First Principles

Congratulations to Pat Hickey – I’m looking forward to doing everything I can to help him advance the cause of liberty in AD 25 and across Nevada. I’m incredibly proud of my volunteers, supporters, and campaign staff, who helped me run a PHENOMENAL campaign.  I am honored by everyone’s efforts and faith, and will continue working as hard as I can for all of you in whatever capacity I can.

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As I sit here and type this, I can’t help but to admit my disappointment.  It is always difficult to work so hard for something and not attain it.  Untold hours of incredibly hard work went into this race from hundreds of some of the best people I’ve ever known.  The successes of this campaign belong to them.

And there were great successes!  The hard work has and will continue to matter, and to pay off.  We helped define the terms of the conversation, and I believe that hard fought primaries make the eventual winner a better general election candidate and ultimately a better legislator/officeholder.  And as a virtual unknown without vast sums of personal cash to spend only three months ago, we came in as a strong second in a five way primary to a guy who also worked incredibly hard to win, and with a ton of advantages to boot, including the name recognition, connections, and experience that comes from holding prior elected office.  We ran a campaign I’m very proud of, and didn’t leave anything on the table.

Through the race, I was lucky enough to meet tremendous individuals I wouldn’t otherwise have gotten to know, or know as well.  I thought I knew how fortunate I have always been in the people who surround me, but now I am reminded many times over just how blessed I am.  And I am confident that many doors have been opened as a result of this run, and I’m looking forward to exploring these new relationships and new opportunities.

More importantly, our foot is now in the door.  I decided to run because I believed it was time for a new generation of principled conservatives to take responsibility for the future of the GOP, Nevada, and the USA.  Even though we didn’t win the seat itself, this new generation established itself as a presence in our local politics that is here to make a difference.  I promise, so long as I have anything to say about it, that this presence will only get stronger over time.

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And while I admit my disappointment, I also confess some relief.  The 2011 session will be a bruising one, without easy answers to potentially devastating problems.  No matter what happens, there will be hundreds of thousands of people angry with the decisions made in Carson City.

But most of all, I get to spend more time with my family than I otherwise would have.  And being lucky enough to have such a beautiful family, that is no small thing!  Indeed I am blessed – thank you so much for all your help, love, and support, Alicia and Lillian.  I love you both more than my heart can hold.

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Four years ago as I was watching election returns come in for a bad midterm election for the Republicans, I wrote the following:

You’ll never see me wear black on the day after an American election, or sit around and mope. To do so is un-American, and I use that word as strongly as I know how. Every election we have in accordance with our two-centuries-old founding document represents a transfer of power without violence, with extraordinarily minimal cheating, and with grace befitting a great nation. Candidates will call their lawyers, not their militias, and the decisions of judges will be obeyed willingly. I won’t ever accuse people of “voting against their economic interests” – people know what they’re voting for. No matter how much we dislike candidates or outcomes, it is shameful to react with anything but joy over that fact. Shameful.

So there it is. I’m glad it’s over, and now we move forward. On this night I’m proud to be an American. God bless America, and may our children tell us we did the right things at this most dangerous time in our history.

I copied and pasted that into another post two years later when Barack Obama won the Presidency (along with some reservations which seem prophetic in retrospect…).  And I mean it just as much today, and will mean it in every election cycle as long as we still have a Constitution to follow.  I hope anyone reading this who might be disappointed over the results of our Gubernatorial or US Senate primary races join me in this thought tonight.

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The stakes have never been higher for our state or our nation.  In such a time, duty calls, and that’s why I ran.  And no matter what the election results were, duty still calls, and there is much for all of us to do.

In 1976, Ronald Reagan conceded his primary challenge to President Ford, but with a reminder and a warning about the burdens of that victory:

And suddenly it dawned on me, those who would read [my time capsule] letter a hundred years from now will know whether those missiles were fired. They will know whether we met our challenge. Whether they have the freedoms that we have known up until now will depend on what we do here.

Will they look back with appreciation and say, “Thank God for those people in 1976 who headed off that loss of freedom, who kept us now 100 years later free, who kept our world from nuclear destruction”?

And if we failed, they probably won’t get to read the letter at all because it spoke of individual freedom, and they won’t be allowed to talk of that or read of it.

This is our challenge; and this is why here in this hall tonight, better than we have ever done before, we have got to quit talking to each other and about each other and go out and communicate to the world that we may be fewer in numbers than we have ever been, but we carry the message they are waiting for.

We must go forth from here united, determined that what a great general said a few years ago is true: There is no substitute for victory, Mr. President.

From tonight on, to victory.  Together.