I spent a lot of the day today sleeping. Seriously, you lose a LOT of sleep when you're on the campaign trail and you don't even seem to notice as long as you avoid looking at beds and couches. I hadn't slept for about three days by the time I finally laid down. Anyway, my first campaign has ended and the results were a bit worse than I was expecting. So yeah, whenever something like that happens, you're always going to be disappointed, there's not a lot anyone can do or say about that. But they try.

I woke up, looked at the clock and said, "That has to be A.M." Then I looked at the window and realized that was impossible. I spent the rest of the day replying to e-mails, answering phone calls, and starting to make a scratch in the enormous block of people who I have to thank personally.

I made a few errors in strategy, but I'm not sure that it would have made enough of a difference to bring us victory if we had known then what we known now. Voter turnout in one township, for example, was a meager third of what it was four years ago.

(In general, overall turnout was down from 20% in 2006 to a little over 15% on May 4th)

With the above said, I think my supporters are more upset than I am. The truth of the matter is that I ran a positive campaign; and I was able to call my opponent when after things began winding down and we were able to thank one another for keeping things positive.

The truth of the matter is that I lacked name recognition going into this race and my opponent was a former County Commissioner. On top of that, I barely had two months to campaign before the primary. That's not a lot of time to solve a name recognition problem. When I was initially approached to run for County Council, there was not another Republican in the race. Over the course of about a week, Travis and I started laying the foundation to see if we had the time and smarts to make something like this work. The Friday of that week, I sat down with the Party Chairwoman and other leaders in the community to get their approval. We got it, signed the paperwork, and planned on releasing everything Tuesday.

Well, after approving more campaign related stuff, Travis and I spent the rest of Friday taking a break, attending a seminar comparing Communist insurgency and propaganda in Germany and Argentina during the 1980s. Yes, we're geeks. When we turned our phones back on that evening, we were bombarded with text messages and voicemails telling us this other Republican announced his candidacy for this race.

Apparently, nobody at the table knew a former Republican county commissioner was going to get in the race.

Now, had he announced a week earlier, there's no way I'd have run. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I did. But I wasn't interested in getting involved in a primary unless it involved me kicking the teeth out of some Ron Paul loving 9-11 conspiracy nut. However, when you spend a while playing with an idea, getting family and friends on board, establishing plans, making logos, designing websites, and talking with positive party officials; stopping everything on a moment's notice is insanely difficult to do. Not just because you have to cancel everything, but because you've got so much emotional momentum moving towards something and saying, "Oh, never mind then" just isn't human nature. Or at least, it just isn't Kevin Tracy nature.

Anyway, we got in and our Press Release was drowned out by news of Evan Bayh's decision not to seek re-election. Great first day. But we kept fighting and even though we lost, it's something that Travis and I will be able to look back at one day and be proud of the way we did things. The truth of the matter is that victories only last for a short time. Memories last forever. If you win, you'll be thrilled for a short period before your next battle starts. If you won by acting like a jerk, you're going to go into that next battle with you and everyone else knowing you're a jerk. And if you lose while acting like a jerk, well, that's the worst case scenario.

I have absolutely zero regrets about the way this campaign unfolded. Sure, I'm disappointed, but just like the thrill of a victory, the disappointment is only temporary. There will be other battles and we'll have victories and more defeats. But as long as we fight those battles like we fought this one, there's never going to be anything to be ashamed of.

I wrote the Chairwoman of the county Republican Party and told her I was still supporting the ticket 100% and that I was available if the local GOP ever needed my talents. We have a great team going on the November ballot and, even if I'm not on it, I want to see people voting straight ticket Republican next on Election Day.

Also, about an hour after I told Travis things were over, I got a call from a local newspaper asking what my plans were after this. That was by far the strangest part of the night. I planned on winning. I told him I was looking forward to supporting the Party's nominees and catching up on some sleep. I actually think that might have been what he put in the paper. With my sleep caught up on, I realize now that I've had a large blank canvas sitting on my easel for over 2 months now and it's really in the way.

I think that will be my new excuse for not writing as often as I should on ktracy.com. :)

Seriously, thank you to everyone out there for remaining loyal to this blog and supporting me like you have when I wasn't writing every day... or every week for that matter.