Announcing Candidate Campolo

You may have heard me describe myself, very modestly, as “simply the finest human being who has ever lived.”

That is no longer true.

The title now goes to my sister, Allison Campolo, who has just thrown her hat into the ring to run for the Texas state senate, in District 10. (That is basically the southern half of Tarrant County – Konni Burton’s district, for those of you who keep up with these things.)

And you guys, I just can’t even imagine the guts it takes to do that. You know, to put your face out there KNOWING that people will say horrendously ugly things to and about you. To volunteer yourself to spend the next 18 months knocking on doors and making phone calls and wearing out the bottoms of your shoes, all for a ‘maybe’. For a job that literally does not pay a living wage. (Texas state senators make $7,200 per year, plus a per diem when the lege is actually in session – which is four months out of every two years.)

But, you know. She sweated her way to a black belt in kung fu. Started, ran, and sold a business. Got her master’s and is working on a PhD in veterinary biomedical science. She’s spayed cats, researched fish farms in Thailand, smashed bricks, blood-typed horses, built a barn, broken bones, played in a band, doctored an epileptic beaver and a squeamish brother-in-law, and probably BASE-jumped from a breaching whale off the coast of Nicaragua while I wasn’t looking. She’s even more of a ridiculous Mary Sue than I am – and if that’s the kind of person you would trust to road-trip down to Austin and kick our Lone Star shit into shape, then I hope you’ll join me in backing her bid.

You can start by following her on Facebook and on Twitter. She’ll be speaking at the March for Science in Fort Worth this weekend, and will need our help in collecting donations and signatures to secure her bid. It’s going to be a long, uphill slog, y’all – but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from living with Al, it’s that bravery is contagious, and ‘badass’ is a verb.