A Campaign for Local Food (Part 2)

In the last couple weeks I had a family member admitted to the hospital, and while visiting her I caught a bug and Chris dropped my phone in the urinal. Yes, ick! So, you’ve had to wait patiently for the unveiling of the candidate who values local foods, which I blogged about previously.

First, I know the rules: 1. Never discuss religion and 2. Never discuss politics with people you want to keep as friends (and I want to keep all my blog readers as friends). So, I hope you understand what I’m doing is sharing my experience with this candidate, because I find it refreshing. Not because I’m trying to push my values on you – many of you will not be able to vote for her anyway. So here goes…

I have been impressed, not only with Ms. J’s interest and passion for buying locally, but with her integrity as a person. When Chris and I were helping to plan the menu for her campaign event, the topic of alcohol came up. Should we include it, should we not? Smiling I said, “you’ll probably get more donations if you include it, that’s what the casinos do.” Ms. J responded with a statistic about the amount of alcohol that is abused in the US, and shared how shocked she was reading about it. She’d rather not include alcohol, that isn’t the type of campaign she wanted to run.

Another lesson I learned from Ms. J is the importance of being positive about local eating, rather than tearing down manufacturers or companies that may not behave in a way I consider ethical. “Positive messages,” is what she told me, “we need to share positive messages.” We all know these:

District 105, you have an excellent House
of Represenatives candidate.

• Local eating builds community

• Local eating supports the local economy

• Local eating provides the freshest foods

• Local eating decreases the distance food travels

• Local eating tastes great!

• And on and on and on…

There are many negative things we could focus on as locavores, however, from Ms. J I have learned how important focusing on the positive is, and I for one, have not heard her talk negatively to bring down others. I completely respect that.

So who is this mystery candidate…her name is Jane Byrnes and she is running for House District 105 which is located in west Wichita. I don’t live in her area of Wichita, so I can’t even vote for her, although I considered moving to do so ;) Learn more about her and her values at http://www.campaignjane.com/.