Mikael Sandstrom is the clear underdog who has a vision for a more pedestrian friendly Sarasota. With no previous political experience Sandstrom would bring an outsider’s perspective to City Hall, but his chances seem slim in a crowded field of qualified candidates.
Candidate for Sarasota City Commission
Scroll down for a transcript of this interview.
Coming soon.
R – Alright, live to the Facebook internet. What’s up Facebook? We are here with our seventh installment of our meet the candidate interview series. We’ve got one more this afternoon, so by the end of the day we’ll have that all wrapped up. If you haven’t seen it already there is a meet the candidate section on the Sarasota Underground website, where you can learn more about all the different candidates and watch the full version of these videos. We’re just going to do the first fifteen minutes live on Facebook, then we’re going to cut and we’re going to continue the conversation here, and you guys are going to have to wait to watch that. So, anyway, our guest today is the executive officer, or an executive officer of his parents’ company; Sweden Trade Inc., which operates Olivia boutique on St. Armand’s circle, he is one of the youngest candidates on the ticket, and probably has the toughest path to office of all the eight candidates. With a vision of a more pedestrian friendly Sarasota, Mikael is excited to bring an outsiders perspective to City Hall and hopes to bring practical approach back to City Politics, so welcome to the studios, how are you doing?
C – Great! Thank you for having me. It’s wonderful to be here.
R – Let’s just start where we’ve started with all of these. Why do this? Why get into city politics? Why throw your name in the hat for something like this?
C – Well I’ve always enjoyed political discourse, I’ve always enjoyed thinking about how to improve society, how to move technology forward, and I think looking at how the county is all one affiliation, and the city happens to be another affiliation, it seems like there is no cartilage between the two bones. There’s no cooperation, there’s no fresh perspective. I hope to encourage other people to get involved in the community, maybe the next city commissioner election, we’ll have a more young – a larger selection of younger candidates and it’s important to really be active, and you have to start somewhere. Everyone starts somewhere, but I have to throw out a name because I respect this guy more than a lot of other candidates that I’ve previously seen on a ticket, and his name is Robert Neff, and he ran as city charter as a green party member and got twelve thousand votes, and that kind of motivated me to put my name on a ticket. I’ve always pondered the idea, hey it would be kind of fun to run for office, because you can talk about issues and be a platform, so given the circumstance, I decided to run.
R – So let’s talk about some of that connectivity between the county and the city. The city commission and the county commission are not on the same page. You talked about; theres no cartilage between the joint. We’ve all the different candidates specifically what they would do as a city commissioner to increase that communication. How do you do that?
C – I think that given my background working with a lot of republicans, and studying with a lot of democrats, as well as studying with democrats in Sweden, left thinking people in Sweden and working with a lot of libertarians, I feel like I actually can develop the discourse between the other city members that happen to be democratic, and the county is republican. I believe that I can – and when I talked about discourse, that’s the key. I think that to many times you have these – you have two political parties, that don’t want to give the other party any breathing room, and so if there’s a good idea, such as pedestrian safety, or perhaps switching some of the city municipalities, solar, Arlington can be heated by solar, a lot of these ideas I feel like won’t be pushed forward because the democrats won’t listen to a Republican, and a Republican won’t listen to a Democrat, so you need an independent in there that has a fresh perspective.
R – Yeah, that brings up an interesting point that we haven’t talked about in any of these interviews, and that is the party affiliation inside of politics which is typically less of an issue in local politics because you don’t get those big ticket decisive issues that sometimes split us at a larger level, but that doesn’t mean that those ideologies are removed, right? When you start getting into those small chambers and so how do you deal with some of that on a local level?
C – Well you know one of the things even I just – even though my campaigns only been about a week, or a week and a half, I’ve met with democrats and I’ve met with republicans and both of them have actually reached to me, they’ve called me and they’ve communicated with me about things they like about my campaign, and a lot of them want to recruit me. They want me to join their party. So I think as an independent there’s a desire for these independents in City Hall, as we’re rather – at some of these citizens that are independent, not everyone is thinking Republican or Democrat in this linear thinking, we need to be more abstract. We need to being forward think – technology forward thinking, and I think the more demand that the people have for this type of thinking, the more likely it’s going to be in office, and I know that I have – I’m challenge – the challenge for me being a very young candidate and my first time running for political office, however that I motivate others in – other candidates for instance, whoever wins this should be listening to some of the other candidates, because this is a community.
R – I agree. Let’s talk about some of those hurtles, right now. You don’t have the name recognition that some of the candidates do but you bring kind of a new perspective to some of this. What do you feel makes you qualified to be a city commissioner?
C – One of the things that I believe is how much I will sit down and have a discussion with someone. Even if at first it becomes, you know, conflicted, you have an opinion, I have opinion, and there’s no solution because they stop at that. No one – we want to advance past the point of just bickering, and I feel like my qualifications come from my political science studying in Sweden and as well as my background as a growing up in a small business I have the understanding of business as well as kind of the respect for some of the ideas that I have gotten from speaking to some, you know, progressive and libertarians. Such as solar; the city should be solar, and some of that cost is a concern for republicans and the democrats, they like it because over long term it saves a cost. So I think there is some connection that two parties can make, two ideologies that can come together. Pedestrian safety, it’s a no brainer and so the qualifications come from within, it comes that I’m kind to one another, I’m kind to one I’m having a discussion with, I sit down long enough to find a common ground, I love this city, and I think with those two things, people will trust me.
R – Where is your support coming from in this race? Because you have lots of hurtles to overcome in lots of different spectrums right? Fundraising, you were one of the last candidates so the other’s kind of got a head start, so just talk to me a little bit about where you’re support is coming from, and how you plan to get to office.
C – My support comes from a lot of my friends, it comes from people I’ve talked with, it comes from progressives, it comes from libertarians, I’ve spoken with – actually I don’t just narrow my thinking in terms of; I’m only going to cater to this type of ideology. I actually find value in everyone’s opinions and so a lot of the service industry has spoken to me. One of the main issues they have is the sound ordinance on main street and there actually needs to be more vibrant activities, more night life on Main Street and so I believe my support comes from the, you know, truest people in Sarasota, that work every day, they work maybe six days a week, they have one day off, you know, that’s where I believe my support comes from.
R – Let’s talk a little bit about those specific initiatives, noise ordinance being one of them. It seems like Sarasota at some level thinks at some level that that conversation has already been had, and it’s over. Obviously a lot of people in the city think a lot of residents don’t agree with that. And one of the big issues in Sarasota as a whole is how do we retain our youth here. How do we keep them thinking that Sarasota is an attractive city for them to start their careers in, not just come back after they’ve built their lives. So how do you make an impact on that as a city commissioner?
C – I think there needs to be a push for more jobs for us here, and I think that comes from encouraging companies to move here and as well as letting the development be sustainable so that’s it’s not getting in the way of you know, of other people’s rights, you’re not building this big building right in front of someone’s view going over the bay and more or less –
R – Was that a – not to interrupt, but you mentioned it even by name there, so talking about the view interrupting people’s view, I can imagine your referencing the building that’s going up there downtown. Are you not excited about some of the growth?
C – You know I would say I’m slightly indifferent, because on one hand growth is good because you want people to move in here however traffic is so bad that it troubles me that if we overly develop some of the other issues that we need to talk about are not being pushed forward, you know? Such as on Main Street, would they rather spend money on developing buildings or could they spend money on a pedestrian overpass going from Main Street to Bay front? They’re actually spending eight hundred thousand dollars, four hundred thousand from penny tax, and four hundred thousand to build a round-a-bout on Ringling and pine place, if you Google Sarasota fatality hit and run, it will shock you. So, there needs to be a serious discussion about safer conditions for pedestrians, more vibrant downtown, a respect for one another and I think once you implement these ideas, if you make Sarasota solar and we really – and I believe in philanthropists, I believe there is a cost of that, I believe someone will come in there and donate to build it, maybe even a small scale, and the youth will see it –
R – But is that a little naïve to think that – I agree a solar city seems like a cool idea, is it something that’s viable as a campaign position – are there other things that should be taken more precedent in the conversation that we’re having, either today and as a city commissioner as a whole?
C – Oh absolutely, however I would like to use that issue as a platform to discuss solar, because for instance I spoke with the police chief and she’s open to having a solar panel over the roof and she wanted to talk to an engineer to see if she could put one on the roof. So I think small scale – this is a good thing and I spoke with one person and there main concern was cost, well, I happen to believe in kindness of others, and if there is eight people that control half the world wealth, are you telling me that one of those persons is not willing to foot the bill for a solar power golf carts at bobby jones save the city some electricity cost, and that would go a long way for their publicity, and I truly believe that.
R – But that’s where – that’s why I say idealistic, because that’s not how the world works, right? Nobodies just going to – some billionaire isn’t going to walk by Sarasota and open his pocket and drop a bunch of cash to pay for all these like pie in the sky ideas. What I’d really like to get a handle on and maybe we kind of shift gears here to do this is, what is your plan for tackling some of those changes? You come into city commission let’s say day one, what do you do to start making impacts on any of that stuff?
C – One thing I believe that is an important thing to distinguish is the homeless situation, and I believe that if the homeless were able to vote they probably would have the problem solved a lot faster. However they don’t have a home, and a lot of them have mental problems, a lot of them have drug problems. They have a right to exist; they have a right to occupy a public space. If I went right now with this suit and fell asleep on a park bench at five points park and – how long would it take for someone to remove me, however if I dressed in clothing that no one liked visually, it’d probably be a lot faster. I think there needs to be an encouragement that the city officials and county commissioners, we need to encourage some of these homeless to go to the programs that are available for them, you know? I think the more that we talk about that, the more we continue that discourse amongst everything; I think the problem will actually solve itself.
R – Yeah. Where we at are on time for this Facebook clip because we had to restart. We have a couple more minutes. So a couple questions before we drop on the Facebook feed here, tell me growing up, living in Sarasota at some level obviously you have experience outside but you’ve spent a good amount of time here in Sarasota, what has been the biggest change to the area over that time?
C – I’ve been here for thirty years, I moved here when I was three years old, I went to school here, I went to High School at Sarasota High, the largest thing I’ve seen is growth, and I’ve seen growth in the young community, I remember looking at statistics that had the youth – it was troubling, it was a very small statistic, however one to fifty is about half the population so I’ve seen more people kind of bracing Sarasota, you see growth obviously, so I have friends that have been here since the seventies, they told me about the two lane road on 41,so this city has grown tremendously, this city used to be called the hidden city, it used to be kind of a small tucked in city on the west coast of Florida that a lot of New Yorkers came to escape the cold weather and that’s always been a thing that’s always been a marquee issue of Sarasota and so I just seeing the same thing is just kind of grown in scale, but Sarasota still has it’s beautiful qualities.
R – Yeah. How do we – because you’re obviously a step in the right direction if we’re talking about young people involved you know we have a couple young candidates that are running for city commission and we’re starting to see – we’re one of the things that are happening In this town, but there’s a lot of other big things happening in this town that kind of give me a little bit of hope in – that we’re moving in the right direction, that there’s potential to move in the right direction. How do you think we can speed up that process? I think some of the voters statistics, more people over the age of ninety then under the age of thirty based on the voter demographic showed up to vote in the last city election. How do we change that?
C – You know one thing I did notice, I didn’t know about Sarasota Underground until the election, and then that came forward, and I hope that one – when other people see that I’ve decided to run and I’ve never run for political office before, other people say you know what I like that. I like the concept of a younger person running, then the more we get involved, the more Sarasota Underground talks to people, the more other organizations bring in youth, the more that we actually open ourselves, because these past elections have been so decisive, and are just at each other’s throats and I think it’s about time that we drop this whole notion that it’s like everyone – it’s either you – you’re either with me or against me, and I really feel the youth needs to come together in terms of Sarasota, federal and state is different, but Sarasota is something that I really feel the younger people want to be involved but it’s just disheartening that this thing is going on at a state and federal level and they believe that it transcends to the local chapters, and that’s not true. Locally is completely different.
R – Well and this is where you have an opportunity to make a real difference, this is the level at which your vote really makes a heavy impact, especially when you’re talking about city commission races that are decided by a couple hundred votes, thirty five hundred registered voters under the age of thirty, only one hundred and fifty show up to vote. You have something like seventeen percent voter turnout in the last three city elections and so you really see a lack of voter participation, and a large amount of apathy in our age demographic for some of this stuff, and that’s kind of the hope for these videos. Is there anywhere people can go to get information?
C – They can go to my Facebook page, Sandstrom just type that in on the search page or they can call me 9413204056, and I’ll have a discussion with anybody over any topic that they’re really – drives them, and I think one thing that really is a hidden gem in this entire election, even though the field is large and there’s two candidates under forty, we can look at the voter turnout after, and it’s gone up that will be a positive thing, it will instill a lot of trust in our political system and that’s the positive thing. One of my main goals that I had in this election was connecting with people more, and I’ve done that in the past week more than I can think of, it’s fantastic to be meeting new people, and I think that’s actually going to encourage young people to vote. So if people want to get a hold of me, you can address any issue that drives you.
R – That’s basically our exact same goal. We have no stake in this race, we have no horse in the race if you will, what we do want to see is we want to see that needle move. We want to see that seventeen, eighteen, nineteen percent be thirty, thirty five, forty, can we eventually get to a fifty percent number. Will we make that kind of impact on this election? Will you guys turn out to vote? It’s yet to be seen. If you’d like to learn more, we’re having a town hall eent febuary 15th, you can learn all about that at Sarasota Underground dot come, we’re going to continue here with Mikael.
C – Thank you for tuning into watch me.
C – But really, look at the numbers. If they go up –
R – It’s unreal, what we could do in this town, that’s the thing that really bothers me the most, is that the people that say we can’t do things, or , this sound ordinance – it’s all a non-issue. If we show up with another couple thousand people, it’s over.
C – Well I hope to be a beacon of this, I know – I’ve talked to people. No one will answer the first time. Very difficult; I mean I’m running to win, but I’m looking at things from a very positive perspective. My dad actually wrote a bestselling book in Sweden talking about you come what you, you believe, if you put it in your head and say we will accomplish this, nothing is going to stop us, right now it’s too many older generations that are kind of dictating how we should operate on a younger perspective.
R – Yeah, and that’s something that we have at our disposal with this technology with these tools and the ability to interconnect, if our demographic and our generation isn’t going to do that and lead that change, then what; Because we’re disrupting everything else.
C – It’s absolutely a, you know, mind boggling why as a society our youth has not come in stronger, you know, in terms of technology forward thinking. I call it that because a lot of these issues we need to seriously take a look not five years, but twenty, thirty years in the future and that’s one of the reasons I brought up solar, because I believe bobby jones for instance – they charge their golf carts every day, why would they not have a solar panel on that roof to charge them all? It would pay for itself, just small things like that. And maybe that’s not going to happen in five years, but maybe ten. Hopefully it will within the short term, but it’s about getting the message out there.
R – Sarasota as a city is a fairly fractured, conversation we’ve been having with all different candidates, it’s just different parts of the city, and it’s not like you might think. A lot of people think city and they think its just that downtown core, they don’t understand that if goes all the way to the airport, it goes all the way down to north siesta key, it covers part of long boat, it comes to mid town, it covers that north trail, it covers a big swath of – how do we get people on the same page? Because so often what happens in these local politics a candidate comes out and they’re backed by their Home Owners association or their specific group, and they have invested interests of that little group, but you’re representing the entire city, so how do you get the rest of the city to buy in?
C – You have small interest groups that you talked about that are small, in comparison to the people that don’t vote, or in comparison to people that are disenfranchised, the people that don’t aren’t members of certain interests groups, they just go to work, they don’t have time for it. I think if we could get them to go out and vote, them to be active, some of these small interests groups will be just that, you wont have one group dictating who they feel should be appointed – and I think it’s just disheartening from my political science background and studying – I’ve talked with people that are near anarchist libertarians, and I’ve talked to people that are Marxist, and I think there’s actually some common ground and it’s not good to be extreme, it’s not good. You won’t get any productivity done, it won’t happen. There needs to be a moderate look and libertarians, progressives, and democrats and liberals all types of ideologies, we ought to get together and really hammer out – there’s a certain term called chains of equivalence and that means for instance, let’s say you are for higher taxes and another person is for lower taxes, but you both agree that drug laws should be reformed so that a victimless crime is not punished. You set aside that different ideology, set aside that and unify together, there’s too much resistance because they don’t want to give the other party credit, and that’s the problem, we have to drop that notion of credit, that party’s going to get the credit, this party’s going to get the credit. End that; that’s why I think running as a no party affiliate is important because people will see that I actually do care about the city. I care about the issues of the city and I don’t think in terms of, you know, left or right I tend to think on a higher level.
R – If you had a magic wand, and you could just instantly change one thing about Sarasota what would that be?
C – Well I’ve already talked about solar, but I think one of the things I would find to be fantastic would be when you’re driving down 41, there is a safe crosswalk going over from the hospital, there’s another right by south side elementary, because kids – it’s just convoluted when it comes to the school ending, another one by MLK and 41, safe crosswalk and the main one featuring right on the end of main street going to the bay front, beautiful Sarasota, because it’d actually encourage people to go out and walk. How many times have you seen somebody – I have a friend of mine that would love to walk to work, but she’s afraid to cross 41, so if I had a magic wand, I’d beautify Sarasota, so it has it’s pedestrian friendly environment, and maybe even seriously consider parts of main street walk only at certain times –
R – Explain that.
C – Explain?
R – Explain – well you said maybe shut down parts of main street.
C – Oh no not shut down, I mean invite friendly walking environments. Main Street becomes so crowded with driving that sometimes it’s scary to walk around the corner; you don’t know how fast somebody is going. So a little bit more understand and a better perspective on how we can make driving safe for getting to your location, however also have the concepts of pedestrians, because when you go to – I was born in Holmstock, Sweden, and the center of town is pedestrian. There’s actually a section of town that you just walk on, and like I said if I had a magic wand, I would’ve re-done Main Street and done a beautiful walk way, now its kind of convoluted because of the traffic patterns, but with a magic wand I would’ve made that same type of environment that you can walk to main street, you park and then it’s just beautiful. If you ever see any of these communities it’s very beautiful.
R – Affordable housing and retaining our youth, we talked a little bit about that on the earlier segment but specifically to affordable housing. Affordable housing is not just something that’s effecting our youth, the SYP did a survey last week and something like seventy seven percent of people have considered, or are currently considering leaving Sarasota due to the cost of affordable housing, and again I throw the caveat it’s not just effecting young professionals its effect everyone in Sarasota, and it’s a difficult topic, because you have market conditions you have prices of real-estate, you have lots of things that are leading to this problem but how do you address that from a city commission stand point?
C – It’s starts with having a serious discussion with the real-estate developers, and if I get elected I’m friends with – and I have communicated with one of the previous candidates and he was for affordable housing, and I would reach out to some of the people that have intensively studied affordable housing most of their adult life, and I think that’s the key thing. As a city commissioner you represent the people, and it’s okay to say you know what I want to reach out – it’s not going to cost anything, all it takes is a phone call, all it takes is just to open your eyes and open your ears and see what’s going on and listen to people.
R – Yeah but it takes that to get a phone call with somebody about potential having a discussion about affordable housing, but no offense we could have all the conversations about affordable housing until we’re blue in the face and that may not actually get us anywhere, so how do we actually make progress on that?
C – Well we’ve got to leap over that notion that it’s republicans versus democrats, we have to leap over that, once you leap over that, certain things can come. One idea that I had that I don’t understand why it hasn’t been housing right now, and there’s obviously plans to change it, however the old Scotties building in the Ringling, that should automatically be housing, I don’t know why there isn’t housing already. You would have a beautiful view over Payne park and it could be affordable, and it just takes – it’s a very difficult situation, because like you said, there’s a real-estate that challenges because you can’t have affordable housing in – on long boat key, there is expensive homes there.
R – But you could basically say that about anywhere in Sarasota, because Sarasota is literally a block from the water, the whole city is really close to the water, and it’s a beautiful place, and so cities like Sarasota are not typically affordable to live in, nobody ever runs to New York and say they’re going to pursue their dream doing this, and they hope they can find a cheap place to live, they’re going to go there and do whatever it takes to live there.
C – They say in New York you either show up with a lot of money or no money.
R – Yeah, and that’s not to say that this is – we don’t have that draw right? People are not flocking to Sarasota to make their dreams in the music business or whatever it may be and their willing to just pack a house full of roommates and hey we just got it right, started from the bottom now we’re here, but there has to be some level of solution and we’ve tried some in the rosemary right? Because apparently solved this problem because they gave a bunch of density to the developers in rosemary but as we’re seeing now those units are coming online, they’re not affordable there’s going to be a glut of these really expensive apartments in that area, which is great because this is a place where people want to live, but it doesn’t solve the need that we tried to solve and so what I guess I’m looking for is specifics from you if somebody is watching this and they’re thinking; none of these guys have done it on city commission maybe the new guy can do it. How do you help solve that problem?
C – One of these issues when it comes to housing is obviously homeless, they need homes, and I – after – because I talk with as many people as I can –
R – Well are you just going to give them homes?
C – I think there is – if you look at programs such as habitat for humanity, and theres also other programs such as that, they actually build affordable housing –
R – But they build fifteen homes per year that’s not a real solution for young professionals or people looking for solutions for affordable housing.
C – Yeah that’s quite the challenge because you have to have the market answer that and so I think it actually could happen through a lot of discussion, I really do because that’s what it takes, when it becomes this conflicted issue and the county doesn’t want to do it and the city commissioner there’s that odds, it really takes an amount of intense studying, you can’t just answer it with one discussion, because it takes a lot of energy to really get done, it should actually – is conflicted because you have this real-estate market that dictates the price, however you want affordable housing so how do you be able to have the middle ground with the two.
R – Right. What’s your favorite part about living in Sarasota?
C – Probably no snow. No cold weather, because the worst part about my time in the winter of Sweden was when the weather went to freezing, then it went to rain, then it went to freezing, then to rain, then it – it did the five, six times in one night, you wake up and it’s a frozen tundra, so probably the weather, and the people. People in Florida are so awesome, my friends, family, it really comes down to that.
R – As a guy who grew up in Ohio, I know what you’re talking about – nothing worse than slogging in slushy, icy, cold, gross weather.
C – And I remember one time I was walking home really late and there was a guy following me and it didn’t seem like he wanted to be friendly, so I kind of started accelerating faster, and of course, fall over, so that’s not fun if I decide to go for a jog here in Sarasota, I’m not going to fall over.
R – You’re never going to find yourself on a hidden camera slipping on ice. I’ve seen those cameras on Facebook, people just put up a camera right outside of a door and they just watch people bust themselves on black ice.
C – I believe the revolution of social media hadn’t entirely kicked off then.
R – Well I don’t think it’s actually kicked off yet.
C – There’s more to it, it’s a growing industry and that’s one of the things I studied, when I studied political science in Sweden is actually the social media. Obama actually revolutionized the internet whether anyone wants to believe it or not, around the same time he hired the Facebook executive to run his campaign, so ever since that there’s been like a upswing on social media, and I think it’s about time that people start getting actually friendly with social media, and once we get friendly with one another there can be growth, the biggest problem I see with social media is the ability to hide a post or block, because what you’re doing is polarizing yourself –
R – Well there’s no trust in social media, we’re plenty friendly, and we’re plenty noisy, we just don’t trust each other.
C – We need to be kind to one another on social media and we also need to trust one another.
R – That’s very altruistic; you have to build those things into the network. You can’t let humans decide to do that or not, because when no one is watching the human is going to take the easy route to whatever is going to be more beneficial for them, so unless you bake this stuff into the system, unless you bake this stuff into the infrastructure you’re just not going to get it naturally.
C – Another call of mine is actually show the community that I care because I’m running, hey this guy is running he obviously has some ideas and he cares about the community that’s one thing that will transcend into social media and hopefully we have a lot more young voters turn out from there, we can move forward with society, we can be technology forward, we can be friendly to one another, we don’t have to be bickering like the past fifty sixty years or even more than that.
R – You said something interesting there about turning out, what are you doing specifically to increase that turn out? To appeal specifically to that younger voter, and do you feel that in doing so you may be laying the ground work for future progress in Sarasota, but maybe even hurting yourself because likely they may not be the ones turning out in this election, assuming the tack record stays the same, I don’t expect a massive deviation, I hope we see a little uptick, but how do you reach them and is doing that hurting you?
C – You know, one of my strategies is word of mouth, just talking to people, and talking a lot of – everyone young on social media or just in person, I think that’s what it takes, it takes for us to talk to one another, because we don’t want to be – we want to stop this idea that human interaction is only limited to social media, we need to go out and talk to people. One of the things President Obama said is if you don’t like the way things are then get some petitions, or run for office, so that’s what I happen to be doing and I – I don’t think in terms of oh hes a democrat, who cares what he has to say, or oh he’s a republican who cares what he has to say, there’s a real positive message coming forward after this kind of, really, really dirty election cycle, I think that we need to talk to people and the more friends I talk to, they talk to friends, you know, I’m going to be involved a little bit more with some of the invites that I’ve been invited to, the thing is I’m actually taking them seriously. Word of mouth is powerful. It really is.
R – So word of mouth is great, and positive thoughts are great. How do you overcome the money and name recognition deficit in this race? Like legitimately as a path to becoming a city candidate, like let’s have a real frank conversation, how do you overcome that?
C – I have to be persistent, and pragmatic. So, if I don’t get the money – It’s just sad that money buys politics, so I’m hoping to reverse that, however, I’ve already been approached by multiple people that have been interested in my campaign, that may be wants me to continue being involved in whatever issue drives them, and that’s the goal. No matter what happens at the end of this election cycle, this campaign coming up, at least I have built solid contacts, I’ve developed relationships with people of the community, and from there, there’s a positive to that, and I’m not limiting myself to oh I lost the election, no I met wonderful people, if I win the election that would be fantastic, because I think there would be a fresh perspective in office.
R – So for you it’s kind of a jumping off point into a bigger fray potentially? Is there something that we have not talked about that you would like to bring up, or you wold like to address while we have the cameras up, is there an issue that –
C – One of the things that I’m trying to do is limit my campaign spending because I’m trying – and even though my raising is not going to be as high as the other candidates, I hope to make a good impact on a nonprofit that I’m going to donate at the end. It’s a challenge because you see Facebook ads, you see mailers, and you me when someone sends a mailer it’s here you throw this out, it’s going to go directly to my trash, I might not look at it, and so these candidates are spending all this money on signs, on this and that, just get some business cards, go out and meet somebody, here you go –
R – But that’s what it takes to win right? It can be said that yes whether you agree with it or not whether you want money out of politics or not, to win a campaign – or to run a campaign to win takes a certain level of effort.
C – When I worked on Bob Bars campaign I believe we didn’t even get one percent but our county that we were in, in Georgia got a pretty good percent, I think it was two percent, so I think in terms of – if I get, let’s say, five percent, four, even ten, if I get twenty percent out of running a limited finance campaign, that’s a great message to send up to other people, because then I know how much to spend. I don’t like the concept of blowing money, because the fiscal conservative in me, thinks that look, I need to show other people that I am actually pragmatic when it comes to how I spend and I think it really starts in the campaign because you don’t want to – campaigns just going to blow money and it sends the wrong message to the community and it just turns me off.
R – Is there anything you’d like to know from the other candidates? Like something you’d like me to ask them, or a piece of information you’d like to know about the other candidates?
C – Fred Atkins I have a lot of respect for him, for the community service that he’s had since 1985 I believe, I went to school with his son, I went to school – I was in the same high school as Hagen Brody, even Martin Hyde I kind of respect the way that he’s put himself out there you know in terms of how he wants to – he at least feels what he feels and then he wants to show the community that hey I’m out here, so I respect the fact that they’re entering the race. One question I would have for them is how do we unify county and commission? When you have – let’s say that there’s all democrats on the city and the county, how are they going to get together? How is Martin Hyde going to get along with other candidates? If he’s the one candidate and four other democrats, how are they going to actually get along, how is a county and a city going to get along, and how are the city members themselves going to get along, because that really is a big issue. If you get along, you can get things done, but if you’re griping over this – you have all these democrats and republicans, some of the democrats I’ve met are absolutely fantastic, and some of the republicans I’ve met are absolutely fantastic, but it’s the ideology of not wanting to have progress because you don’t want to throw a bone at the other candidate, so I would ask them how do you overcome that leap. How do you overcome the notion that it’s a *inaudible* that I’m not even dealing with, or it’s a democrat that I’ve been dealing with, we’re all humans we’re all trying to improve Sarasota and I really think there should be common ground.
R – The final question that we’ve been ending all these with is do you have any questions for us, for our audience, for us as an organization, or for anybody who might just be watching this and wanting to get plugged in?
C – What motivated you to start Sarasota Underground? What steps did it take? How did it just go upon I’m going to start this program, this type of radio program, this type of twenty four seven internet news?
R – You know this has been part of stuff I’ve been working on for a while. I started a blog four or five years ago and to be honest as that started growing in popularity and in impact, people in Sarasota – I started comparing it to local media companies saying hey, look we’re competing in exposure, and a lot of them didn’t believe us and didn’t want to give us credibility. So we said okay we’ll build a Sarasota front and so it’s been a long on going conversation that really goes to a lot of issues we’ve been talking about, getting people involved, active, getting people to vote, empower young professionals –
C – So you’ve met some resistance then from a perspective
R – Yeah, well we’ve –
C – So that’s what I’m saying is if you had resistance in terms of credibility and then now you have a town hall meeting, you’re Facebook pages are being shared everywhere, that’s a step, so I think from a bigger perspective it’s a wonderful thing that you guys are doing, to even overcome the notion of Sarasota – some of the older generations are saying this is my town, you can’t take it from me this is my town, well we’re young and we have more energy, and we’re going to take it, and we have respect for every generation, and we have a young perspective, and that’s why I think a lot of the good things you guys are doing – like I said with the two bones, you guys are acting as a cartilage between the two bones. There really is – there are no discussions and I think the future and looking forward as seeing some of the good stuff that you guys are doing.
R – Yeah we can’t say anything other than thank you for the kind words We’re working hard to do that, there’s a reason our slogan is creatively connecting Sarasota. We think Sarasota is amazing, we think it’s all fractured and in segment, we think we if can get people on the same page then we can start making some progress.
C – Exactly it’s like a big puzzle and some people are hording the pieces because they want to be the one to solve the puzzle, and it’s like hey –
R – And it’s not even about that, it’s not about hoarding the pieces because they want to be the one to solve the puzzle, it’s because they don’t know better, because in their mind, they’re doing the things that feel right to make Sarasota the best for them, the problem is they’re looking through this very small tunnel right? They’ve got this tunnel vision, when in reality they just brought the whole scope in you’d see the whole –
C – There are different lenses of viewing things, if you’re homeless view yourself through that lens of people who are homeless. What if they lost their house during the housing crises? Then view yourself from maybe another perspective, and you have a business on the corner and someone is just sitting there, how you get those two on the same page, get them to be kind enough and not just say get out of here. Just be kind to them. That’s a great challenge, and more people that get active, the more that we come together as a community – do you know what the worst punishment thousands of years ago was, it wasn’t prison for life, it was get out, it was being banished, so why is that? It was because the community was strong, and we need that strong community.
R – I think we’ve got a really interesting opportunity to not only connect as a community but to show the world how you bridge this divide between millennial and boomers, and how to create something beautiful out of something seeming insurmountable. Kudos to you for running, it’s a bold move to do, I wish you the best –
C – I encourage anyone that’s watching this to say you know what I like the way he’s thinking, I like him, I encourage you to get more involved in the community, we want to see the town hall meeting packed, that’s something that’s going to really transcend on a larger perspective.
R – Absolutely, once again thank you, this is the end of installment seven, we’ve got one more coming up here in a couple hours, we’re going to be interviewing Matt Sperling as the final candidate, you can watch all of the interviews, learn more about the candidates at Sarasota Underground dot com, and forward slash town hall at the end of that if you want to learn more about the Town Hall Event, otherwise we’ll catch you guys next time. Thanks.
Hagen Brody 
