Milestone yesterday

For the first time since I've been going to meetings for the campaign, all 6 candidates for the 2 at-large positions were in the same room together--thanks to the Chamber of Commerce candidate breakfast. There were also Board of Education and District seat candidates there as well. Even one of the current Council Members that doesn't have opposition was there for awhile.

We were all there to listen to Chamber representatives explain how the Chamber works: committees, funding, members, services, and philosophy. The first message was: "Party politics just aren't welcome" in Chamber activities. Another message was that Chamber is focused on specific issues and to not make assumptions on Chamber positions on those issues. The Chamber position on those issues depends on the people who are involved in the committees and boards. (Who knew the Chamber was grass-roots organization!) Looking through the information provided for us, they have a group of people working on almost any issue that the community-at-large cares about: Education, Environment, Government, even Sports-- to name just a few. (See for yourself; I added a link to the Chamber website to my Links section.) With almost 3000 member organizations, they have lots of people to get involved.

For those of us running for a Raleigh office, it was especially interesting to see the 2-minute recruitment video(actually a DVD) developed by the Chamber staff person for Raleigh. We even got a copy of it.

There was a comment and questions opportunity at the end, plus after the meeting we could talk one-on-one with the rest of folks there. The one-on-one is always my favorite part. I got to give several people my page-long "introduction". I ended up going home and printing out more copies for my next meeting, with the Homebuilders.