I’m going to blog about my experience with the new thing I’m doing. I’m running for Senate in South Carolina. It’s a longshot, honestly, because I’m an alternative party candidate and we are a very red state. I’m planning to earn the Libertarian Party’s nomination next May (2026) but until then I’m just an independent person running a campaign with libertarian principles.
In lieu of a platform page, I’ve decided to blog. Each experience I have, the topics we’re talking about, the issues people want to know my stance on.
In most conversations, voters want to grill the candidate to see if I line up with them. But I want to interview them to understand where they are. I believe in deep customer knowledge and I want to know my customers. In this case, the voters.
What do they care about? What interests them? What worries them? What’s keeping them awake at night? What’s making it hard to do business? To make ends meet?
On a recent episode of Moore Impact, the podcast I host for the Darla Moore School of Business, my guest, Yogesh Chavda, talked about the invalidity of data being collected with insufficient tools. If we’re relying on surveys that don’t ask the right questions, we’re leaving out important lived experiences.
I want to understand the lived experiences of South Carolinians. What’s happening in their churches? Their schools? Their neighborhoods? Not what does the data tell us, there’s BIG (red & blue) machines churning the data, but what are we learning?
When I suggested the blogging effort as a way of building my platform, I was told people don’t read. So I’ll need to supplement the blogs with Instagram reels and other multi-media elements. That’s fine. I can do that. But it’s in the writing that I work out my big ideas. It’s through writing that I metabolize what I experience and make sense of what I’m doing. So I’ll keep blogging.
Some of the best work is being done in the blog space right now. Not to say the video content creators and podcasters aren’t getting it done, but some of the bloggers are hitting home runs on places like Substack. Long form content is making a comeback and people are asking to be educated and inspired by stuff they read. Not just mindlessly entertained by what they consume.
There’s something participatory about reading. You’re immersed in the voice of the writer but also using your own mind to contribute to the discussion. It’s a deeper engagement than watching. Deciphering the structure, marks, and vocabulary all make an active participant of any consumer. Those tools the writer uses to establish tone are intentionally selected and purposefully placed. And you accept them, understand them, and in doing so understand the writer.
My co-host Keven Cohen always says there’s something romantic about radio. The connection we make when people are hearing our voices, imagining our faces and posture and gestures, it requires more of our audience than video. I will add that reading requires even more than listening (which may be why video people always say people won’t read). Reading requires code interpretation – letters, words, punctuation – and that activates your brain. When it’s activated, your brain is better equipped to get what I’m saying.
So I’m going to challenge my audience to read. Engage. Activate. Bring yourself into the conversation, don’t just passively consume the content. Is it ambitious? Yes. But so is running an independent campaign for Senate in a very, very red state. I’m not afraid. I’m excited about the possibilities.
Ya’ll know I don’t do anything if it isn’t fun. And writing – blogging – is fun!
What do you think? Will my voters engage with my blogs to learn more about me? leave a comment and let’s discuss.
Unapologetically X 