Author's Note
This is a story about my campaign for Carlsbad City Council in 2016. I was encouraged to write it by a couple of people involved in the campaign, and I have written about what I found most interesting—not the grind of the campaign itself, but the memories, the absurdities, and the people I encountered along the way.
I’m not the main character in this story. I’m the narrator. I describe what happened, participate in dialogue when necessary, and occasionally reflect on my own role. My name doesn’t appear in the text. That’s not an accident. It isn’t important.
What is important are the people I met. Most were women. Volunteers, supporters, opponents. This story is about them—who they were, what they did, and what they thought. Since the story is not much about me, I should give you enough of my background to set some otherwise missing context. I’ve always been interested in politics. In college, I was a Nixon supporter. Forty years later, I was voting for Obama and registering as a Democrat. My original goal had been law and politics. I earned a BA, MA, and PhD in international relations. But instead of a life in academia, I took a detour into computer technology, ultimately becoming a data engineer.
I’m not a true believer in any political cause or personality. What interests me most about politics is analytical: how do you win an election? That curiosity, paired with a sense that I was being sidelined professionally due to age and shifting tech trends like machine learning and AI, helped push me into running for office. Maybe politics could offer a new place to belong.
The fight against Rick Caruso and his grandiose vision for a high-end shopping mall along Agua Hedionda Lagoon in Carlsbad also drove my decision to run for City Council. Carlsbad voters seemed ready for change, and I wanted to be part of that.
This story sits somewhere between Creative Nonfiction and Historical Fiction. Events are based on real experiences. Elected officials appear under their real names; I have made up names for other characters. Characters don’t always map to real people—but all characters represent something real. All of this serves the continuity of the narrative. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
If you lived in Carlsbad in 2015 and followed the fight over the planned shopping center at Agua Hedionda Lagoon, you’ll likely recognize the roles certain characters played despite the fictional names. If not, I hope you can still follow along, connect the dots and maybe even get a laugh or two out of it. That’s what this story is worth.