Back in March, Friends Jour­nal and the Earl­ham School of Reli­gion co-hosted an online dis­cus­sion with six Quak­er can­di­dates for con­gres­sion­al seats. The idea and coor­di­na­tion came from the awe­some Greg Woods. I went to see just how high the 2018 “gray wave” had crested.

Spoil­ers: no wave. Four of the can­di­dates didn’t make it out of the pri­maries and a fifth was run­ning as an inde­pen­dent in a long-shot can­di­da­cy. The one can­di­date to win major-party pri­ma­ry was the awe­some Shaw­na Roberts¹ of Bar­nesville, Ohio. Shawna’s one of the most down-to-earth, real, peo­ple I know and it was a lot of fun to fol­low her cam­paign. Her twit­ter feed has been a hoot:

Last night, at the BPW forum, my oppo­nen­t’s state­ment said his child­hood home “did­n’t even have indoor plumbing.”

Oh, Bill. Indoor plumb­ing’s still pend­ing at our old farm house.
You can’t out-hillbilly me. Unless you eat squir­rel brains. I draw the line at squir­rel brains. pic​.twit​ter​.com/​h​G​M​J​v​Q​8​Yhq

— Shaw­na Roberts (@RobertsOhioD6) Octo­ber 20, 2018

Unfor­tu­nate­ly Shaw­na only got about 30 per­cent of the vote yes­ter­day. This elec­tion was not kind to Democ­rats in rur­al dis­tricts like south­east Ohio’s 6 and she was run­ning against an incum­bent. From my van­tage point 30 per­cent seems pret­ty good, though as my sev­enth grade math teacher used to intone in his weary bari­tone, close only counts in horse­shoes and hand grenades. ² Still, the prospect of a Mrs Roberts Goes to Wash­ing­ton win had me hop­ing against the odds. I’d love to see her con­tin­ue to be involved: 2020 is only two years away.

Stats on everyone’s results are at the updat­ed Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics page. For any­one won­der­ing about Quak­er politi­cians, Paul Buck­ley had a nice overview of our com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship to vot­ing a few years ago.

2018 Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics Web Pan­el (Updat­ed Nov 2018) 

The upcom­ing U.S. Con­gres­sion­al mid-term elec­tions already have at least sev­en Quak­er can­di­dates for office. How does their…

Friends Journal 

1. Yes, I’ve used awe­some twice. Both Greg and Shaw­na are par­tic­u­lar­ly awe­some Friends. Warn­ing: I will use awe­some again in rela­tion to my favorite word sleuth.
2. Yes, it’s an oldy. And of course the awe­some Bar­ry Popik has traced it down (Popik was an essen­tial source track­ing this Quak­er bumper­stick­er).