Dear Task Force on Judicial Excellence: Having dipped my toe in a recent judicial election, I thought you’d be interested to hear my ideas behind my campaign, and what I learned from the results. As someone intensely familiar with the inner workings of the Cleveland Municipal Court, I often thought my insights on “what works” and “what doesn’t” in a courtroom would make me a good judge. I thought of it as a well-deserved raise for a underpaid public servant. However, my often-vocal distrust of Democratic party politics-as-usual kept me out of the running. There was, in theory, another way. Win public support as 1) the most qualified candidate in the race, 2) the candidate most supported by bar associations, 3) the candidate who won’t take money or spend a dime on advertising, 4) the candidate with bi-partisan support from both Democratic and Republican party leaders, 5) the candidate with Plain Dealer and Call & Post endorsements, 6) the candidate with full union support, as a current member of a collective bargaining unit, etc. I thought there would be plenty of opportunity to get the message out that I was a “message candidate” with a new way to run for judge. Somewhere that plan went awry, and despite a well-received Facebook page, I succumbed to my own messaging failures. It was a great experience, but its lessons proved my hypothesis wrong.