That Door is Locked, But It Shouldn’t Be

I’m sitting in a local cafe doing some writing for the campaign. In front of me is a glass door to the outside. It’s a side entrance for patrons, used mainly to reach the patio but also for those who are coming from that end of the parking lot.

Today, this door is locked. Which means on over fifteen separate occasions in the last two hours, I’ve seen someone walk up to it and pull the handle—only to discover that they cannot enter this way. Each one of them correctly deduces that the restaurant is in fact open, and they walk around to the main entrance at the front of the building.

The likely reason for this problem is that the person capable of fixing the issue is not one of the people affected by it. And that individual (who is probably the manager) is not paying enough attention to unlock the door.

Institutions of all sizes have locked doors, from the Federal government to your own employer down to this small business. A locked door, in this case, simply a pathway that should be open, but isn’t. Often it is because the person who has the keys isn’t paying attention. They aren’t trying to make it easy for everyone who needs access.

As a candidate, one of my driving principles is to be accessible. If people ask me questions, I try and respond. If they make comments on my Facebook page, I try to reply. I am not going to lock the door.

Speaking of which, last week I released a 45-second campaign video and posted it on Facebook. It was about the recent accusations made against Dr. Anthony Fauci [1]. My message was that we should pursue the truth, but we should not spread rumors.

If you click that link, you’ll see hundreds of comments. Many were personal attacks and horrific insults. But I tried to respond to as many as I could, because I will do everything I can to not lock the door. No matter what people say, I will try to respond. Because to me being a public servant means being accessible to the public.

I’m here for all the people, not just the people who agree with me.

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[1] Dr. Fauci was accused of being connected to animal cruelty in medical experiments. So far this comes from one source that got a lot of the details wrong.