might wanna check me out online before you do that…but thanks!”

Woulda been a cigarette moment once.

Or handing Mayor Frank Jackson my campaign literature, asking for his support, while he’s standing next to Kevin Conwell, Ward 9 councilman, and having Mayor Jackson tell me to “talk to the councilman,” whose wife is running for the same county council seat while sitting on the county payroll.

Huh.

Used to be a cigarette moment, too.

About a month into quitting, the Cavs swan dive hit, culminating in every non-Ohioan everywhere rooting for Lebron James to leave town and fuck Cleveland over as hard as anyone has ever done since Art Modell.  Stewart Scott on ESPN even said during Game 6 that Cleveland is “the only city whose mottos are ALL failure,” without a single thought of how that would sound to…Cleveland.

And in between the calamitous Game 5 and the season ending Game 6, I filed my petitions to run for public office.  I even dressed up for the occasion.  People came and took pictures.  Not one cigarette throughout.

It’s still a bumpy ride – death threats, the occasional asshole to my face, the litany of haters online, the daily realization that some friends, no matter how close, you know who you are, just aren’t going to be there for you when you need them most, and they won’t tell you they have no intention of being publicly associated with you, no they’ll just let you figure it out, and boy will that really, really suck.

But I don’t smell like an oncoming ash tray from three feet away anymore – because I decided to run for public office.

I don’t stand alone outside in the freezing cold nursing my past on nicotine anymore – because I began a run for public office.

I’m not sleeping off hangovers 7 days a week then starting all over again before the sun goes down – because I decided to run for public office.

This feels right.  That’s why I’m putting myself through this.  It feels human.

And frankly, I don’t give a damn whether I win or lose.  I’ve  already won the unpredictable battle I wanted and needed to fight.  Winning an election, hell, I already know how to do that.

And if I can win this race…and I think I can…it will mean that if you pick your spots, work hard, fight like hell, and seize your own dignity, then anyone, can accomplish anything, in Cleveland.  And it doesn’t matter how many people, however powerful, root against it happening, either.  In fact, the more rooting against it, the more standing in the way, the better. When’s the last time you saw that happen in Cleveland?

See you at your “screening committee,” Senator Smith.