Thanks from Jeffrey Starkweather

Dear Friends,

I want to thank everyone who supported and volunteered with Sally and me during this arduous campaign, especially my ever understanding and supportive wife Dee Reid, my daughter and campaign treasurer Emily Tinervin and our entire family, as well as all of the amazing, hardworking and dedicated truth tellers who make up the leadership of the Chatham Coalition and Pittsboro Together. I can’t begin to name all of the individuals who supported us, but they certainly include everyone Sally has already named and many others whom I will not try to enumerate here.

I am extremely proud that Sally and I, with your and the Coalition's help, took the high road and ran on issues and our qualifications to do the job. We avoided personal attacks. And we won all of the local group endorsements, and, more importantly, your trust.

 I was asked at a forum why I was not supporting Mike Cross since I was instrumental in helping him get elected in 2004. I said I would rather answer why I am running. I paraphrased a quote from Robert F. Kennedy when he announced he was running against LBJ in 1968. He said he was not running against any man, but because we are in perilous times, that he believed he had some sound proposals he felt could address the country's problems and, besides, he did not feel he had a choice because he cared so deeply for his country. I said I was running now for essentially the same reasons.

We ran with all of our hearts and, like any athletes vying to win, we left everything we had on the field. For the Starkweather campaign, it was not quite enough.

The last several years of community organizing and public policy advocacy have been an extraordinary journey joined by so many wonderful, caring people like you. I believe another RFK quote fits what we have all accomplished together: "Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events."

What I will do next is yet to be revealed to me but I will treasure every moment of our adventure in attempting to make Chatham a more sustainable, equal, caring, and open community.

Will I ever run for public office again? Will I continue what I have been doing as a full-time community organizer and citizen advocate? At the moment I doubt it, but I am keeping an open mind because so many friends and supporters are asking that of me. One never knows what events may change one's perspective. When Abraham Lincoln lost to Stephen Douglas in the 1858 U.S. Senate race that featured their famous series of debates, Lincoln said, "I am glad I made the late race...It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which I could have had no other way...I believe I made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone." That cause, he vowed, “must not be surrendered at the end of one, or even, one hundred defeats."

Yes, I believe I and everyone connected to the Coalition, Pittsboro Together, our cooperating citizen organizations, friends and allies have made “some marks that will tell for the cause” in speaking honestly during this race and over the last four years on the issues we have consistently put forward as part of our citizens' platforms.

I used to say that I could never be a politician because I would tell the public what I honestly believed. Perhaps I was right, but regardless, I will continue to speak the truth as I see it.

Much love and many thanks,

Jeffrey