MW: That's my district. So, I knew that anybody could do better than that, and I also had suspected that the guy who beat me in the primary in 2012 was not doing his best possible job -- he...I don't want to say the guy's name too much but...because I'm still disappointed that he beat me by 19 votes in the primary but....this election cycle 2014, this guy ran in another congressional district, AZ-07 and was thrown off the ballot for electioneering fraud. And it was widely suspected in my race and I didn't pursue it to find out if it was true or not, but he may have beaten me unfairly last time...the real thing is it didn't matter -- he wasn't trying hard and Paul Gosar is an 'R' and R's currently are in power in western Arizona ; we're one of 3 or 4 congressional districts in the state that are really lopsided with republican power. But I'm working on that.
Rob: What percentage of people in your district are independents and what percentage of them are democrats, and what percentage are republicans?
MW: We....democrats are 21, 22%; republicans are like 27%; and independents are 32%; and then tea party and green fill out the other portions....I mean libertarian and green fill out the other portions. So it's typical that people will vote republican...in fact, a lot of people who move into the state, who have been in politics, will change their party to republican from democrat because the culture had been very supportive of it when I first got here...it's not as bad now. All of America is becoming more progressive, even Arizona. It just takes people like me trying to hang on until we catch up with the rest of the times.
Rob: What kind of responses are you getting when you go out and how are you campaigning?
MW: Well I'm campaigning like a poor version, populist version of...hold on. I'm campaigning with a poorer version of a real, meaning regular, or traditional congressional campaign. We do social media all day, every day. I attend party events, I attend candidate forums, put out campaign literature, got a TV commercial, newspaper ads, I'm in Yuma right now putting up campaign signs and distributing thousands of pieces of literature, so....it's a traditional campaign, it's just economically starved.
Rob: How much money have you raised so far?
MW: So far we've raised about $33,000...yeah, and then had countless amounts of goodwill. For example, all over the state, even in places that aren't in my congressional district, people have me stay at their house, give me rides from here to there, save me gas, etc. We tried to calculate it and figure it out but it varies from month to month; but it's certainly...if you were to try to monetize it, it's probably thousands of dollars of emotional support that we get from people just saving me money I don't have to spend.
Rob: Okay. Are you going to have a debate with your opponent?
MW: Not...you know, it's interesting...we haven't had any debates this round. We had some debates last round when we were both primary candidates. Arizona media has not been kind to democrats; Arizona media has in fact tried to minimize even covering news of democrats outside of the heavily democratic areas. For example, in my place, in Kingman, Arizona, the local editor told me he didn't want to cover democratic events because they didn't take place at convenient times. Well, see in that same newspaper, republican events get front page coverage when it's like 3 people running for City Commissioner visit the republican men's club...front page news. I...as a member of the state party, as a member of the county party and a congressional candidate, I bring people from all over...you know democratic candidates, statewide candidates a couple of times, and all we hear back is; 'Well we don't want to attend. We don't want to check that out. It's just you democrats -- you don't really matter.' It's that lopsided.
Rob: Wow.
MW: So, when we talk to mixed events, where republican and democrats are both, you know, in the audience, it tends to be pretty hostile when I speak. I've had audience members get up and rush the stage and try to shout me down when I'm talking; there's videos on YouTube if people want to follow this...there's 3 or 4...there's 3 actually videos where the audience is trying to stop me from speaking because they're so used to being in a conservative world -- they don't even know how to listen to somebody who's calling them on it. Of course, I've got to admit, my campaign slogan is "Tell the right they're wrong," and I open with 'the conservative values agenda is destroying our country. These people have been lying to you and what they are doing equates to treason.' And it's fun and games from there!
Rob: Now what about your support -- who's supporting you?
MW: The progressive activists around the state, actually around the country, have been giving me quite a bit of support. In particular, this last week I got the endorsement from Progressive Democrats of America, which is a national group based in D.C. They are the 'inside/outside the party' organization, meaning that they work with the Progressive Congressional Caucus there at the US Capitol; AND they work with independent organizations like Code Pink, Amnesty International, Democracy for America, Move On, and so on, and try to coordinate active...progressive activists activities with governmental policy, or at least progressive policy makers. So getting their endorsement -- not everybody follows the progressive world as much but -- it's the equivalent of getting like a Heritage Foundation endorsement if you are a republican. That was pretty big. I also got the state DFA -- Democracy for America -- chapter's endorsed my work, not the national yet. I'm not in a viable race so they're not really ready to support movement right now. In Arizona there's a group that outspoken LGBT activists, stonewall democrats that have endorsed my campaign also; but I think probably the biggest support that I get though comes from the marijuana community because I am the director and legislative liaison of Safer Arizona, which is one of the faces of AZ legalization...more visible marijuana political action committees.
Rob: What's the name of the organization?
MW: Safer Arizona. The name comes from Safer, which was in Colorado and helped get medical marijuana legalized about a decade ago in Colorado. The organization filed in 2013 and that year we launched a citizens' initiative for legalization. We were trying to collect signatures for an initiative which would have regulated marijuana in the state of Arizona. Our signature drives failed, but in the course of the process, we built a grassroots network, made national news and I became the legislative liaison--met with more than half the state legislature on medical marijuana issues and now we're working with MPP, which is the Marijuana Policy Project (the national organization that does marijuana reform laws) and now we're at the forefront of the group that's trying to put together the 2016 initiative.
Rob: Well what have you learned from this?
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