Institutional politics. It is a term that I have just heard recently and as I go through the process of the campaign, I am beginning to garner a greater understanding of how exactly it plays a role and the damage it has done to our government. Now, to be fair, we the electorate have no one to blame but ourselves. Our malaise and failure to engage over the past decades has allowed these institutional politicians (and I mean not only the elected representatives, but the small minority of overzealous that work behind the scenes as well) to really subvert the will of the people. Let me explain.

You see, due to the overabundance of type “A” controlling personalities on both sides of the aisle, there has accumulated over a period of decades an obscene amount of technicalities. A simple example of this is something that I personally, and apparently at least three other candidates in a neighboring district, experienced just a couple of weeks ago. There is a statute in place that allows anyone to challenge the qualifying petition signatures that candidates must submit in order to qualify for the ballot. Now a challenge isn’t just simply filing a form, you have to actually file a lawsuit in the county court system, thus not only causing court costs, but the individual must now defend themselves and incur the costs of that defense. It is an important and necessary part of the process used to prevent fraud. Apparently, there are some unethical people out there that would forge signatures, go figure. As with any well intended government statute, this is all on the up and up until institutional politicians figured out that it can now be wielded as a threat, both idle and acted upon, to other candidates to “thin the herd” and eliminate competition.

The truth is, no matter how legitimate the collection of signatures is, they can be disqualified for a number of reasons, not just falsification. Someone might sign on the wrong line, they might not have changed their address yet, the name is not legible, etc. You see now you get into the question of the importance of intent and process. In my case, I personally collected over 90% of my signatures by going door to door in my district for months. I know where they came from as did those that threatened to challenge me. My integrity was never once questioned; it was this small group of institutional politicians (5-20 people at the most in a district of 71,000 registered Republicans) that took it upon themselves to “thin the herd”, their words, not mine. While I am sure that the majority of those involved with the potential challenge were well intentioned and earnest in their attempt to do what was in their minds right, their threat of a challenge to me was not about the integrity of the process, it was about their opinion of the race.  The result would have been how they inadvertently were going to use a a well intended statute to deny you the people of the opportunity to choose the candidate you prefer, only after allowing the democratic process we have established to play out. I am the only candidate in our particular race that has real world experience and has not been a part of the institution and you would have unfortunately been denied that debate. Now, obviously as I write this I am still calling myself a candidate, so cooler heads prevailed and for that I am most thankful, but this caused me to take a hard look at our process, now as an insider.

You must ask yourself, which is more important, the process or the result? In our culture today we pick and choose, to suit in our own self interests, when the Darwinian model of survival of the fittest is appropriate and when it is unfair. Many of you might be saying, hey you do what you have to do to win. Fair enough, but I would argue that when we take that approach we feed the institutional beast and we abandon our intellectual honesty and integrity. You don’t believe me? How many of you were outraged about how Obamacare passed?  I know I was. You know what bothered me the most? The use of a parliamentary gimmick called the Slaughter Rule (which dramatically lowered the required number of votes for passage) and a slew of backdoor deals. Everything from money to the life of the unborn, were bartered to garner votes and eventually pass the most overreaching government intrusion in history. The life of the unborn was nothing more than a chip on the table!  Yet the day after it passed many called it a victory. Regardless of whether or not you liked the bill, they got the win and apparently, somewhere in our convoluted system of laws, technicalities made all of the deals legal and the overwhelming will of the people could do nothing about it. That should scare us all, yet according to institutional politicians that was acceptable. Make no mistake, I guarantee you, to a person, those who wanted to challenge my petitions were furious at how Obamacare was pushed through, by way of the Slaughter Rule and pay-offs, yet, whether realized or not, some were more than willing to do the exact same thing because it benefitted their world view. The integrity of the process must be paramount! Institutional politicians are using the “rules” to control our lives and we all as God fearing Americans should be outraged. This is what our system has become, all the way from Washington to here in LD-22.

Just because we can, does not mean we should. Don’t let fear and the naysayer of this world press their insecurities on you. We can win the day and honor the integrity of the process, it is not an either/or proposition, it is an and/both.  This battle, on most levels, is not right versus left, Republican versus Democrat. The institutional politician is alive and well on both sides of the aisle, the question becomes what are we the people going to do about it? Are we going to sit idly by watching our flat screens and posting on Facebook while the institutional minority manipulates our lives? Or are you going to stand with me in the face of what seems like an unstoppable force, as our founders stood up to the British, and say the manipulation of our system stops, starting right now. My friends, process and purpose is every bit, if not more, important than the result. I believe we can have both, but I can only do that with your help. God Bless!

In His Service and Yours,

Brett M Petillo