Wimp or Shrimp?

I am very, very worried.

If Chick Heileson, running for the U.S. Representative seat currently held by Mike Simpson, did one simple little thing, he might win my vote.

I just read his biography earlier today, and am now fixated on this:

He later owned and operated an indoor swimming pool and recreation area east of Idaho Falls.

That could only be the swimming pool, waterslide and miniature golf course at Panorama Hill. How many times did we take the trip as kids to that wonderful place, go swim, go down that slide and then go to the snack bar to eat honey-butter bread and play video games while waiting for Mom and Dad to show up to bring us home? A rhetorical question, obviously.

Re-open the pool complex, Mr. Heileson, and I’m your man. Never mind that he wants to shut down the Department of Energy, for whom I work indirectly. I want back my childhood swimming pool.

Then I have to ask myself: Is that what it takes to get a vote and, possibly, a position in the U.S. House of Representatives? I don’t really know any of the man’s views aside from the fact he’s committed to Family with a big F, grew up in Iona and owns a collection of blue suits and red ties. Yet I’m considering writing a letter to him and asking him to re-open that pool and thus earn my vote.

Then I have to ask myself another question: What am I getting out of voting for his opponent, other than a vaguely fuzzy feeling that voting for him is in line with what Esquire magazine – where I always go for my Idaho political news – thinks of the man?

I think I’ll go back to my original voting strategy, which is to vote for the guy with the most amusing name. Chick Heileson wins again.