As some might recall, Gaylon For United States Senate had a scandal as the 2014 campaign wound down.
It was a pretty good scandal, too, involving some robocalls an organization sent out on my behalf without my knowledge. This usually would not have been too big of a problem except for the fact they went out in the middle of the night. I hope it goes without saying I had nothing to do with them, except dealing with the aftermath.
I found out about the robocalls around 4am a couple of Sundays before the election. I had gotten up for my usual 4am constitutional and I heard my phone vibrating on my desk. I ignored it. It went off again almost immediately so, curious and making sure it wasn’t an emergency, I went and looked.
I didn’t recognize the number so I didn’t answer. I then noticed assorted notifications on my phone: Twitter, Facebook, emails from my contact page and even voicemail and texts because my number was on my campaign’s website.
That was my introduction to RoboGate. History will not record this as the equal of other –Gate scandals, but it was my first one so I dug in. I answered every tweet and email. I tried to return phone messages, but invariably there was so much rancor I stopped spinning my wheels.
Then it hit me this could result in a high level of publicity for Gaylon For US Senate. In another life I was a radio announcer and a newspaper reporter, so I had a working knowledge of what to do and it did result in some TV interviews and other exposure for the campaign.
The only bad part was it was impossible to quantify the impact it had the number of votes I got. I don’t think it dissuaded anyone from voting from me; there is no such thing as bad publicity unless it involves, as the old adage says, a dead woman or a live boy.
Eventually I heard the message and I found it interesting my name wasn’t mentioned until the very end. The general tone of the call was a message of peace. It lasted about 90 seconds or so and ended with “…Gaylon Kent is the only anti-war candidate on the ballot!”
True enough. This was interesting, however, because before this there had been no mention of my name which, of course, meant that people, annoyed at having been woken up in the middle of night actually stuck around to the very end. In retrospect this was probably so they could find out who to get mad at.
