Meetings are never the most exciting affairs. Perhaps that’s why the reaction to the Middle East Summit in Annapolis hasn’t been more enthusiastic. Then again, maybe it’s because there is a vague sense that what should be about reconciliation and peace seems more like a strategic tactic designed to draw one side closer together as a prelude to war. Let’s all hope that in this case, the pessimists are wrong.

On a more local front, there were a number of important points that came up at our campaign meeting on Monday that I wanted to summerize. Now that I’m moved into the new campaign headquarters and we have the physical space prepared, the rest of the month is for us to get a working organization together. This weekend, our first (sort of, semi) full time campaign worker Chuck Myron will also be moving in for a least a month.

The plan is to do a full public rollout of the campaign in January. In the meantime, we know the holidays always slow things down, so we set some very modest goals:

            -To raise our first $5,000 by the end of 2007

            -To have 12 volunteers (full or part time) ready to go at our next meeting (mid-December)

And, at that meeting we will also begin to establish the actual organizational (paperwork!) foundation of this campaign. The sort of thing that is never really fun, but obviously very important. This time around, we also established the three key events that will define our efforts over the next year. We’ll talk more about each of these in more detail soon, but briefly these are:

        1)  Candidate Qualification

We’re going to get on the ballot the old fashioned way by collecting signatures!

        2)  Middle East Perspective Trip

We can all see the effects of domestic policy here at home, but the most important issues of foreign policy right now center on the Middle East, so we plan to take a small delegation of Southwest Floridians to the region to get a first hand look.

        3)  The Victory Celebration!

No matter what happens next year on Nov. 4th, the next night (Nov 5th 2007) we plan on holding the biggest party this town as ever seen, and everyone (and I mean everyone)!

More on all of these coming soon…