Reconnecting with an old friend brought my ‘5 minutes of fame’ back to mind. The old video had gone away – again. Having personally backed it up, I was able and inspired to watch it last night for the first time in many years.
Ted The Younger got so much right, and now with a more dispassionate view realize I did even better than I remembered. If you removed party labels and were left with one of those two choices to be Idaho governor, I won.
Pretty dang good for my first television appearance. Of course that guy with the green tie in 2006 is quite different from this guy who is 12 years older. I would not want to even try that over again and probably lack the optimism and fire that youngster had … nevertheless, I did what very few do, and did it well.
That makes me approximately 1 in 7,700,000,000 … kind-of special, eh?
I award that younger Ted *ONE ATTABOY*.
Entering the race I thought, “If only the non-voting majority can see an opportunity to throttle back the growth of big government, they’d jump on it … or, more realistically, that the public forum and publicity would help others wanting to reverse freedom’s erosion feel more hopeful and get involved in some way”.
Idaho Congressman Butch Otter, widely known as a “libertarian Republican” had the inside track. He and newspaper publisher Jerry Brady were scheduled for a state-wide PBS televised debate. Hearing of that I contacted the sponsoring League of Women Voters, sent them the required proofs of running “a serious campaign” and was added to the debates. Rather than embarassingly sharing the stage with a real Libertarian, Butch Otter dropped out.
The two candidates who qualified and chose to debate on state-wide live television put on a show that the studio crew LOVED, though the entire time facing the cameras my frontal cortex was screaming, “RUN”. That did not show up on the television at all.
I post the video here that you may see Ted Dunlap The Younger debating the issues, speaking from the heart… and note the consistency: Liberty is not a costume I put on, but a driving force that resides deep in my soul. That’s my liberty and yours. I cannot be free unless everyone is.
Being in front of live state-wide TV cameras was definitely intense. Public speaking is challenging for even experienced veterans and I certainly am not that. Nevertheless, my ideas and principles came through. I think they are relevant still today to who I am and what I stand for.
While others tell you, “Nobody could have predicted the economic downturn”, you can see in this Idaho state-wide television broadcast that Ted Dunlap is among those who not only could, but did predict it, and knew what steps to take then to minimize the damage.
The “economic downturn” is not done with us yet. It will be renamed and the runaway printing presses of the central banks (like the USA’s Federal Reserve) that caused the economic collapse will remain blameless on the mainstream media. Fortunately, you look elsewhere for your news and KNOW who dunnit.
The Republican no-show candidate was under pressure to have a public debate after his withdrawal from the PBS, League of Women Voters long-standing event. The Republican strategists came up with a format that would not hurt Otter’s campaign.
They invited all four registered candidates which included Marvin Richardson, who changed his legal name to “Marvin Pro Life Richardson” for 2006, then to simply “Pro Life” for his self-financed run as an independent in 2010 when the other switch did not force the result he wanted in the media. The bible-thumping radical show helped mask Otter’s shortcomings.
The ‘debate designers’ also kept responses to short sound-bite-sized segments allowing Butch to get away with “I am a Republican” and the rest of us no time to explain why that was not necessarily the whole story.
I don’t know if the large live audience at the other side of the state was supposed to help, but it didn’t matter much to me. While professionals work their scripts over with experts, I spoke extemporaneously from the heart. I had no idea what was going to come out of my mouth until it actually did. Thus as my turn to summarize approached my brain was going a million miles an hour trying to come up with something clever.
That did not work. My turn came. My mouth started moving. The closing statement came out on its own.
It wasn’t disasterous, but I was not impressed either. I survived. Show over, I slipped offstage. Missy and I walked back to the staging room they had given us to gather our belongings and quietly slip away. A man approached and introduced himself as the communication sciences department chair and told me that I had won the debate.
My look spoke volumes so he went on.
When you want to get people do do something your instruction has to be repeated at least 20 times.
Do you know how many times you said “Vote for Ted Dunlap” in your closing?
No.
29 times.
Oh.
You did very well. You won, but of course that will not show up on election day for other reasons. I just wanted you to know.
Thank you.
[editor note January 2022: My Vimeo account is gone along with the videos there. I may track the Twin Falls gubernatorial debate video down and insert it here someday.]
