Changing Hearts and Losing My Mind, Volume 2

[Catch up with Volume 1 here.]

Election finance is a minefield. My campaign fund-raising sources consisted entirely of people who had once tussled my hair and/or used their thumb to wipe chocolate from my face, and I still narrowly escaped a $5000 fine for late paperwork -- the third consecutive required pre-primary finance report showing that I still had an operating budget of $0 for the primary election in which I had no opponent.

So I welcomed the navigational assistance of a sitting City Councilman, even after it became abundantly clear that he was certifiably insane.



Councilman Jimbo Faile* was utterly convinced of two things: I was capable of unseating the incumbent in District 14, and the gays were out to get him.

Diabolical homosexuals, it seemed, had been secretly plotting against Faile for most of his public life, and like some sort of bizarro pink Illuminati, their incognito influence was virtually boundless. Even our state's twice-married, Republican United States Senator was an undercover homosexual operative with dastardly designs, Faile confided to me during our first conversation ever. He had this information on good authority, of course.

After deftly avoiding any implication of agreement with Faile, yet simultaneously not laughing my ass off (Maybe I was built for politics after all...), we got down to the business at hand: How does a first-time candidate with no money and no connections topple a three-term incumbent with a 3-to-1 party-registration advantage in the district and a husband who works for the Mayor?

I'll tell you how: Fat jokes.

My nemesis, you see, tipped the scales at about 21 stone 6, and Faile's plan for me to drown this manatee involved a busy intersection, an unflattering picture, and a dusty cultural reference to a 1970s puppet show.

"I had this idea last election, and the guy wouldn't do it. But I'm telling you, it would work!" Faile told me. He spoke in insistent whispers, as if the whiffleball kit in the corner of his basement home-office could be selling his secrets to the Chinese. "There's this picture of her on the phone, and she looks even fatter than usual. If you could take that picture and photo-shop it--" He warily enunciated the word as if it were a process which conceivably involved blood moss and eye of newt. "--You photo-shop in a picture of Kermit the Frog saying 'I'm sorry Ms Piggy, I can't vote for you. I'm voting for Scotticus Finch!' You put that on a billboard and you'd win in a landslide!"

After an initial period of stunned paralysis, I gathered my sense of humor and began looking around for Allen Funt, or at least Ashton Kutcher. Unfortunately, it was just me, Faile, and those communist whiffleball bats. He wasn't kidding.

Maybe the "No Fat Chicks" tactic is underrated; I did lose the election, after all. But somehow I couldn't bring myself to hinge my first campaign on a Wayans Brothers routine. And anyway, I've heard Jim Henson Company's a real jerk about usage rights. I also have it on good authority that Kermit was secretly gay.

*Names and locations have been changed to protect my supersecret identity.