The Good Fight

Long before I ran for the Maryland House of Delegates in 2006, a legislator in another state offered me his seat if I’d sleep with him ten times. Otherwise, he explained to me, I would have to grovel, toil, and humiliate myself in other ways for about ten years before I could mount a campaign on my own. (That was fifteen years ago, so that his estimate of grovel­ing time was in fact conservative.) After this I went to New Hampshire to work for Jerry Brown’s presidential campaign, my only real qualifications being that I had an American car and would work for room and board. My first day began at six a.m. and seemed to have ended just before midnight, when another staffer came into my bedroom, lit a joint, and talked about all we had to do tomorrow. I quit after three days, moved in with my mother, and finally read Ulysses.

Maryland has forty-seven House districts, each of which is represented by three delegates. Multi­member districts were used in the early days of the British parliament, in part because there was safety in numbers on long carriage rides and several M.P.s were harder to rob than one. Also seeking safety in numbers, the two incumbent delegates in my district were running as a team, or “slate,” and the contest for the third of each voter’s three votes would likely be between me and several other challengers. The district sits just above the northern tip of the District of Columbia and has been called one of the most liberal in the country. Two years earlier the most popular bumper sticker seemed to be ReDefeat Bush. Now it was Impeach Him. Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by more than two to one, so that the winners of the Democratic primary in September were guaranteed a win in November.

I would be a weak candidate. I had only lived in the district for four years and barely knew my neighbors. I’m not a people person, and would rather read a book than pocket business cards. (The legislator who offered me his seat for sex also suggested that I fill a shoe box with business cards before running for office.) I’ve lived for months at a time without a phone and did not get email until the twenty-first century. I have crooked teeth and a right eye which wanders when I look to the left. I do not go to church, do not believe in God, and will ­mumble something about a “oneness of all people and things” if forced to state my religion. My wife and I had a two-year-old, and I planned to...