“I talked to Reverend Jackson yesterday and asked him for permission to address the congregation. He said I could if I did two things first. One was to praise God, which is easy for me to do. I have a personal relationship with Him, and I hope it shows through my actions. The reverend’s second condition was that I talk about the building fund for the roof,” I said as I raised the bucket.
“Folks, something I know about God is that he helps those who help themselves. He isn’t going to make it stop raining just because we pray for it. It would be silly of us to think we’re so special that he isn’t going to make us need a new roof for another year. We can either start putting out buckets for when the roof starts to leak, or we can fill these up with cash and help ourselves,” I said. Then I motioned for my assistants to start handing buckets down the rows.
While they did that, I talked about Duke running for mayor. I pulled his tennis ball out of my pocket, and he forgot where he was and began to dance in anticipation of me throwing it. I think even Reverend Jackson was shocked when I tossed it down the center aisle. Duke bailed off the stage and made a mad dash to retrieve his prized possession. He bounded back, excited that church was more fun than he ever imagined.
I tossed it two more times, and everyone was smiling at his antics.
“Duke is all about a good time. But he can get serious if he needs to,” I said and gave him the hand command to sit.
He plopped his butt down and looked at me.
“I realize it sounds like a joke that we’re trying to get my dog elected mayor. What Duke represents is a placeholder until we can get someone qualified to run. Believe me, his opponent in this race doesn’t have half the heart that Duke has. We need someone who will put our community first. My mom said that Duke would represent us better than he who shall remain nameless. Do me a personal favor and stop on the way out and meet my buddy, and, if you’re feeling the love, sign his petition to get on the ballot.”
◊◊◊
“How many signatures do we have?” Grandma Dawson asked.
“Your mom got 38 from the hospital, and we collected another 89 from the church, for a total of 127. Only 423 to go,” Dad said.
I handed out sheets to everyone in the room. I figured I’d met my quota when I had five, six when I filled one out. We now only had 417 to go.
We’d met at our office above my mom’s real estate company. Caryn and Megan had returned from LA Saturday morning and joined us for the meeting. For Caryn, the trip had been a chance to spend some time with her family and interact with our other business partners.
“Do you think it’s even possible to get that many signatures in the next three days?” Caryn asked.
“Sure. I have the football team and cheerleaders collecting signatures today. They should have them for us tomorrow at school. If we don’t have enough, we’ll regroup and figure out what we need to do,” I said.
“Let’s assume we get enough signatures,” Dad said. “What’s our next step?”
“We need to get the word out because we only have a little over three weeks until the election,” Grandma Dawson reminded us.
“Ideas?” Dad asked.
“I’m making a video that we can post to social media. We can get it tweeted out and hope it goes viral,” I suggested.
“Any other ideas?” Dad asked.
I almost blurted out an inappropriate thought at my dad’s cavalier dismissal of my idea.
“We need endorsements. I bet we can get the governor and Senator Dixon to help us,” Grandma Dawson suggested.
“What if we get Duke to endorse them? We could see if they would tag it at the end of their ads,” Megan suggested.
That made us laugh, but Dad wrote it down. I noticed he didn’t write down my social media ad going viral. We’d just have to see about that.
“We need yard signs and posters. I know a sign company that will print them, put them out, and clean up after the election,” Mom said.
“That means we need money. I assume you’re willing to support your candidate,” Caryn said with a smirk.
Seemed someone wasn’t taking this very seriously.
“We need to track campaign finances. We’ll want to set up a separate account just for this,” Grandma Dawson explained.
“Can we do a GoFundMe page?” I asked.
Dad actually wrote that down.
“How much money do you think we need?” Mom asked.
“Depends on whether or not we do TV. If it’s just grassroots and word of mouth, we can do it on the cheap. My fear is we won’t get enough exposure for people to vote for Duke if we go that route,” Grandma Dawson shared.
I was happy to see Ian and Brook show up. We caught him up on what we’d done so far.
“Nontraditional candidates have to be outsiders to win. In the case of running a dog for mayor, it absolutely must be fun and upbeat. People have to be in the mood to stick it to the man. With the current presidential election and the level of hostilities, this is the perfect time for something like this to possibly succeed,” Ian said.
