It was actually a difficult decision for me to decide which party to run under. My beliefs don't really fit into Republican or Democrat but are more Libertarian. I knew that in order to have a chance to win, I would have to run as one of the two major parties. The incumbent was a Republican and wasn't very popular. He had run 4 times previously and lost twice. When I decided to run, there weren't any Democratic candidates that were running and no major Democrat players that were even considering it. The district was 52% Republican but it was a presidential election year where traditionally more Democrats show up to vote. This was the first election after the district had been gerrymandered. It just happened that the county I lived in and was well known in had more Democrats and was newly added to the district for this election. My goal was to win my county by the same amount the Democratic candidate in 2008 won it by and do the same as the Democratic candidate did in the other counties in 2008 and 2010. That would have been enough for me to win. With my county being newly added to the district for this election, the incumbent was a complete unknown in my county. With the incumbent being so extreme right wing, I expected him to get very little Democrat votes. My goal was to be more of a moderate, anti establishment candidate and siphon off a few percent of Republican voters. If I ran as a Republican, I would have had to raise a lot of money and become well known between March when I declared and the August primary. If I ran as a Democrat, I thought I could sail through the primary and take more time to establish myself before the November general election. Also, even though I don't fit into either major party, my beliefs are closer to traditional Democratic beliefs (not those of today's Democrat party) and don't really align much with today's Republican Party at all. However, I was a bit naive at how big politics worked and the higher ups in the Democratic Party made sure I wouldn't win. As far as the underwear bomber incident, I blame that more on the intelligence agencies. Looking back, I don't think I could have won running under either party. I was too outspoken during the underwear bomber case. This is what I hinted at above, the people that are really in control have ways of not letting anti corruption candidates into office. Acknowledging this as the truth was the final straw in us leaving the US. We don't believe that real anti corruption candidates can ever win. I'm sure many will disagree with this statement but I don't really want to get into a political argument about it.
As far as being safe, I don't really worry about that. If anyone wanted to kill me it would have been in the time leading up to the underwear bomber trial. I was very worried I would be killed after I was named the sole witness for the defense! By the way, I don't consider what I went through a result of the Democratic Party but a result of uncontrollable intelligence agencies that work for the unelected elite but that is a topic for another discussion.
