Meet Colin. . .

Hello! Thank you for taking the time to look around. As I’m sure you can see, I’ve never really dealt with building a website before, so I’m sure things will change as I gain more experience. Please forgive any technical errors and the bare-bones nature of my main page. I’ve also never written a blog (or anything like it) before, so I offer my apologies in advance for what I’m sure will be a rambling mess of random thoughts, excessive and unnecessary commas, and incorrect capitalization (I’m sorry Ms. Womack). I plan to use this space a little more informally. I’m sure I’ll venture into politics and the business-oriented side of my brain will try to make what I write relevant to my campaign. But for today, I’m just going to be me.

I did not plan to run for anything.

I guess it’s always been one of those ideas that just hangs out in the back of your head as an absurd possibility of “If I were in charge…" It’s the same way your brain wonders what would happen if you leaned just a little too far out past the railing that protects hikers from tumbling into the gorge. Of course you’d never do such a thing! But the “what-ifs” are always there, no matter how hard you try to suppress them.

That’s not how I run my life. (Almost) everything I’ve ever done is exactly how I planned it. I knew since high school that I wanted to be an emergency physician. My time in Boy Scouts taught me to “Be Prepared,” and I felt that pursuing that particular career would train me to be as prepared as I could possibly be. Every course I took at UGA was chosen to meet the pre-reqs as quickly and efficiently as possible to prepare me for MCATs and MCG. Everything I did at MCG was to prepare me for a residency in Emergency Medicine. And everything I did in residency was to prepare my family to return to Georgia to work in Athens. My wife and I planned our engagement and marriage 8 years or so in advance. We planned having kids, and blessedly that worked out as planned. When I’m at work, as soon as I meet a patient I’m formulating a plan to work them up, get them feeling better, and disposition them. When I’m in my shop, I’m building things that I’ve been losing sleep over, staying awake thinking about the most efficient way to build the project with the least amount of waste.

That’s not to say I’m some old crotchety fuddy-duddy control freak. Every once in a while we do something more spontaneous. One evening after a date night, my wife and I were trying to kill time before having to return to pay the baby sitter, so we took a detour to explore some of the neighborhoods just outside of downtown. We stumbled across a house for sale, and one thing led to another and suddenly we were leaving our newish Oconee home to go repair, reclaim, and refurbish an 1890s house in Cobbham. The house has been like another member of the family. It’s full of charm and character but also holes and leaks. However I can honestly say I’ve learned more skills working on this house than I ever would have if we hadn’t taken that detour.

Most of my life I hadn’t paid much attention to politics, since I was mostly busy doing other stuff. I voted R because that’s just what you do when you’re a white “conservative” male. Right? Eyeroll. But eventually I voted libertarian for the first time in 2016 when I realized what a mess the old parties were. I’d dabbled with libertarian ideas and attitudes. I had been entranced by ideas like the FairTax. I started to realize that Rs really only paid lip service to economic stability and stewardship, and Ds were just as incapable of ensuring freedoms for all. So it took me four years, but I finally put my money where my mouth was and joined up at LP National as well as LPGA, and got together with a couple of other guys to rekindle an affiliate here in Athens and the surrounding counties. I’d been elected to the state executive committee at my first convention, so all of 2020 and 2021 were learning the ins and outs of participating in a political organization, helping out where I could, and trying to figure out exactly how I fit in the libertarian world.

Sidebar: Georgia voting rules are silly. Firstly, they’re stacked against everyone but the Rs and Ds. All the applications a candidate fills out ask whether you’re R, D, or “Other.” When you register to vote, you get to be an R, a D, or an “Other.” Rs and Ds get automatic ballot access for their candidates, assuming they can come up with the necessary cash. Guess who doesn’t? For districted races, if you’re an “Other,” you have to go around your district and beg THOUSANDS of your neighbors to write their personal information BY HAND on a certain size sheet of paper which then has to be notarized, approved, blessed, etc., etc., etc., by the Secretary of State before you get the privilege of paying to be on the ballot. This would be difficult in a normal year. In the time of COVID, it’s a miracle if any “Other” manages to get on a ballot. However, these rules apparently do not apply to statewide races. For those ballots, the “Other”s merely have to earn the votes of 1% of active voters. “Active” doesn’t mean they actually voted. It just means they’re on the rolls and eligible. So if the last election only had 50% turnout, the “Other”s would need to garner 2% of those who actually vote.

So a couple of weeks ago I was attending my second LP Georgia convention. Luckily the LP has managed to earn the necessary percentage of votes to allow us to run in statewide races. The best way to do this is apparently via the Public Service Commission ballot. PSC candidates have to live in their district, but they appear on every ballot in the state. So at convention we have to get together and nominate candidates to run in every race we possibly can. Whether we win or not, we want to gain exposure, lead the other candidates to talk about issues important to voters, and just maybe get the other candidates to endorse some libertarian-leaning ideals. So the convention attendees broke out into groups based on our PSC districts. One thing led to another and suddenly, I was leaving my seat at the fringe of the floor to give a quick speech on the dais to seek the nomination for PSC2.

So now I’ve leaned too far over the railing and I find myself suddenly in an unplanned adventure. Hopefully my brain and my philosophy are prepared to learn some new skills and keep me morally straight on this detour.