For a political candidate, Rick Kunkel has a high degree of self-awareness. You can tell by the way he prefaces his pronouncements about the issues of the day. "I don't want to sound kooky or radical, but ... " he says to introduce his support for universal health insurance. "I don't want to sound strident, but ... " he says as a wind-up to his denunciation of how big, special-interest money finds its way into political campaigns - although not into his.
Even about his candidacy, Kunkel finds the need for a qualifying prologue. "I'm not delusional," he might say, or "I'm not crazy." All of which, of course, only begs the question.
Kunkel is the Green Party candidate in the race for the House of Delegates in the 42nd District, a splotch on the map just above the city's northern line in Baltimore County. He is running for one of three seats against three Democratic candidates and three Republicans. If it helps, think of them as France and Germany and him as Luxembourg. As of last week, his opponents each had raised an average of $55,255 for their campaigns. Kunkel had managed $5,939.
That financial disparity, which undoubtedly will grow wider by Election Day, helps explain why, at the moment, Kunkel is standing in a steady rain on a traffic island at the corner of Charles Street and Towsontowne Boulevard. He is a stick figure, long and thin, in clothes that hang ever more limply the wetter he gets. In each hand, he holds a green cardboard sign, and he constantly raises and lowers them as though sending signals by semaphore. The signs bear his name or a Green Party slogan, such as "Not for Sale" or "Corporations Out of Government." Four Green Party volunteers with similar signs man other parts of the intersection.
If you are in need of an antidote for the cynicism in American electoral politics, a good place to find it is in the electoral long shot. After all, who has more faith in the possibility of democracy than the candidate with the least chance of winning?
That describes Kunkel, and he knows it. "I'm not unrealistic about what this is about. I know I'm a long shot. I'd be a fool to say otherwise."
Kunkel never has run for anything before and never wanted to. He is running now, he says, because he couldn't sleep at night if he didn't. "For me, it's 100 percent idealism combined with 100 percent outrage. I know and feel what's possible, how things could be and should be."
As ardent and expansive as he is on the various issues, he is all too aware of the irony that his campaign is reduced to one of catchwords. He refuses all contributions from corporations, unions and PACs - not that any have been offered - and in no case will he accept a gift of more than $100.
Those constraints severely limit his opportunities to reach the 63,000 voters in the 42nd District. Glossy display ads and big lawn signs would empty the budget. Mass mailings are too expensive. Radio and television spots are unthinkable. So, it's sign-waving.
"I get home from work at 5:30 or 6. At that point, how many meaningful conversations can I have with voters? Ten, if I'm lucky? So, we made the decision of waving signs on street corners. This way, we hit thousands and thousands of pairs of eyes. It's a tactical decision - an unfortunate one."
As the traffic lights change during this afternoon rush hour, Kunkel constantly reorients himself to face passing cars. Most passengers wear stony expressions, but in virtually every group, someone rewards him with a honk, a wave, a smile or a thumbs-up sign. Kunkel registers every such positive reaction. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," he cheers to himself under his breath.
None of it comes naturally to him. "The first five minutes, you feel a little foolish," he says, "but then you get into a groove."
Because Kunkel is running for office, he is by definition a politician. But it is an identification that feels as foreign to him as would "venture capitalist" or "junk bond trader."
Over coffee earlier in the afternoon at Barnes & Noble, he had reflected on the strangeness of this role of candidate. "I'm an introvert by nature," he said. "I get my tank filled by being alone. But here you're out front, speaking in front of an audience, introducing yourself to strangers. I can't deny I get a thrill out of it, but it also runs down my battery."
Until recently, Kunkel says, he considered his work a sufficient expression of his politics - organizing a farmer's cooperative in the Himalayas as a Peace Corps volunteer and serving the homeless and the mentally ill as a social worker. He was catalyzed into electoral politics in 2000, when he heard a speech by Ralph Nader, who was running for president as the Green Party nominee.
Kunkel agreed with the Green Party positions on a range of subjects - universal health insurance, a living wage, campaign finance reform and other trade, labor and environmental issues. It was something Nader said, though, that changed everything for him.
"There was one quote that got me, that stayed with me a couple of days, and then I knew I didn't have a choice," Kunkel recalled. "He said, 'If you don't like the government, become the government.'"
Kunkel, who is married and the father of a daughter in the sixth grade, joined the Greens and volunteered in Nader's campaign, his first one ever. This year, he helped found a Green Party chapter in Baltimore County. In line with the party's increasing activity in electoral politics, he began thinking about a campaign for the General Assembly, preferably for someone else. When no one stepped forward, he agreed to take it on himself, but on one condition. "I always said I didn't want to do this alone. There had to be a core group of people willing to work hard on the campaign."
And so there have been. A group of 25 key supporters and as many as 50 other volunteers helped collect the necessary voter signatures - about 650 - to get his name on the ballot. They have joined him at street corners, designed a Web site, and searched out forums where he could appear. They also helped him weather the crisis of redistricting, when the Maryland Court of Appeal's intervention abruptly moved the 43rd District out from under him and plopped him into the 42nd. He had to acquire 500 more signatures to make up for the ones that the decision rendered useless.
Since then, it has been a steady exercise in sign-waving, some door-to-door canvassing and occasional appearances at generally sparsely attended political forums.
"I never knew what hard work it was going to be," he says. "I read a couple books. They said be prepared not to get much sleep. Be prepared to say goodbye to your family. All that's true. The campaign has been front and center to the detriment of my work and my family. It's been hard."
And humbling. As the rainfall grows heavier, Kunkel walks down a line of cars, offering his leaflets. Few drivers will even make eye contact, let alone roll down the window to accept his material. "It's odd to me that people wouldn't take a flyer, that they wouldn't even want information," he says.
He admits the rejection is degrading, but it's not too degrading. "As a social worker, I'm used to people not liking me, people who are delusional, who think I'm out to steal a million dollars from them. So, when I'm doing this, I think about what's more important, health care for all or being humiliated? When I think about it that way, it's not even a choice."
Just then, a young man in a silver Camry rolls downs his window and with a friendly smile accepts a flyer from Kunkel. "I'll take a look at it," he says, and he seems to mean it. Kunkel is elated. "Every time someone blows their horn or gives a thumbs-up or gives $2 to my campaign, that's a victory. Fires usually start slowly."
It won't be possible to tell how much his fire has spread until Election Day, but already Kunkel's candidacy has managed to activate some who have never involved themselves in electoral politics. They say they've been attracted not only by Kunkel's positions but also by the sense that his candidacy represents an attempt to take back something lost.
"So many people of my generation have been disengaged from the political process," said Peter Owen, 33, a free-lance photographer and one of those most active in Kunkel's campaign. "I can't really blame them. This is the first time I've been involved in the electoral process, except for going into a voting booth."
Kunkel isn't kidding himself. His district has 34,400 registered Democrats, 21,300 Republicans, and 167 Greens. Assuming the typically high 90 percent turnout rate of Green voters, that gives Kunkel a starting point of ... 150 votes.
Needless to say, for a Kunkel victory, Election Day is not going to come down to who can best mobilize his base.
Whatever the outcome, Kunkel says his campaign is proving beneficial to his party in terms of electoral experience and name recognition. "We have eight people running in the state this year. [One for state comptroller, four for the House of Delegates, and three for county commissions.] My hope is that next time it will be 28. This is all about growth."
Should he fail to beat the odds this time, will Kunkel be one of them? Here, for the first time, he is equivocal.
"It's hard, man, it's hard," he says. "I'd be thrilled to death to have other Greens run in the 42nd. Thrilled to death."
The rain has only gotten worse, and his coat has darkened as the water has soaked in. After about an hour and a half, Kunkel calls the troops together to halt the afternoon's campaigning.
As he had insisted earlier, he may be running for office, but he isn't crazy.