Nitty Gritty

 In my previous post I alluded to the fact that some things had been happening in my life - some not-so-good things, in fact. In this blog post I will [a] attempt to explain what had happened and [b] have a written record of what happened.

As some of you know and others of you never guessed, I'd been slightly homeless for the past few months. My landlord decided not to renew the lease with me citing I was "fat and lazy". So, as of mid-August I was adrift.

Sure, I was working, but I wasn't making that much money, surely not enough to pay for a down payment on a place. Besides, I was working for a congressional campaign and I wasn't sure how the election would turn out. If we won, we all had jobs. If we lost ... well, then we were all unemployed. 

Luckily, there was a non-profit that helped veterans with housing and they had some money to put me up into a hotel for the short term. The candidate I worked for kept asking me to just stay at his house and I kept wanting to keep my work-life and home-life separate, so I never moved in. Not only did I need that separation but he also has 4 kids who are always there when they're not at their mom's house (which, even though they shared custody 50/50, they always seemed to be at his house).

After the election (we lost - but that's another story) I went to Florida for a couple of weeks and hung out at my brother and mom's houses. When I returned to Colorado the candidate said I could crash in his spare room. He also promoted me in his campaign (without asking if I wanted to stay on) and put me to work. 

I spent most of the time at his house staying in the spare room. Sure, I'd come out and be social once in a bit, but as I said before, I need my own space and in order to give him and his family as much as possible, I kept to myself. Every morning I went to the gym to exercise, shower and change just so I wasn't using his hot water. I never brought in more food than it took to make a sandwich and maybe a bag of chips or other snack.

Please, keep in mind, while I was "working" for the next cycle's campaign, I wasn't being paid. Personally, I considered it fair trade for the room.

So now, fast forward a couple of months as it's the first week of February. 

Two days ago I reached out to former campaign employee as the candidate had suggested she was willing to come back and work to get him elected. We chit-chatted for a while and then I asked if she was really going to come back and she said, "No." She'd taken a job with a non-profit in another congressional district and her time would be spent working and helping to depose the sitting congresswoman there who was making headlines daily for all the wrong reasons. 

Our conversation ended up lasting just under two hours. We talked about the campaign, what the candidate was doing to stab himself in the foot, what he was doing right, what my plans were for the campaign moving forward and whether or not the candidate would let me - the campaign manager - develop and execute my plan of action or would he undermine every effort to win. 

We talked about her family, her pending move to Telluride and her new husband (she'd been married the in Dec or Jan in Ecuador). 

On this same day I was given feedback by someone who follows the candidate on social media. Apparently his personal accounts on Facebook and Instagram are just filled with images of himself shirtless. Him riding a bike- shirtless. Him out for a walk - shirtless. Him doing yoga - shirtless. 

You get the picture. 

This woman, who is in her fifties, asked if the candidate was serious about his campaign and if he was, why was he posting so many shirtless pictures instead of policy ideas or commentary on what's going on in our government.

The following day (Wednesday, 03Feb21) the candidate and I were having a conversation about some campaign things when I mentioned the anecdote I received from this woman. Instead of taking the feedback and discussing how he should be social media'ing, he decided to get very angry and demanded the woman's name and number. I told him the feedback was provided to me in confidence and that I wouldn't divulge her name, which only infuriated him more. He again demanded he name and number and said he would call her and let her know what his policy positions were. 

Again, I declined. He was nearly frothing at the mouth, shaking and his eyes were ablaze that anyone could criticize him. He then turned his anger towards me, accusing me of not trusting him and if I couldn't trust him to handle this correctly why was I even on the campaign?

I explained it had nothing to do with trusting him and everything to do with the promise I made this woman when she provided her feedback. I explained this is what we call market feedback in the corporate world and that he should take it to heart.

Instead he stormed off, again accusing me of trust issues. (Honestly, if there were trust issues, I wouldn't have brought it up in the first place, but he doesn't see that.)

I followed him into the other room, keeping at least 10 feet between us as he was known to carry a Glock-19 in his waistband even while in his house. Not only that, but he is former SpecOps and has taken his frustrations out on the punching bag numerous times. I wasn't ready to be the punching bag.

"Fine, you want to have this discussion? Let's do this," I said, ready to confront him with all the issues I have about how he wanted to run his campaign. These are issues I saw in the last cycle and ones I wanted to correct going forward. However, he wanted to micro-manage the campaign and that's not his job as the candidate. "It's not me who doesn't trust. You yelled at Frankie for the same reasons when he was the campaign manager. I was there, I saw it! You might want to consider whether you are able to trust the people around you."

"How dare you blame Frankie's mental issues on me!" he screamed back. First, I didn't blame the candidate for any issues. I was demonstrating a pattern of behavior and how he was the common denominator. 

My email was cut off
immediately.

Then, he said: "Get your stuff and get out of my house. You're no longer on the campaign and I don't want you here anymore." (This is a paraphrase, but this was essentially what he said)

I didn't argue or plead. He knew I would be on the street. So, I went into the spare bedroom, gathered my things and put them into my truck and left. I only had about an hour of sunlight left and had to get to my storage unit to organize before it became too dark.

During my drive I called the former campaign manager who was renting a room from the candidate as well. He happened to be out of state, but he offered me financial assistance which I turned down. He said when he returned he'd talk to the candidate, that the candidate "...can't do this without you and he needs to understand that."

I also called the former team member who I'd spoken with the day before who expressed once again her misgivings about whether he had a politician's disposition. In the past we'd talked about whether he was serious about winning or if he just liked the competition of running. We'd had the same conversation the day before and now we were having it again.

That night, for the first time in weeks, it snowed and dropped into the single digits. I didn't get too cold sleeping in my truck, but I was woken at 4AM by the local police who put a spotlight on my truck. To be fair, I was parked in a private lot, but the business had been out of business for years and another nearby business was using the lot for overflow storage. I was off the street, behind some large items. I didn't think I'd be bothered. And yet, I was. 

I got up, went to the gym and then the library where I beefed up my resume, joined an online career fair and then made some calls. 

One of those calls was to the woman who introduced my to the candidate in the first place. She was well connected and she still respected my capabilities. She had also been a candidate for office and so I could bounce this off of her.

Thursday 0:05AM

She admitted the candidate had reached out to her to get to me since I wasn't returning his SMS messages. She had an inkling of what had happened, but not the whole story. So, I told her the whole story. 

Soon, she offered me her spare bedroom for the weekend. I told her I wasn't reaching out for a place to stay, but to ask if she heard of any kind of employment she could recommend to me. 

She told me to come over to dinner and then assured me I could stay overnight. We talked at length about what set the candidate off and she let me know that this was a ongoing issue with him. When he first announced his candidacy others told him he needed to clean up his social media presence. He threw a fit then too, apparently.

In fact, when the campaign's social media manager asked him to tone down the topless selfies he fired her. At that point, I told him he had every right to fire her if he wanted, but he would have to own his social media presence. There would be no excuses that it had been someone else making those posts for him. 

Thursday, 18:47

During our dinner and conversation the candidate kept texting her and the former employee. First he would say if they heard from me to let me know he was sorry, then it would be to accuse me of trying to sabotage his campaign. Then he'd text me and apologize, say I could stay at his house before threatening me that I'd somehow violated the NDA and he would sic his lawyer on me. 

This went on until midnight or so.

Luckily, neither of them were having it. They both independently pointed out that the screenshot he'd sent them stated I was trying to access the campaign email on 01FEB21. Three days prior. 

In fact, I didn't know my account had been deleted until someone tried to reach out to me and had to contact me on Twitter (see above image in black and blue).

Then this morning he sent out another text message, this one to the two women I'd been in contact with, both of whom know him, and me:

Then, later this afternoon I receive an email where he bcc'd me. I am going to copy and paste it so I can edit out all the identifiable information easiest.

To the candidate from a volunteer:

[Candidate], 

I have appreciated the confidence you had in me as I worked on your campaign.  It was great to feel a part of something bigger than just one of us alone.  But it is time that I move on.

It was interesting watching your team grow in both numbers and complexity.  I still have some concerns about the team's follow-through and perhaps that will also improve more.   

The area of greatest concern to me was the difficulty with which you seem to take advice/criticism.  Since May I saw you get angry with many of your staff/volunteers when they offered suggestions or counter arguments to policy.  It was often hard for members to come to you because of your past responses. Many parted ways because of this. It causes me to wonder how you would govern, because all representatives need to hear advice and criticism.

I imagine you are not happy to read this now.  I'm sorry, because I think you are a great guy with wonderful ideas and I wish you the best in your future endeavors.  I can only hope you will think about my concerns a little bit.

Please accept my resignation.

 [Signed]

And here is the reply he copied me to: 

Can you please forward me any and contacts developed on the campaign that are not in the drive? If you could drop that information into a turn over folder for my next volunteer coordinator I would greatly appreciate it. I imagine that you spoke with Jason or received an email from him. 

I cannot have people living in my home, eating my kids food, and following through my home when I walk away from a moot argument/discussion saying, “ok let’s do this,” it was inappropriate, disrespectful, and inconsiderate of my place of peace. It was physically aggressive behavior and I will not tolerate it in my home. 

I am sorry to see you go and appreciate all the work you have done for me and our efforts. I appreciate the constructive criticism and will take it into consideration. Let’s not bend the truth though, you have never seen me angry [Name] . 

I am going to be hiring professional staff that have campaigned before and I am going to be reaching out to you, Jeffery, and a few others whom I respect to ask for AARs after action written reviews to improve the campaign structure and organization.  

The next year will be fund raising and networking and soliciting endorsements. 

I wish you all the best of luck in all your endeavors. Have a nice day and do t hesitate to reach out. 

I will share you on a turnover folder in the drive and would greatly appreciate it if you would place a written AAR with suggestions for improvement in it as well as any turnover information that would helpful for an incoming volunteer coordinator. 

If you are still receiving campaign emails I will have those redirected to my incoming Volunteer coordinator.  

Thanks again can’t tell you how much I appreciate everything. 
Respectfully,

There are many issues here, but I will only address a couple:

1. I did not eat his kid's food. In fact, I rarely ate at his house at all, except for the aforementioned sandwich items. Every once in a while he would offer me food if he made enough and a couple of times I took him up on the offer just to be friendly. But we're talking a couple of times over the course of a couple of months. Not always, not daily, not even weekly. 
2. In fact, I bought food for the household on a few occasions. I bought salmon, salad stuff, doughnuts, pizza and more. 
3. We were in the middle of a discussion where he became angry and aggressive and when he walked away, still saying things to me about trust, I followed him to the next room.
4. Physically aggressive behavior? Ha! What a joke.
5. The he says she's never seen him angry. Well, probably not, but I have on multiple occasions, whether it's at a prior or current campaign employee, his ex-wife or his girlfriend. I've seen him go punch or kick the bag to express his anger.
6. The "Jeffrey" he mentioned is another volunteer who quit last season because his favorite employee, the Finance Director, verbally abused him. Not sure if he'll come back to the campaign. 
7. AAR - After Action Review.
8. For the record, the person he was emailing with is the same person that contacted me on Twitter over whether my campaign email had been shut down. 

The thing is, I'd walk away entirely, but I left some things at his house I need to go get and with his flopping from one extreme to the other repeatedly over the past couple of days I'm sort of apprehensive of going there to pick them up. At least alone. 

I was in touch with his baby-momma who said this is classic manipulative behavior. I think he's just upset because I'm not engaging. With his personality type, it has to be driving him nuts with me not engaging. 

The thing is, he really is a good guy. He has good intentions, cares about people and wants to do positive things for the world. After all of this, I'm firmly in the "he doesn't have the temperament" camp.

The worst part is, with Covid going on, there isn't a lot of things I can do to stay inside and stay warm. For example, the library (where I'm at) closes at 5PM tonight. It's currently 4:27PM. The gym closes at 7PM and doesn't open until 7AM on the weekends. So, if I get up at 5:30 or 6AM, which is fairly late for me, I have nowhere to go to get out of the cold. No movie theaters, no coffee shops, no places where we used to just hang out and use the wifi.