Look! Chris makes a political endorsement!

Here comes something that I haven't done in... what, at least six years?  To be honest I can't remember.  I think the total amount of times that I've endorsed a candidate has been less than three.

(Okay, I guess I kinda endorsed myself during that very wacky school board race in 2006, but that mostly came during the process of chronicling that process here on the blog.  I didn't actually come out and say "I endorse myself!" although that would be kinda funny...)

For many years I have had a policy and I have kept strictly to it, without any exceptions.  It is this: I will not vote for any candidate whose campaign runs a single negative ad against an opponent.  If a candidate cannot win on her or her own merit, then that candidate doesn't deserve my vote.  All a negative ad demonstrates is that the candidate running it is more interested in power and prestige than in the people.

I'm telling y'all here and now, that my ballot wound up having a lot of blank spaces at the very start of this campaign season.  I've been watching every race like a hawk, showing partiality to none.  Longtime readers also know that I am not partisan.  I vote for the person, not the party.  Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, independents... each and more have been represented in the ballots I've cast.

Incidentally, one of the most absolutely worst things that a person can do is vote a straight-party ticket.  Too many people fought and died so that we might have the rights of citizenship.  Those rights do not include casting votes without thinking about who you're voting for.

Some of these notions won't find approval with more than a few.  But I don't care.  You shouldn't come to this blog or that of anyone else and expect commentary fitting the status quo.  Around here, we laugh at silly concepts like conventional wisdom.

But anyway...

Here, with less than a week left before the election, after observing this season very closely, I can confidently attest that there is at least one candidate who has passed my test.  The same cannot be said of his primary opponent in the media, and it certainly cannot be said of the two "front runners" in this state's U.S. Senate race.

If this candidate runs a negative ad in the eleventh hour, I'm going to withdraw my endorsement.  But this far along, seeing what I have, I don't think that it's going to happen.

Say no to the negative ads!
Vote Mark Walker for Congress!

So it is that The Knight Shift and its eclectic proprietor gladly announces that in North Carolina's 6th District race for United States House of Representatives, I am going to heartily endorse Mark Walker.  Not only because his values and beliefs as in such close alignment with my own, but because he has run the cleanest campaign that I have probably ever seen for office at the national level.  Not one commercial - be it television or radio - has come out of his campaign aimed at an opponent.  And I seriously believe that he is going to win election in very large part because of that.  People are fed-up and tired of negative campaigning.  People are hungering for real character and integrity.  I would never intimate that Mr. Walker is a perfect candidate, because there is no such of a thing.  If he does win election to Congress, there will be things that I will disagree with him about.  That's just the nature of this carnal world where we each strive to see through the glass darkly.  But I can very confidently affirm that voting for Mark Walker will be one that for the first time in a long time will not be a vote that I see myself regretting.

If anyone asks, I'm not affiliated with the Walker campaign.  I haven't volunteered for it, I haven't made any phone calls or passed out literature.  I've never met Mark Walker.  I do know many others who do know him personally, and not one of them has not attested that he is a man sincere in his beliefs and convictions.   These are people who I respect a tremendous deal and if they say that about Mr. Walker, I'm inclined to believe them.

So again, Mark Walker wins this blogger's enthusiastic endorsement.  And I will encourage this blog's readers who are also in the 6th District of North Carolina to do likewise.  And if you want to know more about Walker, his background and what he stands for, click on over to his campaign website.

Categories: endorsement, house of representatives, mark walker, north carolina, politics, united states