Chuck Yes We Kam

Only We Can Keep The MF'er From Burning Down

During our one and only debate in October of 2012, Florida 6th Congressional District Republican Nominee, Ron DeSantis closed his remarks with, “I’d like to thank Mrs. Beaven for keeping the home fires burning while her husband is serving in Afghanistan.”

My response? “Military spouses don’t keep the home fires burning; we keep the motherfucker from burning down.” 

Pro-Tip: #MilSpouses hate being patronized

My first run wasn’t against Ron DeSantis. It all began back in 2010 when I threw my hat into the Republican ring, aiming straight for Congressman John Mica's long-held seat in Congressional District 7, stretching from just south of Saint Augustine to just north of Orlando—a cornucopia of coastal charm, suburban sameness, and good ol’ rural grit. By 2012, we saw the grand redistricting dance turn District 7 into District 6 and Mica taking a forced jaunt into Orlando proper. Opportunity knocked, and I intended to kick the door open. Open seats are like diamonds in the rough, rare and thirsted after, especially with incumbents swaying the electoral odds at a staggering 90% re-election rate.

The term “Congressional Stagnation” dances in the haze of erudite politico’s, with folks like Yale’s Professor David Mayhew spinning theories of “Vanishing Marginals” to explain why we’re stuck in a legislative purgatory. But when the glimmering chance of an open seat appears, everything shifts. My name sat comfortably with familiar Democratic voters and a trusty donor list. All that was left was to woo the independents!

As Country Club Republicans ceded ground to the fringes of their party, I thought independent and moderate Republican women could be persuaded. But here's the kicker: reaching out to them drains dollars. Fast. It was like trying to sail against a hurricane—lots of flailing about with barely any ground gained. This new District was split between not one but two media markets, with Jacksonville gobbling up the north while Orlando laid its claim to the south. Double the cost means double the fundraising.

Ah, the sweet thrill of political campaigning.

That left me with a daily mix of personally talking with as many of the 700,000 people living in the district across hundreds of miles, dialing for dollars, and blasting out social media posts. Picture this:

Each day, you wake up to a twisted game of roulette: talk to a chunk of the 700,000 souls scattered over hundreds of miles, dive into cold calls to funders, or fire off desperate social media blasts into the ether. When day morphs into night, it’s time to call potential donors, pinging through Central Time, then leaping into Mountain and Pacific, before wrapping up with the Hawaiian sunset.

Pro Tip: Hawaiians get really pissed when you miscalculate their time zone.

When dialing came to a merciful end, it was time to write. Ah yes, well crafted emails that had been signed off by Steve, the Head Guy, and Chris, the Money Guy, and Ben, the Word Guy, and Cole, the Social Media Guy, and Me, the Face of Beaven for Congress. It’s a Go! Send. Wait. Watch. Check analytics. Open rate - 2%. Super. Just Super.

It was all oddly interesting in that car-crash kind of way.

Between 2010 and 2012, I began crafting a memoir of sorts, a tell-all about the hidden truths of congressional life—the juicy bits that nobody ever dares to whisper aloud for fear of banishment from polite political society. I called it "Political Suicide." Life happened and I vaguely remembered that it had ever been important to me.

A decade later, I happened upon a printed copy in a box in the attic filled with other lost memories. I looked at the cover for a few seconds before it dawned on me. That writing - the cursive in scratched by a blue sharpy - it was George McGovern’s. He had renamed it: “Winning While Losing.” The mystery of it is, to this day, I don’t remember ever sharing it with him.

Now, I find myself decades deep in the kill or be killed game of public policy. It’s a game in which all the players have a motive that has nothing to do with good governance. Some just love the fight but in my experience, they usually do it for selfish reasons. Purpose. Power. Fame. Cash. Transforming lofty ideas into painstakingly crafted bills, and then into laws followed by rules, policies and procedures leaves a lot of nooks and crannies to hide whatever bullshit one desires. My experience has hammered home a golden truth: the folks crafting these laws—yep, they rarely consume the services those laws create. It's a tragic hamster wheel.

Take a page from Stephanie Land's “Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother's Will to Survive.” She nails it when she writes, “I need a job to prove that I need daycare in order to get a job?” It’s a hamster wheel of - as she put it - “fuckery.” The overworked, underpaid case manager's subtle nod drives the point home. “I know it’s fuckery and now you know it’s fuckery too.”

“From the beginning, Americans have believed that their condition could and would be improved.” 

- George McGovern

Post-2012, with pen firmly in hand, I wrote about the utter debauchery that is our political ecosystem. I wrote about policies—and let me be blunt - I am talking the most low-hanging fruit of policies. The kind even a child could fix.

Take, for instance, the General Education Development (GED) test—historically significant yet constantly belittled - which I wrote about in 2013. Fast forward to 2022. I was trapped on a conference call about juvenile justice, during which I suggested Florida ought to be destigmatizing the GED. Enter then Senior Chancellor of the Florida Department of Education. “We must be careful, it could discourage students from working toward a diploma,” he said. Oh, sweet irony! Here’s a guy - second in command of all Florida learning from preschoolers to university co-eds - who doesn’t seem to grasp that passing the GED places you in the top one-third of your class. That’s seventy-sixth percentile magic, my friends.

News Flash: The GED was designed to help WWII vets graduate after missing their senior years because they were out there, you know, fighting Nazis.

But I wasn't done. Oh no. I was charged up about military life too. I penned a scorching piece about how state licensing burdens unfairly cripple military spouses, a cause Ron DeSantis championed early in his own administration. I ventured into the spaces where education intersects with military life—ripping the Band-Aid off America's life-threatening dropout rates, particularly among military-dependent kids.

ICYMI: According to a study by the National Association of Military Families, nearly half of all children with an active-duty parent will drop out of high school. Get your head around that: 50%.

When I sat down with Brad Carson, President Obama’s Under Secretary for Personnel and Readiness, he was about as receptive as a brick wall. “The Department of Defense operated top-notch schools,” he insisted. True, Brad. DoDEA schools are renowned for their graduation rates—but what about the other kids? The thousands of active-duty military dependents who don’t get the golden ticket? The kids of Reservists and National Guardsmen who aren’t getting any of that star-studded education? Research is clear - if they slip through the cracks, it’s a disaster that reverberates through personal economics and our broader national security.

News Flash: The Obama administration and its successors have, to date, ignored this harsh reality.

I wrote about education reform, youth unemployment, and entrepreneurship. Have you ever screamed into a dark hole but no echo came back to you? Yup. That’s what writing feels like most of the time and that’s what writing about policy feels like all of the time. But still I write.

I write about policies like rural internet accessibility, for example. Because I want people to make the connection between campaign soundbites and policy substance. Imagine, when the pandemic hit, if every household had internet for school, work, telehealth, ordering in, and bill paying. The untold power of connectivity amid the pandemic chaos may have reduced academic learning loss and the side effects of isolation but, thanks to the Trump administration’s decision to deprioritize President Obama’s ConnectALL plan, we will never know.

ICYMI: “Rural women are also nearly twice as likely to be turned away from services because of the insufficient number of programs and inadequate staffing of community-based health programs and face barriers of access due to geographic distance and isolation.”

Let’s not kid ourselves—this stagnation isn’t just a product of recent memory; it’s the documentarian of a deeper reality. America has been treading water on critical issues for generations. It wasn’t until the Trump administration, however, that we started to witness our rights capsize.

And that we simply can not tolerate.

We can not tolerate policies that don’t honor the service of our military families. We can not tolerate administrations that are willing to take parental rights from those it disdains while expanding parental rights for others. We must not tolerate policies that treat civil rights like a scarce resource. As the saying goes - it’s not a pie. And we must not tolerate administrations that bastardize matters of daily life including access to utilities and safe infrastructure for their own political advantage.

That is why I say #ChuckYesWeKam and that is why I am proud member of #VetsForHarris.

And that is why I closed my 2012 debate with Ron DeSantis with -

“I feel like Ron and I are in two different row boats headed toward the horizon. I am excited to see what’s on the other side…what’s ahead for America. And he is pretty sure there is nothing on the other side…nothing beyond what he can see.”

So how about you and I meet up on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, to keep the motherfucker from burning down?