Tracinski for Congress
No, the title above is not a typo or some form of irony.
The reason I’ve been scrambling to finish my year-end review and button up some other things in this newsletter is that I am launching a campaign for a seat in the US Congress in Virginia’s fifth district—an area that stretches from my rural county in Central Virginia down through Charlottesville and Lynchburg and takes in a vast area of extremely rural Southside Virginia.
Check out my campaign site at TracinskiForCongress.com. And please sign yourself up for e-mails there. I will be transferring this whole list over to the campaign, but there are some limits on how I can do that without getting marked as a spammer, so for now, please take just five seconds to click the link and sign up.
You will find at that site my first explanations about what the campaign is about. It touches on themes that will be familiar to readers of this newsletter.
And yes, nobody can spell “Tracinski.” I’ve probably trained many of my subscribers here, but everybody else sees a long Eastern European name and kind of freezes up. So my next step, which is in process, is to get “T-ski for Congress” to redirect there. This way, all people need to know is that my name starts with a “T” and ends with a “ski” and not worry about the stuff in between.
No Permanent Allies, No Permanent Enemies
To anticipate your next question, yes, I am running as a Democrat. Why? Because in today’s context, it is the best fit.
One of many reasons I’ve never run for office is because each party usually has its litmus tests, and I figured I wasn’t likely to pass all of them. But today, the Republican Party has one and only one litmus test: unquestioning support for Donald Trump. As for the Democrats, the one issue I think is most important right now—reining in unlimited presidential power and restoring the checks and balances of the American system—is the issue where I am way far out beyond any of the other candidates. Nobody can outdo me on it. And I am really trying to get people to understand that this is the most important issue.
If it shocks you that I’ve gone over to the Democrats, remember that political alignments are never permanent. When I moved to this area 30 years ago, there were a lot of people who thought they could never vote for a Republican. They had just elected a Democrat named Virgil Goode as their congressman for the 5th district. But Goode was an old-fashioned conservative Democrat, and over his 12 years in Congress he first switched to be an Independent, then became a Republican. And a bunch of the people who thought they could never vote for a Republican now think they could never vote for a Democrat. I’m hoping to change their minds, again.
Here’s another example. One of the elder statesmen of the Objectivist movement, Harry Binswanger, just put up a post in October denouncing Trump’s second administration as “tyranny” and recommending “voting straight Democratic in 2026.” When the Ayn Rand people are saying Vote Blue No Matter Who, you know all the old political alignments are going out the window.
For those who complain that Democrats are too far to the left—well, the way you can respond to that is to support Democrats in the primaries who are a closer match to your outlook and priorities. Most of them by far—most of us—are not socialists. I have been advocating a broad united front against Trump’s push for authoritarianism. In the last month or so, this has meant Democrats in New York City can elect a pretty far left guy like Zohran Mamdani at the same time that Virginians elect a moderate like Abigail Spanberger. So why can’t that “big tent” include a classical liberal and former Tea Party guy with a passion for restoring the American system?
The Man in the Arena
The other big reason I’ve never run for office is that, as a writer, it has always seemed easier and a lot more fun to sit back and criticize the idiots who do decide to run. But that’s not a luxury we can afford right now—nor is letting those idiots get elected—and that’s the main reason I’m doing this.
I can’t just stay on the sidelines and shout at the politicians about what they need to do. It’s not my style to sit back hoping that somebody else will do the right thing, when I can go out and spend myself in a worthy cause.
But there’s a reason people who write about politics for a living don’t usually run for office. That’s because the moment you run for office, you have to stop writing about politics for a living. Anyone who pays me to write articles on politics is potentially running afoul of campaign finance laws.
Fortunately, this does not seem to apply to sales of my book, and I also write about things other than the politics of the day. So I will continue to comment on politics from my campaign website, which is another reason to sign up there. But The Tracinski Letter will switch out for a while to writing about other topics, especially philosophy, history, and possibly music.
I’m excited about this, because I’ve got some very interesting things I’ve been planning to write that I’ve had to put on the back burner because of the pressure of covering the latest insanity. These articles are at least as interesting and important as the things I’ve been writing about this year, so I’m looking forward to sharing them with you over the next few months.
The Nuts and Bolts
At the moment, I’m feeling a bit like someone who has lectured on physics for years, and then someone asks him to build a nuclear reactor. I know the theory very well, but I’m finding out everything I don’t know about the nuts and bolts of putting together a campaign—and that’s all the stuff that has to be done first. So I’ve been climbing quickly up that learning curve.
The one thing everybody keeps telling me, which I knew already, is that fundraising is the most important thing. Like an army, a political campaign moves on its stomach. That’s another reason to go to the campaign site, because while I’ve got many different irons in the fire, I’m also counting on your help. One thing I actually like about the federal campaign finance laws is that there is a limit of $3,500 per person or $7,000 per couple—once for the primaries, again for the general election—so I can’t just raise enough money to run from one wealthy sponsor, I need to raise it from ordinary, middle-class citizens.
Right now, this is my top priority: to raise enough money to hire more people to handle the nuts-and-bolts stuff, so I can concentrate on the things I’m best at—and frankly, where I have an advantage over other candidates, which is writing and speaking and honing my message to voters.
So again, check out the campaign site and sign up there. I hope you’ll help me out in pursuing this difficult and important project. And I also look forward to sharing here, for a while, all the things I do that are not about politics.
Sir: You have my support.
Congratulations on running for Congress! I can't think of a candidate I would trust more.