( – promoted by Sue Prent)

It's getting to the time when I should be quick and succinct, which is a bit unnatural for me.  We've seen that on the trail, where I will stand there chatting with voters for however long it takes, seriously cutting into the number of doors we can knock.  Hey, I'm a professor sometimes and talk for a living, plus spending most of my day with a baby makes me starved for adult conversation!

Anyway, we're now in the critical final few days of this campaign.  No more filibustering on the front porch, even though we're having a great time.  No more blogging about policy solutions, even though I have lots more to say.  I mean, after this post.

I must note that the last couple days have pushed us over the fundraising goal, with $1025 raised since the September finance report.  That's astonishing.  I originally hoped to get 400 bucks, saw that threshold shattered quickly, then upped the ante to a very aggressive thousand.  You all came through on that, literally fueling the campaign as we drive around our very rural, dispersed district.  You paid for postcards and postage, card stock and printer cartridges, cell phone minutes and blog hosting.

Almost 100 contributions averaging about 36 dollars made this campaign possible.  Sam, Ericka and I thank you humbly for that amazing amount of faith and support.

Not only did we have scores of donors, we also had dozens of volunteers hit the phones and doorsteps.  Mostly friends and family, and also people who up until recently were really complete strangers and now we consider friends.  Between them, we've been able to canvass hundreds and hundreds of homes, call hundreds and hundreds of voters and send hundreds and hundreds of cards and letters.

Thank you so much for the investment of time and energy.  It has put us into a great position to perhaps surprise some people on Tuesday.

I'm not sanguine about our electoral prospects.  The odds are stacked against an obscure stay-at-home-dad who jumps into a race without any party support.  Obviously we need to catch a few breaks in a 5-way race for two seats when there are essentially 3 incumbents on the ballot.

Yet failure is only guaranteed when you don't try.  We all have worked wicked hard had to make success possible.  So we've already won a huge victory, whatever the vote count is next week.

Seriously, I want to win, and we've campaigned to win.  No matter what, though, we're going to party like it's 1999 after the polls close because this was just such a wonderful experience and awesome team effort.  Whether Todd Pritsky is in Montpelier or Fletcher, there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done over the next couple of years, and we will keep plugging away at it all.

All that said, let's remember there a still 4 days left to campaign.  You have time to volunteer and/or donate to help get additional votes.  I appreciate the support we've already gotten so much and would like to ask you to do just one more thing before it's over.  Then we can crash knowing we did all we could and sleep soundly with no regrets.

todd