Every campaign has a FAQ page. Most of them are a press release wearing a costume; the questions are softballs the staff wrote so the candidate could hit them. This one’s different in two ways: these are the actual questions people actually ask (and the ones we’d ask a stranger claiming he isn’t a joke), and the answers stay put after election day. Nothing here is a “clarification” waiting to happen.
Got one that isn’t answered here? Send it to the contact page or the newsletter. If it’s a fair question, it gets added, with a real answer, in writing, where you can hold me to it. That’s the whole system.
I’m anti-corruption, anti-making-things-worse, and pro-telling-you-the-truth. That’s the complete list. When I write about corruption and you find yourself putting a specific face on it—any face, any party— that’s you doing the editing, not me.
The problems I care about have outlasted every administration in my lifetime, which is exactly the point: if a criticism of something stops being true when the person involved changes, it was never about the problem.
As of today: zero taken, zero planned. This campaign runs out of my own pocket, on purpose — see the ledger.
If that ever changes — say, enough real support shows up that turning it down would mean turning down an actual chance to compete — it changes in public, first. The policy gets rewritten on this page before a single dollar is accepted. We register with the FEC like the law requires. Every cent lands on the public ledger. And you’ll hear about it directly from me, not from a filing you had to go dig up.
Honestly, if someone with real money ever wants to back this thing, I expect they’ll just say so — and that conversation will happen right out here in the open, same as everything else. You will never learn about this campaign’s money secondhand. That’s the deal.
Four things: honesty even when it’s inconvenient, thinking clearly enough to tell when words don’t match actions, caring that other people are having a hard time, and not making things worse. That’s it. If those sound like a low bar — they are. That’s sort of the point.
Right — I’m a write-in candidate, so my name isn’t printed there. You have to write it in yourself. On your November ballot, find the race for U.S. Representative, District 6, look for the write-in line, and write in Michael Dorland. If there’s a bubble or oval next to that line, fill it in — a write-in name without the filled bubble may not get counted. That last part trips people up, so: write the name and fill the bubble.
Yes — if the candidate filed the paperwork to qualify as an official write-in, which I did. Arizona only counts write-in votes for candidates who’ve formally registered. Votes for unregistered write-ins (your dog, a cartoon character, your preferred chaos) don’t count. Mine do. Write it in correctly and it’s a real, counted vote.
Neither. I’m running with no party affiliation. Not because I think I’m above picking a side, but because I don’t want to owe anyone a vote before I’ve read the bill. If I get something wrong, it’s on me — not a party I was told to follow.
Honestly? Maybe you shouldn’t — read all of them first. I built a whole page pointing you to everyone running so you can compare. If you read every platform and pick someone else, that’s democracy working. I just think honesty and clear thinking shouldn’t be rare enough to count as a campaign pitch, and I’m willing to run on them being the bare minimum.
No — but it’s not solemn about itself, either. The race is real, the filing is real, and the platform is real. The tone is dry because pretending the world isn’t a mess would be dishonest, and honesty is the first thing on the list. So: serious campaign, no pretending. Both at once.
Mostly: tell one person how to write me in. That’s worth more to a campaign like this than money.
We’re deliberately not chasing small donations. Three reasons. One, taking money means federal paperwork we don’t have the staff for, and a pile of $10 donations wouldn’t pay for that staff anyway. Two, honestly? If you’ve got a spare $10 or $20, you should probably keep it, or put it somewhere it does real good, we even keep a list of better places for your money. Three, if someone(s) genuinely wants to fund me, seriously and properly, within the law, we’ll do that right and publish every cent (see “Where does the money go?”).
So: keep your five bucks. Spend your breath instead. Tell a neighbor.
A candidate, his wife (who is smarter than him), and a committee that mostly exists to overrule the candidate’s worse ideas. It looks like a bigger operation than it is. That’s part of the joke. We’re telling you it’s the joke.