Team DitchMitchKY congratulates Shawn on what he accomplished in the last month with this Eventful.com competition and in bringing John Edwards to Columbus. We’re very proud of him, as well.
BE HEARD
Columbus earns spotlight by winning challenge
Saturday, July 21, 2007
We could think of 10 questions to ask John Edwards when he visits Columbus. But why spoil the moment?
Ultimately, this is not really a story about Edwards anyway. This is the story of one young man and one small town, and what can be accomplished with determination. It is a thoroughly American story.
You’ve probably followed the events through Bill Bartleman’s coverage in The Paducah Sun: When Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards announced his “Demand and be Heard” competition on eventful.com, 24-year-old Columbus, Ky., native Shawn Dixon decided to enter. The one-month competition invited Americans to nominate their home towns for a campaign stop by Edwards, where the candidate promised to answer at least 10 questions.
Dixon is in law school at New York University. He has unlimited opportunities to see Edwards and the entire gaggle of candidates during their frequent visits to America’s largest city. Heck, the two leading candidates, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, call New York City home. And another New Yorker, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is poised to enter the race.
But Dixon wasn’t thinking about himself; he was thinking about his hometown in Hickman County, where he grew up and graduated from high school. He thought, why not Columbus?
Well, for starters, Columbus is a tiny town of barely 200 residents in one of the smallest counties in the United States (only 11 have fewer residents). And the other nominated cities were all bigger. Lots bigger. The eventual third place finisher in the contest, Los Angeles, is the nation’s second largest city and sits in the largest county in America, with nearly 10 million residents.
It was a tall order. The other top nominated cities included San Fransisco, San Diego, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver and that other Columbus in Ohio. But Dixon was undeterred. He began e-mailing friends and networking Web sites. The entire community got in on the competition. They soon found Columbus among the serious contenders.
Then the Associated Press picked up Bartleman’s first story on Dixon’s efforts and it found a national media audience. People from all over the country, excited about the prospect of a major presidential candidate stumping in a tiny crossroads, adopted Columbus. The votes poured in.
The final tally of 1,814 votes for Columbus was more than the next two, Eureka and Los Angeles, Calif., combined.
The visit will be good for Columbus, putting the national spotlight on a region that’s gone through some tough times, with lost jobs and declining population. It is representative of countless struggling rural communities stretching from Alaska to Florida and from California to Maine.
It will be good for Edwards, too. When he makes good on his promise, it will fit his campaign theme of addressing poverty, and it will complement his stops in eastern Kentucky last week on his Road to One America Tour.
Columbus has a little-known but important place in American history. President Thomas Jefferson proposed moving the national capital from Washington to Columbus so it would be more centrally located. The proposal lost by a single vote in the Senate.
Details of the visit have yet to be worked out. But residents of Hickman County are justifiably excited about the visit and proud of what they’ve accomplished. Rather than complain that their voices are never heard, as too many Americans are wont to do, they simply stood up and demanded to be heard.
John Edwards is no Harry Truman. He’s not even an Alben Barkley. He’s a former vice presidential candidate who could not carry his home state in a losing election. Nor was he even the leader among eventful.com’s presidential candidates in the “Demand” challenge; fellow Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Ron Paul each received more than twice as many votes.
But what Columbus did is a singular achievement. The Columbus vote total exceeded that of any other city for any candidate in the contest. Obama received 1,057 “demands” from Seattle. No other candidate received more than 1,000 from any city. And all the contests were dominated by major cities.
This accomplishment may not reveal much about John Edwards, but it says a great deal about Columbus. And one persistent native son.
Columbus Native Key To Bringing Edwards To Town
