Meet Dave Cole-- Progressive Congressional Candidate In South Jersey

This week, several of the Blue America candidates were at the PCCC training in Washington. Some of them called me and e-mailed me and told me they were really impressed with a smart young guy we hadn't been writing about, Dave Cole, the progressive who wants to take on Frank LoBiondo. So I called Dave and started the conservation. I can see why everyone is so impressed. He's a software engineer and former technology advisor at the Obama White House. Within a minute of beginning a conversation you can see he's a knowledgeable and committed progressive, motivated by, as he puts it, "a desire to fix our broken economic system, make investments in education and infrastructure, and ensure the middle class dream for working families in South Jersey."

He struck me as a different kind of "tech guy," not a Ro Khanna corporate shill trying to represent the big, gigantically wealthy tech corporations, but a "people's tech guy." Wired, in covering his campaign, mentioned that he had downplayed his experience in the coding world but that his "experience came shining through when Cole released his political platform on the popular software development site GitHub."

GitHub is a place where coders can easily collaborate on a piece of software, and Cole hopes that his constituents will collaborate on his political policies in similar ways. On GitHub, they can readily comment on and even edit his policies. But that’s only a start. Cole’s bigger vision is that all sorts of political work-- from campaigns to the bills proposed by elected officials-- will be handled in a similar fashion.

…Of course, citizens have long had ways of communicating with candidates and politicians. They could write or call or send emails. But the technology that underpins sites like GitHub provides a new way to actually evaluate, track, and integrate public suggestions into policy documents. It’s not just that anyone can instantly suggest changes to Cole’s platform. Each suggestion can also be discussed, in much the same way you can discuss a Facebook status update. Cole can then sift through the suggestions and discussions, automatically incorporating any change he and his staff think is beneficial. GitHub also makes it easy to navigate old versions of documents, making all changes transparent and making it easy to revert to old versions if necessary.

I asked him to write a guest post introducing himself to DWT readers.

A Fresh Start for South Jersey
by Dave Cole

I come from an incredibly beautiful and unique part of New Jersey-- the garden of the garden state. I grew up amidst family farms and endless peach orchards, and we spent our summer weekends down the shore, at family-friendly beaches along the Atlantic.

  South Jersey is where my parents settled down to raise our family. My dad was a union factory worker from Northeast Philadelphia and my mom, a real estate agent-turned-entrepreneur, from the South Jersey suburbs.

From first grade through college, I attended New Jersey's public schools. At an early age, I developed an interest in computers and technology. I have a distinct memory of going to a computer fair at the old race track and picking out an anonymous beige box we affectionately called an IBM Clone. It didn't have internet access or much memory, but it opened me to an entirely new world. I learned science and engineering from educational video games, wrote stories and made posters, and eventually got brave enough to start pulling out the pieces, reassembling them, and writing code. I was having fun, but what I didn't realize at the time was that this experience would open up so many opportunities.

Slightly before this time, when I was just five, my father was laid off from his job. A take over company had come in to trim what it saw as fat at the independent baking factory. My father was singled out most likely because he had the good sense to start up his own non-competing side business making blended flavors as well as the unfortunate courtesy to tell his bosses about it and secure their blessings.

My mother wasn't working at the time, following the birth of my sister, who was still less than a year old. My father doubled down on setting up his new business, and to cut costs, they considered dropping their life insurance policy which would pay off the mortgage in the event of the unthinkable.

The unthinkable happened two months later. My father passed away suddenly due to liver failure. It's at this darkest point in my family's story that I began to see a bright light that would become my guide.

In addition to returning to work, my mother, Patti, went back to school, and took business courses at the local community college. She used the experience to build her own company selling medical equipment. This gave her the resources and flexibility she needed to be there for my sister and me. It would be years before I could fully realize the strength this took, to rise up from losing a partner at such a young age, and with two young children to support. Her strength drives me and shapes my world view.

In college I studied computer engineering, but eventually moved to political science and history, and I looked for ways to use my technical background to help the larger cause of social progress.

I was an early volunteer on President Obama's first campaign, and was honored to join his White House as a founding member of the New Media team and a senior advisor for technology. I served at the White House for half of the first term, building projects like WhiteHouse.gov, including the first-ever online disclosure of White House staff and visitor logs, and the "We the People" petitioning platform. I also worked with other agencies and departments to help them modernize their websites and engagement tools.

After serving in government, I joined a new company called Mapbox, which my team and I grew into a successful small business hiring dozens of new employees and growing even during a difficult economy.

Growing up in South Jersey gave me the education and opportunity I needed to succeed. When I was a kid, a middle class life meant you could get by even when the worst happened. Public schools and higher education were affordable ways to build a better life. But that middle class dream is slipping away for far too many people.

Across New Jersey's 2nd district, 12.8% of our people are unemployed. Many more are adjusting to stagnant or shrinking wages, and less hours on the job. Without any meaningful action on climate change, we remain vulnerable to more powerful super storms like Sandy, and rising sea levels that could swallow the beaches of our childhood memories. People of all ages from our seniors to students are facing mounting costs and little assistance. We're at risk of losing entire generations as that once prosperous middle class lifestyle is slipping away and our youth leave for opportunities elsewhere.

After 20 years of the same excuses and inaction from our Congressman, Frank LoBiondo, we need new ideas and new leadership for South Jersey. At best, Congressman LoBiondo is a fair-weather friend to working families. He plays a moderate on safe issues, but when we really need him, he's nowhere to be found. He's not interested in creating jobs through new investments in infrastructure and education, but instead prefers to support the misplaced priorities of Paul Ryan's austerity budget. He's relentless in opposing common-sense reforms to our healthcare system, to the point of shutting down the entire federal government, only to sheepishly seek to re-open it days after the damage has been done. Our economic system is broken, and to fix it, we need to be bold, not benign.

I'm an engineer with experience growing business in the private sector and modernizing government as a public servant, and I'm running to bring a fresh start to South Jersey. It's time for new ideas to jumpstart our economy, like establishing a National Infrastructure Bank to ensure reliable funding is ready to expand and repair our roads, bridges, railways, schools, and high-speed internet (fiber optic) networks. And it's long past time to take care of our people first by raising the minimum wage out of poverty, renewing unemployment benefits, protecting and expanding social security benefits, and strengthening medicare by giving it the power to negotiate for the best prices on prescription drugs.

We need progress. We can win back our seat in Congress with a bold vision for the future that once again makes South Jersey the perfect place to raise a family. We won't get there with feigned moderation on the Republican or Democratic side. In this election, I face a primary challenger-- a son of a former Congressman-- who has considerable resources and connections, but lacks conviction. While I've had my policy platform publicly available on my website, my primary opponent, a self-described "moderate with conservative leanings," has yet to publish a word about for what or whom he stands. We won't move forward by leaning toward the past.

This is why I'm running for Congress. We're running this campaign on a platform of ideas, not a rolodex of connections. We're even running this campaign in new ways, like inviting public discussion about our ideas, which Wired.com described as, "a glimpse into the future of politics." I'm doing this because I recognize that the best ideas come from collaboration. That's how we build movements. Will you join me in this movement to bring a fresh start for South Jersey? Please sign on at http://ColeForCongress.com.