November 9, 2004
YOU GOTTA LOVE THIS
From Santa Anna, California, courtesy of the Associated Press:
Steve Rocco didn't file a candidate statement or mount a campaign for the school board. He's unknown to teachers and the district and only barely known to his neighbors. Nonetheless, the man being called a "mystery candidate" easily beat an opponent who is active, and relatively well known, in the Orange Unified School District. Now all that's left is to find him.
"Absolutely nobody, but nobody has seen this guy," said Paul Pruss, a middle school teacher and the president of the union. "The whole thing is just bizarre."
When I was in college I was fortunate enough to be elected by my peers to the post of student body president. Towards the end of my year-long stint, when it became apparent that I wouldn't being seeking a second term, my friends and I surmised that we get one of our dorm mates--an unassuming engineering student named Christopher Ian Allen, whom nobody knew--elected to succeed me.
Rocco provided little information about himself in his candidate filings. He ignored mail from district officials and the teachers' union during the campaign. When the PTA sent him an invitation to a candidate forum, the letter came back unopened.
Rocco ran for mayor of Santa Ana in 2000 and raised eyebrows then as well. He declined to provide personal information or to discuss the campaign, and showed up at a candidate forum dressed in camouflage and sunglasses. He came in last place, with 12 percent of the vote.
While our plan never fully materialized, we fully believed that we could get Christopher elected without anyone knowing who he was. He would grant no interviews, nor would he show up for any of the debates sponsored by the Campus Election Commission; all the while, we--his behind the scenes campaign manipulators--would write all of his newspaper editorials and statements, as well as recruit and manage a team of volunteers to campaign on his behalf in the days leading up to the election. Our hook for getting this guy elected?... that he was a National Merit Honors student / engineering major who just wanted to make things better!
What might have helped him this time around was that he identified himself as a writer/educator on the ballot, though he offered no proof of those occupations.
"Not knowing anything more, most people voted for the educator/writer over the park ranger," said John Hanna, an attorney who ran successfully against an equally elusive Rocco two years ago for a seat on a local community college district.
No one came to the door Friday at Rocco's home southeast of Los Angeles, where he lives with his bedridden parents. The front gate of the house is adorned with a fading Johnny Cash record album cover and 10 small American flags hang in the yard. Neighbors said they see him occasionally, usually on a bicycle.
I'm now absolutely convinced that we could have gotten Christopher elected!
He is 53 and was born in Italy, according to his voter registration, where he declined to state his party affiliation. The candidate did not respond to media requests for interviews during the campaign and didn't bother with a ballot statement outlining his platform.
Had we succeeded, Christopher would have headed a student government that controlled a multi-million dollar student service fee budget, and that was regularly called upon to appoint student representatives to policy setting committees and commissions across the university's academic and student life landscape, all while earning an annual salary in the neighborhood of $14,000.
If he shows up to the monthly meetings of the district, Rocco will receive $750 per month. But officials are wondering what they will do if he is as scarce in office as he was during the campaign.
He will be one of seven board members in charge of setting policy for a district that has a budget of $230 million and serves nearly 32,000 students at 42 schools in Orange and surrounding cities. The union endorsed Rocco's opponent, Phil Martinez, a park ranger who has three children in the district, is president of the PTA at his kids' school and is active with the Boy Scouts.
Still, Rocco, who has no children and whose job is uncertain, won with nearly 54 percent of the vote.
Posted by Mikal at November 9, 2004 6:08 AM
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