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Carrick's avatar

I have obvious bias (see name) but I think the version of the campaign as initially conceived did not look /especially/ stupid. People don't realize that the campaign itself was legally prohibited from coordinating with the PAC, meaning we had nothing to do with the external funding, ads, flyers, crypto-connections, etc.

The campaign was someone born and raised poor in rural Oregon--who had lived there 25 years, longer than almost all the other candidates including the eventual winner, not a carpet bag in sight--who left only for law school and largely Oregon-relevant policy work. If you look at our initial ad and early news coverage all of this is clear: (initial ad https://twitter.com/CarrickFlynnOR/status/1488544019802112003, early local coverage https://www.polkio.com/news/carrick-flynn-joins-crowded-democrat-field-of-dist-6-contenders/article_861e4590-b5be-11ec-b8c5-0b6164489699.html) We knew we could fundraise well (we did, we out-fundraised everyone else the traditional way) and we knew I had a strong background--both as a local-boy-made-good and in terms of practical experience in DC with important policy successes. My main weakness was not being especially involved in local politics. Lots of candidates overcome this.

To be clear, we also did not expect to win. We just thought we /might/ win. Our version also failed safe. If we lost, we would have lost a normal, small, local campaign that would not have attracted much coverage at all, let alone negative national-level coverage.

The SBF/crypto/outside money thing was not something that the campaign did, it was something that /happened/ to the campaign. Was our little, humble local campaign ready for that type of hurricane? No, no we were not.

My own analysis was--and is--that I had a low chance of winning either way but the expected value proposition was high. A million-dollar campaign is not terribly expensive and a c+-ongressperson and staff who are scope-sensitive are extremely valuable. (I think ASB's analysis on the EA forum about this was good https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Qi9nnrmjwNbBqWbNT/the-best-usd5-800-i-ve-ever-donated-to-pandemic-prevention.)

I also could be very wrong here, but I think the odds of winning would have been slightly higher without the money storm. While it certainly increased my name recognition, it encouraged the creation and proliferation of nonsense stories. It also created enormous downside risk which was then realized.

Maybe I don't learn lessons, but I sincerely hope others in a similar position to the one I was in will be willing to take the personal risks and throw their hat in the political ring. Even with a low chance of winning and a non-zero chance of some external force sending the sky crashing down on them. I also hope small donors don't draw the wrong lessons from what happened with my campaign and continue to support them.

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Sam's avatar

What I though was so wonderful about the book (and I’m not sure and don’t care whether it was intentional on Lewis’ part) is that the reader walks away with all they really need to know about SFB without being told explicitly by the author that he’s a bad dude.

I concluded that SBF is super annoying, conniving, uncareful, and sloppy. The detailed section about the earlier instance of misplaced millions of dollars was super damning—and amazing foreshadowing. And near the end where Lewis almost offhand mentions that SBF changed the vesting period of an employee bonus only after the value of the coin the bonus was paid in skyrocketed is like evil villain behavior.

I walked away with the impression that SBF committed fraud not in the “I’m going to set up a company to steal people’s money” sort of way but in the “I’m going to take advantage of dumb people betting on coins and be sloppy with their money because I’m super smart and can think my way out of anything ... and I’ll lie and bend the truth to get what I want ... and I don’t really care if I lose it all ... and I’m fully justified in all this because I’m very smart” sort of way.

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