TMV blogger wins race, may be first female to go from blogging to political office

Alan Rosenblatt is helping us determine just how many and which bloggers have gone from blogging to winning elected office, but as of yesterday, it appeared that I might be the only female political blogger in the country to have done that so far.  I have a hard time believing that, but if it’s true – wow.  Especially since the last thing I did was run “as a blogger.”  Great war stories about that in fact.

Editor’s Note: Due to some requests, I’m inserting a couple of photos.

For those of you who might not have known, or recall, I started to run for Pepper Pike City Council in April 2009. I’ve chronicled my run at YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and Twitter, as well as at my campaign website, which was the first time any candidate for a seat on my city’s council had a web presence. I blogged about it at Writes Like She Talks only through September 1, when I had to stop blogging due to time constraints.

I’ll spare you all the ups and downs of the campaign trail – for a lot of it, you can read my entries at BlogHer.com, where I wrote a series every other week for a few months called, On the Road to Election Day.  ElectWomen.com wrote about, Cleveland About.com covered it, and of course the requisite local newspaper coverage produced buzz. And you can read the unofficial results here (there are still 63 provisionals to be counted).

The basic news: A challenger who was not endorsed (though not actively fought) by the mayor of a city with less than 5000 registered voters was able to come out more than 300 votes ahead of a 25 year incumbent because she worked her butt off.  And had a message. And did her homework.  And has been engaged and is invested already in the community.

The “huh??” factor: a television anchorman whom at least some residents did not know lived in the community and was running for office for his first time was the top vote-getter, over and above a 12 year incumbent and a 24 year incumbent, who previously had been the highest vote-getter each time out.

Important note: Scott Newell, the anchorman, has been on the city’s planning and zoning commission for more than seven years and is indeed a nice guy with plenty to offer.  He too used what he had to great effect, as the results show.

Thank you to Joe and everyone at TMV for the support through my hiatus. I look forward to getting back to blogging and unpacking everything that I’ve accomplished in the last several months. For specifics of the outcome, you can go here and feel free to ask me any questions.  People can do this – they really can.