November 14, 2012

I met a woman at Rosedale Mall this weekend, she told me that she worked for Stillwater schools and volunteered on my campaign, I never met her before because she was doing the work with the teacher’s union. She told me how she called people to vote for me, and really wanted to see me win. She then asked me to run again.

I am not ready to make the decision about 2014 yet, but I do know that we couldn’t have done as well as we did without the help of so many people. From people who donated financially to people who gave their time and efforts: knocking doors, making calls, or putting a out a DeGree lawn sign. We had an incredibly supportive team, there was nothing we could have done differently.

I wanted to write and say THANK YOU for your support. In total we had over 25,000 conversations with voters. We were on the track to win. What we weren’t expecting was the over $130,000 of super PAC funding that would be spent to defeat us.

Our message of supporting schools and small businesses reached 10,707 voters, and that is something to make us proud.

As Teddy Roosevelt said, “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Thanks for getting in the arena with me.

- Tom DeGree