If you have a good memory, you may recall that when I was James Smith’s communications director, I worked with a young guy named Noah Barker, as I mentioned him a couple of times back then.
And when I say “young,” I mean he was 17, and just days out of high school when I joined the campaign that July, and he was preparing with great excitement to vote for the first time.
But you wouldn’t have known he was that young if you had talked politics with him without seeing his face. He had the kind of encyclopedic knowledge not only of the present situation, but of the political history of our state and nation (something I like to talk about, since back in the day, our politics made some sense).
He was also the only staffer on the campaign who had actually won a gubernatorial election. At the time, he was the serving governor of Boys State. Which may not sound like much to you, but it was at least something.
Since then, Noah has gotten through college and started a career, and stayed extremely involved in politics even as I’ve put it behind me. He worked as a volunteer to help Joe Biden get elected in 2020, God bless him, and has helped run a bunch of campaigns on a more modest level — legislative, local council and the like. And he’s won some of them — which despite my advanced age and abundant wisdom, I have never accomplished.
Now, he’s running for office himself. On June 9, he’s seeking the Democratic nomination to represent District 70 — the Kershaw/Richland district in which he’s lived all his life — in the South Carolina House of Representatives.
Now, you may smile indulgently and say, “Of course he’s running for office. You knew Noah would do that eventually.” And that’s true enough. But in his case he has an excuse, a reason, a justification for running that most people of any political persuasion you can name would probably see as sound. The first issue on his Issues page is this:
Showing Up
When we elect a legislator, we expect them to show up and do their job. Our current representative in the South Carolina House of Representatives, Robert Reese, doesn’t show up to work.
In his first term as our state legislator, Reese has been one of the worst offenders when it comes to skipping votes. So far, he has missed 153 votes.
That’s 153 times that our district has been left voiceless. That is unacceptable…
For Noah, this is not just a statistic he read somewhere. As a legislative monitor, he’s at the State House every day the General Assembly is in session, and all too often his representative is not.
I’m believing Noah on this. Since I’m no longer being paid to do real journalism, I have not called his opponent to cry “J’Accuse…!” and demand he justify himself. In fact — and you can dismiss all I say on this basis if you’re so inclined — I don’t know Rep. Reese. (I hear that quite a few legislators don’t know him, either, so I don’t feel alone on that point.)
If Mr. Reese presents overwhelming evidence that either he has too been there, or that his absences are entirely justified, I’ll be happy to run that, too.
But his quality of representation is not why I, personally, would vote for Noah if I lived in his district. I have a bunch of other reasons. Two big ones are:
- The rest of what’s on his Issues page. Sure, I might be able to quibble on a point or two — there’s not one person on this planet I would agree with about everything. But what he has here is solid, sensible, pragmatic stuff that has nothing to do with what political tribe he belongs to, or whom he resents, or where he stands in the Kulturkampf. And although this shouldn’t be remarkable at all, the thing that really makes his list stand out is that all these issues are actually relevant to the office he is seeking. That’s because unlike most candidates (and definitely unlike most voters), Noah actually has an extensive, working understanding of the job he is seeking.
- Everything else I’ve learned about Noah over the years.
Bottom line, Noah is the kind of person I’m always hoping to find on a ballot and seldom do these days. His intelligence, his moral compass, his sincere passion about his state and country, his willingness to work hard not just for people who look like or sound like or think or feel like him, but everyone in our society… they all add up to a rare opportunity for voters.
Noah, unlike me, is a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, which is fine because he fits into that small subset that is too rare in his party (and in the Trump era, almost nonexistent in the other party). I’m talking about people I’d go out of my way to vote for: James Smith and Mandy Powers Norell, Joe Biden, Russell Ott, Joe Riley, Vincent Sheheen, Joel Lourie, and God Rest His Soul, Jimmy Carter.
You see that picture at the top of this post? I shot that of him last year, standing behind his car after we’d had coffee in Five Points to talk about his candidacy. Note the green bumper sticker to the left in the picture. That is not a sticker issued by an “Andy Beshear for President” campaign. Noah had it made himself. He likes Andy Beshear, and he loves Jimmy Carter, and so he made for himself a Beshear sticker in the Jimmy Carter style. When Jimmy ran in 1976, I’d never seen a green campaign sticker. It was quite distinctive, and I really liked it. So does Noah. Look at his website’s color scheme.
How does this kid know that? Well, he does. He also understands something that too few people of any political persuasion understand these days, which is that LBJ was probably the most effective president this country has had since FDR, and he accomplished a staggering number of huge, good things for this country. Hence that other sticker.
Well, that’s all I want to say, except that I’m proud of Noah and the campaign he’s running, and he’d better send me one of his bumper stickers, which I understand are a lot like Jimmy’s. I can’t vote in his district, but I can put one of those on my old truck. Maybe it will do him some good somehow…
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