{"id":209,"date":"2010-09-09T21:46:44","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T02:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/?p=209"},"modified":"2010-09-10T07:05:25","modified_gmt":"2010-09-10T12:05:25","slug":"running-unopposed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/09\/running-unopposed\/","title":{"rendered":"Running unopposed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Running for Second Vice President is an interesting experience for me, particularly running against other candidates.\u00a0 Of course, running for a world-wide office is considerably different from running at the district level.\u00a0 When I was Area Governor, I was appointed, and for Division Governor, I was unopposed.<\/p>\n

When I ran for Lt. Gov’r Marketing (LGM), there were two other candidates (rare in my district!), and I took it pretty seriously.\u00a0 I developed a tri-fold brochure and a small poster to take to all the division contests, and the other two candidates were at all the same contests with a flier as well.<\/p>\n

At the election, I gave a two-minute speech, and I honestly don’t remember a word of it at this point, but I guess I got through it (I was an ATM-B at the time).\u00a0 No one got a majority at the first vote, it took a second vote before I got a slight majority (64-61, I think).\u00a0 It really was a great experience!<\/p>\n

As is typical, I was unopposed for Lt. Gov’r Education and District Governor (photo above).\u00a0 When I announced for International Director, someone else also announced, but a couple of months later, he dropped out due to a huge increase in responsibility at work.<\/p>\n

However, I still ran it as if I were opposed, hitting 11 out of 16 district conferences in the region in the fall and spring (the others were on conflicting dates).\u00a0 I had a professional photograph taken, did a tri-fold brochure and a posterboard to take to conferences, and built a web site.\u00a0 I had intended to set the campaign up as a High Performance Leadership project, but I have to confess that when I became unopposed, I didn’t follow through on that idea.<\/p>\n

In many ways, I regret that no one was running against me.\u00a0 I believe a little friendly competition can bring out the best.\u00a0 Still, I have a chance to do that now, as there are at least three other people, all incredibly talented, also running for Second Vice President.<\/p>\n

I really enjoyed handing out the announcement cards at the end of the Palm Springs convention last month.\u00a0 It gave me a chance to confirm what some people were suspecting, and I had some fascinating (though brief) conversations.\u00a0 It was my last opportunity to see most of these Toastmasters leaders face to face before the convention in Las Vegas next August!<\/p>\n

I will be reaching out to Toastmasters leaders in the coming months with personal phone calls (campaign rules sharply limit my use of other means), and I look forward to finding out more about what YOUR concerns are, where we’re doing well, what we can improve upon, and sharing my ideas about future directions.<\/p>\n

Please feel free to contact me directly (details are at the bottom of my site’s home page<\/a>), or if appropriate, just add a comment on my blog here, I’ll reply!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Running for Second Vice President is an interesting experience for me, particularly running against other candidates.\u00a0 Of course, running for a world-wide office is considerably different from running at the district level.\u00a0 When I was Area Governor, I was appointed, and for Division Governor, I was unopposed. When I ran for Lt. Gov’r Marketing (LGM), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4,5,3],"tags":[57,77,78],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2vp-campaign","category-district-conference","category-id-campaign","category-international-convention","tag-campaign","tag-election","tag-unopposed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions\/338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}