Monday morning, Sept. 30, the folks of Alabama’s Sixth Congressional District awoke to the news that our 11-term Congressman Spencer Bachus will retire at the end of his current term.
My wife, Megan, was on the way out the door to work when we heard the news. The first words out of her mouth were, “Are you going to run?”
For the next couple of weeks, that question came from every angle — from national media outlets and political insiders to church friends and family members.
Almost every would-be candidate answers that question with the same over-used phrase — “I’m praying and discussing it with my family.” I did too, but my wife and I were determined to make that more than a tired refrain used to downplay personal ambition.
I don’t pretend to understand the mysteries of how God moves and directs our lives, but we try our best to muster the courage to lay a blank check on the table and let God fill it out. Whether He wants us to move to a third world country, or go to Washington, D.C., or stay right here in Homewood, we pray He gives us the fortitude to do it.
So in that frame of mind, we began considering running for Congress.
But why?
To really answer that question, I need to start a little over a decade ago.
In spite of being a 5’9″ point guard on a mediocre high school basketball team, I had a dream of playing in college. I worked toward that dream every single day. While most of my teammates partied on the weekends, I went to the local park and did drills until the lights went out late at night. That work paid off. I was fortunate enough to get a college basketball scholarship.
A few years later, while I was still playing college ball, I caught another dream.
My brother and his friends had started a band and asked me to sing with them for the church youth group on Wednesday nights. My only experience at the time was singing in church choir as a kid. None of us had ever written a song and I’d never even attempted to play an instrument. But we decided we wanted to make a living as musicians. This, of course, was an absurd idea. But we dropped out of school and lived in a van traversing the United States in pursuit of that dream. Inexplicably, we went on to have songs on MTV and the radio and performed alongside some of the biggest bands in the world.
Years later, my wife and I decided being on the road a couple hundred days a year wasn’t how we wanted to raise a family, so I returned to school to get my degree. I also got heavily involved politically.
While finishing up school, I caught yet another dream. I wanted to take on the old guard media in Alabama and create an outlet that truly reflected the values of Alabamians. I launched the Yellowhammer Politics blog to an audience of just a handful of people. Almost two years later, that tiny blog is now a full-blown media outlet with hundreds of thousands of readers and a growing staff.
Now, please understand, none of those things are to my credit. There’s no way I could have mapped that out. Rather, I hope my life has been, and will continue to be, a reflection of the truth of these words from Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
But I tell those stories today to say this: in no other country in the history of human civilization would all of that have been possible. Only in America can you have a dream — any dream — and through sheer force of will and hard work have a legitimate chance of seeing it become a reality, no matter your race, gender, religion or socioeconomic background.
So why did I consider running for congress?
Because that America — the country that was set up so those types of dreams could be realized, is under threat of extinction. And I — along with a growing number of people across our country — am willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to make sure that doesn’t happen.
However, I have come to the realization that, at least for right now, the most effective way I can fight for the country and state that I love is to continue running Yellowhammer to the best of my ability.
I feel a growing sense of responsibility to the hundreds of thousands of Alabamians who count on us to give them the truth, to hold their elected leaders accountable, and to use our influence to advocate for the principles this country was founded on.
237 years ago, fifty-six men sat in a room in Philadelphia and pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to secure the freedoms we now enjoy.
Today, most of our elected leaders are willing to risk nothing — certainly not their beloved positions of power — to secure those freedoms for future generations.
So although I won’t be putting my name on a ballot in 2014, I will be approaching our job at Yellowhammer with a renewed sense of conviction.
And We The People of the Sixth Congressional District will be looking for a leader who will fight to protect and restore our freedoms — economic, political and religious — so that the dreams of the next generation of Alabamians won’t just be unattainable aspirations, but will have the hope of becoming reality, just like so many of ours have.
Follow Cliff on Twitter @Cliff_Sims
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