(Original recording made in 2003)
Nineteen years ago I had my only conversation with a guy named Harry Lonsdale. Harry ran for the US Senate in Oregon on three different occasions. Twice he failed to win the primary. In 1990 he was the Democrat's candidate for the Senate when he ran against a popular Republican incumbent and lost. Harry was not a politician, he was a scientist and an entrepreneur. His quixotic quests for elected office were seemingly doomed to fail. During that process he learned a lot about how our political process was working then; it took bucketloads of cash to have any success, and that sorry fact is even more true today. Big money wins elections in this country.
Lonsdale self-financed his campaigns. He refused to accept donations from special interest groups. He was a man of integrity. Lonsdale wrote a great book about politics in this country. His messages still resonate today. Harry Lonsdale died in 2014.
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