A few things:

• I had an interview with Veterans In Politics yesterday. They are supposed to be posting the video from the interview at their website (http://www.veteransinpolitics.com/) but it looks like it isn't up yet. I'll try and post the link when it is, along with some commentary on the questions and answers I gave.
• I also went to the Republican Party BBQ that was held yesterday. It was held outside at Dragon Ridge Country Club so it was really warm but everyone there seemed nice. The only people I found who actually live in my district were my opponents in the primary, so that was kind of funny. I talked to Glenn Greener for a few minutes and he seemed nice. I didn't have a chance to talk to Bob Irwin as he was eating when I first saw him and I didn't see him again after that.
• I have posted the questionnaire from the Nevada Animal Owner's and Sportsmen on my forum along with my answers. You can find it here.

Well, as I expected, the Henderson Chamber of Commerce declined to endorse me. They sent me a nice (probably form) letter letting me know that they liked my thoughts and positions but they unfortunately wouldn't be endorsing me.

Oh well, that wasn't too surprising to me. I am interested to see if they do endorse someone in my district.

I've posted two more questionnaires on the forum. The two organizations are pretty much the opposite of each other I think.

The Nevada Advocates for Planned Parenthood Affiliates questionnaire can be found here:

http://www.jackforassembly.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10

The Nevada Concerned Citizens questionnaire can be found here:

http://www.jackforassembly.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11

Feel free to browse through the whole forum if you have a chance:

http://www.jackforassembly.com/forum/index.php

Also, someone went to the trouble of posting something pornographic on the forum (I'm pretty sure it was spam, versus someone specifically targeting me). I've deleted it but if you happen to see anymore of that crap, please let me know by e-mailing jack@jackforassembly.com so that I can get rid of it as soon as possible.

So I had my first candidate related interview today. It was with the Henderson Chamber of Commerce. It was pretty straightforward. It only lasted about 15 minutes, which seems like a short time to get to know me but it is what it is. I figured I'd write down the questions and the answers I gave just for whatever interest there might be in them. I also realized as I walked out that I could have given better answers for some of the questions so I'll throw those thoughts in as well.

But before I get to that, I wanted to talk a little bit about while I was waiting to go in for the interview. They were running a little bit behind so I was waiting out in the office area when the candidate who was scheduled after me came in. We exchanged greetings and he asked what party I was in. When I said Republican it was funny how I was immediately OK. I still don't quite get that. We probably have a lot of the same thoughts about government but I like to hold off judgment until I've actually heard what the person has to say because as I've said before you're never going to totally agree with anyone.

He told me that he is one of the guys who filed a lawsuit against one of the longer term incumbents for possibly violating the term limits law. Now personally, I think that the term limits amendment was yet another poorly worded ballot question but the attorney general came out with the opinion of how it should be applied a long time ago. There was plenty of time in the past 12 years to file a lawsuit. I'm not too impressed by waiting until after candidate registration ended 12 years later. If the lawsuit is successful I personally think it is a pretty underhanded way to get someone out of office. I would rather win on my own merits. He said he was happy with how he had timed the lawsuit, which to me means he meant for it to be underhanded. That left a bad taste in my mouth. He also made a big stink about the Chamber of Commerce being behind by 15 minutes. I can understand him being busy but personally I expected them to be behind. A day of non-stop 15 minute interviews is going to tend to get behind.

But anyways, off to the interview:

It started off with the standard tell us about yourself question. They asked us beforehand to be prepared with a 2 minute speech on ourselves, our education, our career background and why we are running for office. Pretty much what I said is already on my website in the bio section, although I'm not sure that I've ever mentioned why I'm running for office. So here's the reason:

I love Nevada. I think it is by far the greatest State in the country (I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned that part). A couple of years ago I realized that there really wasn't any reason why I couldn't run for office. It also occurred to me that Nevada is small enough and the assembly districts are small enough that I not only stood a reasonable chance of getting elected without a huge campaign war chest, but I could actually make a difference in the government if I did get elected. Those thoughts kind of stuck with me over the next couple of years, so now here I am.

The next question was what I believe sets me apart from the other candidates. What I said was that I feel I am much more open than the other candidates, that I'm going out of my way to answer questions and not dodge around them, regardless of the consequences. This somewhat devolved into me indicating my surprise about how much I am pre-judged (for better or worse) just on the fact that I am a Republican. I mentioned this just above. In all honesty by the time I was done answering I had forgot what the original question was, which isn't too good. Because of that, I forgot to mention that it is one of my utmost goals to never become a politician in the way people normally think of politicians. By this I mean I will always be open to people and won't just tell people what they want to hear, I won't let campaign donations affect my policies, and most importantly, I will always do my best to do what is right, even if I think it will affect my ability to be elected. If I have to violate those principals in order to elected, I don't think I want to be elected. Some other reasons why I think I am better than the other candidates are that I think I am much better than most people at seeing all sides of an issue and determining the best course of action based on all of that information and that I am very good at budgeting and handling money, which is an important part of government.

The next question was what community organizations I am involved with. I answered this question as best I could, but the real answer is that there aren't really any community organizations that I am involved with. Obviously, this is something I could do better at. I have to admit that I have thought about getting involved in a local organization but nothing in particular that I feel strongly about has presented itself as of yet. Some of that may be because I do not have children. I am a big supporter of the Pulmonary Hypertension Association (PHA), which I did mention in the interview, but what I neglected to mention is that I am leaving for their conference on Wednesday so that I can volunteer and help out while I am there. I have also just started to organize a golf tournament that will be held next April 18th at Angel Park to support PHA. I think part of the reason I didn't mention it is that I don't feel right using my support of a charity as a reason to get elected. I do it because I care, not because I want to win brownie points with someone. The reason that I am a such a big supporter of PHA in particular is because my girlfriend died of Pulmonary Hypertension about six years ago and I think PHA is a really great organization.

Anways, the last question was what was my campaign plan/budget. My answer for that was that I wanted people to visit my website, where I would actually answer their questions. Along with that I need to get some signs up so that people at least recognize my name and beyond that I plan on starting to have Saturday "get togethers" or whatever you want to call them. My plan is basically to go around to about 1/4 of my district every week and if people are home, introduce myself and let them know that I am running for office. If they are not at home I will leave them a flyer telling them a little about me and also that I will be at a park or some other location near them on the weekend if they want to come out and meet me. And that's pretty much my plan. As I've mentioned on this website, I also plan on answering every questionnaire I get and going to every interview I can. Pretty much everywhere I go I talk to people, although it's amazing how few people seem to actually be in my district. Oh yeah, my budget. It actually isn't that expensive to have signs and brochures and the like printed up so I'm guessing my campaign will end up being anywhere from about $3000 to $10,000. It kinda depends how things go (and if I win the primary...Vote for Jack!). I did mention that I won't be hiring any consultants or anything like that. As best I can tell they are insanely expensive and I don't know what I would get out of $50,000 in consulting. I guess them telling me to shut up and not talk about things and sending press releases saying how lame my opponent is. Regardless, that's not going to happen.

And that was about it. The last couple people didn't ask any questions, which is probably a bad sign, but who knows. I do have to say that I found it interesting that they didn't actually ask what I thought about any issues. I felt more like they were asking me questions to find out if they thought I was electable, regardless of what I thought. We'll see.

I'm also going to post this on the forum since it sorta has issue related questions.

I have posted my responses to the Nevada Conservation League questionnaire over at the forum. As you might guess, their questionnaire is related to pretty much everything related to conservation, from energy, to wildlife to water.

So I decided that as part of my campaign I would answer any questionnaire that an organization sent to me. My hope is to post these questions and answers in the forum so people can see my views on things (especially since there haven't been a whole lot of questions over there).

I'm not sure what I've gotten myself into. I worked on the questionnaire for the Nevada Conservation League on Saturday and today and it took a really long time to answer their questions. There were a few things that made it take a while:

1. There were a lot of questions and they weren't simple one liners.
2. It takes time to form an answer that covers everything you want it to while still writing in a professional, grammatically correct way.
3. They asked questions about some things that required me to perform some research, and for some of them it was harder to find answers than I thought it would be, such as how much Megawatt capacity Nevada uses for its electricity production (the best answer I could find was about 8500 MW).

The next question is if I'm going to be able to post the questionnaires. I asked the Nevada Advocates for Planned Parenthood and they told me they would prefer that I didn't post their questionnaire for "strategic reasons". I thought that was a really odd answer. I'm not sure what they would lose strategically by having me post my answers to the questionnaire that they sent me.