Somebody's Gotta Do It by Adrienne Martini

Author:Adrienne Martini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

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On the late October day of the debate, I showed up to the campus banquet room in a burnt-orange skirt, a grown-up striped blouse, and black leather boots. The six of us were seated behind a long table facing rows of chairs. Two newspaper reporters/editors were off to our right. There was a lectern for the moderator, a professor from Hartwick College’s political science department, whom I sort of knew from dinner parties at my RN friend Kate’s house. Like I said, in small towns, you really have only two degrees of separation from anyone else.

Maybe fifty people were in the audience, and the event was recorded for anyone who couldn’t make it. Also in the audience were my father and my husband. I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted them there—I always find it hard to remember that I’m a damn grown-up around my dad—but I wasn’t sure I didn’t want them there, either. I am a puzzle.

The one thing I was certain I didn’t want there were my kids. My daughter would have spent the entire time staring daggers at me for making her listen to something so freaking boring. My son is an upstager and would therefore have found a way to make the audience laugh, while I stared daggers at him until he wrapped it up. He has a nimble wit, actually, but with no sense of when he’s testing an audience’s patience. We’re hoping he will someday figure out how to use this power for good.

My opponent and I formally introduced ourselves to each other, even though we’d probably met before somewhere at some point, and sat down to wait for go time. I read and reread my notes in the hope that I could cram one more fact about our solid waste tip fees into my already full-to-bursting skull.

Then the discussion was called to order, and we began.

Each candidate was given two minutes at the beginning to set up his or her bona fides. This was the only part of the night when I felt fully on top of things, given that I had been able to write my remarks out beforehand and practice them a few times. After a quick paragraph about how long I’d lived there and why we’d stayed, I moved on to my main points:

[E]ven wonderful places face challenges. Right now, it feels like the county’s growth has stagnated. Folks in Otsego County keep hearing about unrealized master plans that will bring investment into the area from the outside.

Maybe a better plan would be to grow what is already here. We can make local business stronger by training a twenty-first-century workforce who can fill living wage jobs. Given the climate in DC, we need to make sure our people have access to quality, affordable health care—and protect the health care sector itself, which is one of the top three employers in Otsego. There may already be plans to do that. But what goes on at the county government level seems to exist in a vacuum.

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