I ran for Palo Alto City Council three consecutive times, 2009-2014 and garnered more than 8,000 votes cumulatively while spending less that $2,000 combined. I am, arguably, the most popular local pol on a cost basis (although I still describe my self as “dissent” rather than leadership).

Pete Dixon, who I met twice on the campaign trail, got 7,538 votes while spending $4m of his or a superPAC budget to replace Anna Eshoo (and Joe Simitian and Sam Liccardo will run off in November).

So Pete the former marine, who we know a lot about for his commercials during the 49ers game spent $5,000 per vote; I spent, if you do the math, two bits.

So I am two thousand times more electable than him on a cost basis. That is the difference, of course between a billionaire and a millionaire or between a millionaire and the regular person.

I respect that he served our country or has a better answer to Hamas the terrorist group than most of the candidates. But it still seems like — and I asked him something very near this — he is a rich guy trying to compensate for life’s disappointments by throwing daddy’s bucks at it or us or the mirror.

(I asked him, when he said his younger brother was the quarterback for Princeton, what it was like to be outclassed by his sibling…)

I repeated a version of this to Mary Hughes who is the life partner of Joe Simitian, in between sips of a vanilla milkshake and she laughed and said she’s thinking what I’m thinking and saying but cannot say such. Speak friend and enter is what Tolkien said.

Makes me wonder what Alex Dixon is working on.

(Also reminds me of my Dartmouth school mates Brian Joseph Stretch a former USA, Colin Stretch of counsel for FB, and Tim Stretch the black sheep who flew fighter jets and is a reserve commander. Go, Cats, go big green — and I think I wrote about Vic Goering of the 1944 Dartmouth basketball champs who I interviewed at the end of his life, in Philadelphia or Camden NJ in 2004….sic transit gloria or brother can you spare a billion or trillion dimes?

and1: I saw Ben Clements in the news, about Donald Trump and SCOTUS. Ben argues that now Congress can vote on whether Trump’s criminal indictment could keep him from being seated as president. Why do Americans want a gangster capitalist as our leader?