#Underdogs November 18

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Today’s contribution to the 30-Day Election Trivia Coach4aday Challenge is on political UNDERDOGS.

Our country is infatuated with success stories that involve overcoming perceived insurmountable odds to come out on top. The world of entertainment, sports, business, and politics is full of fabulous stories.

For this post I am going to focus on one such election story but provide some links to many others.

Political Success Stories

Often times I am able to gather information for my daily posts from podcasts. That is the case for today. Apple Podcast has a great series called “Elected Officials of America-Underdog Stories“. This 41-part series is hosted by James Spadola.

Some good ones include:

A show on Mike Ramone-who lost 4 times but never surrendered his dream.

Paulette Jordan who attempted to become the first Native American to be elected a Govenor.

Jewll Jones-elected to Michigan State Legislature at age 21.

Wilmot Collins Story

My biased opinion on best political underdog story goes to a man that I have personally met. It is the political success of Wilmot Collins being elected Mayor of Helena MT. Thanks to one of my former basketball players Kelly Lampkin who is one of his good friends my wife and I met Mayor Collins in August.

Wilmot is a refugee from Liberia who defeated a 4-time incumbent to become Mayor of Helena MT. He also happens to be the first mayor of any city in Montana who is black. Meeting him you understand how he overcame what many would deem an impossible feat. He is genuine and authentic. Montana is one of the whitest states in the country, with African Americans representing 0.4 per cent of the population. Yet he overcame what many pundits would say could not be done.

What I love about Wilmot’s success story is RACE was not the reason he won or lost. The special thing is his character and the ability to connect with his constituents on important quality of life concerns. That was the reason an underdog won. It would be great if ever elections gave us candidates who had the ability to do that.

His election was so mind boggling The Daily Show with Trevor Noah did a feature on Wilmot.