Culture > American Culture

I Lost the Election, but I Won a Car

If you really want to learn about the political process, you should try running for office.

Bob Weir | March 29, 2026

If you’ve ever been intrigued by the political process, you should run for public office. It’s an experience you could never fully understand unless you’ve been through it.

It occurred several years ago in Flower Mound, Texas, a lovely little town about 25 miles north of Dallas. My wife and I had moved from Long Island, New York, and were doing our best to blend into the culture of the Lone Star State with help from a few family members and neighbors.  For the first couple of months, we lived in an apartment nearby, while our new home, equipped with swimming pool, was being built.  Since we both worked full-time jobs in Dallas, and enjoyed socializing on weekends, we paid scant attention to local politics.

Without getting longwinded about the lead-up to throwing my hat in the ring, suffice it to say that I began to realize that our little hamlet needed new leadership.  Inasmuch as I didn’t have the funds or the name recognition to mount a successful campaign, I looked up some of the well known folks who had achieved public recognition due to accomplishments in non-political endeavors.  I arranged meetings with the presidents of the local YMCA, the Rotary Club, some business owners, even a few former opponents of the current mayor.  I soon discovered that none of them was willing to go up against the woman who had been running the town with an iron fist and decimating anyone who dared oppose her.

After hearing the horror stories about what she, and her gang of bullies on the town council, did to them, their reluctance was understandable.  Therefore, I felt it was just another time in my life when I would have to accept the challenge.  I simply didn’t want to live in a town in which people were afraid to dissent, lest they find code enforcement officials putting a microscope on them.

Well, the campaign was even more defamatory than I anticipated, with an assortment of lies and distortions being disseminated throughout the area.  When the local rag was thrown on my driveway, I could feel chills crawling up my spine as I unfurled the paper with trembling fingers.  Had they discovered that I had purloined a Milky Way bar from a candy store when I was in grammar school?  How about the time Mary Lou slapped me when I tried to kiss her on our first date?

During a well attended, televised debate with her at town hall, every time I disagreed with one of her policies, she’d play to regional bigotry by saying something like, “Bob, this is not New York.  We don’t do things that way in Texas.”  In addition, I’d find handwritten scrawls in my mailbox warning me to “go back where you came from, we don’t like Yankees here.”  I began to wonder if I’d be awakened in the middle of the night to see a cross burning on my lawn.  Here I was, a U.S. citizen, retired from the New York P.D., a taxpayer, church-goer, and a regular good neighbor Sam, being dragged over the coals by a bunch of tyrants who maintained control by terrorizing challengers.  Yet every smear, every lie, every threat just stiffened my spine against their thuggish behavior.

Nevertheless, my indefatigable efforts notwithstanding, I suffered an ignominious defeat on Election Day.

Then, a few weeks later, a serendipitous event occurred that made me believe in karma.  During a local football game at one of the high schools, the mayor was selected to draw the winning ticket from a large container of ticket stubs with names of area residents that had spent $20 each to win a new Mustang convertible.  Although I had purchased a ticket (some people bought dozens), I had forgotten about the lottery and wasn’t at the game.  Instead, I was sitting around by my pool that afternoon when the phone rang.  An excited voice on the line said “Bob, you’re not gonna believe this: The mayor just picked your name.  You won a car!”  I could hear the cheers from the crowd over the phone, undoubtedly because they were enjoying the irony.  

Luckily for me, the guy who called was a friend and supporter during the campaign.  He said that when she saw my name on the winning ticket, the blood drained from her face.  She looked around furtively, as if she would have crumpled it and selected another except for the fact that he and a few others were right next to her.

So I ended up with a sleek red Mustang as a kind of consolation prize, while my erstwhile antagonist became the subject of a lot of well deserved and humorous mocking in the print media.

The rest of the story, as they say, is that I became a columnist and soon an editor of a county-wide newspaper, in which I editorialized regularly about the hostage situation residents were putting up with in my otherwise charming little burg.

Soon, a savior appeared in the form of a successful and popular businesswoman with a stellar reputation and a record of philanthropy second to none.  She won a resounding victory, and, in addition to making significant improvements in the town, and making me feel vindicated by my earlier efforts, she became a dear friend.

By the way, after driving that snazzy set of wheels around town and having youngsters pull up alongside and dare me to drag with them, I decided my hot car days had passed.  So I sold it.

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