Feb. 20, 2020

By Steve Brawner
© 2020 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Were you watching the New Hampshire presidential primary results Feb. 12? Fort Smith’s Mosemarie “Mosie” Boyd was, because she was on the ballot.

The founding attorney of the True Grit Law Firm collected 32 votes and placed 25th in New Hampshire, then drove all night through a snowstorm to Cleveland and flew to her home state of California to campaign there. She spoke with me Sunday from Fair Oaks, where she attended high school and where her mother has a campaign sign in her yard near that state’s governor’s home.

“She’s very proud that he and his security detail drive by my presidential campaign sign every morning on his way to work,” she said.

Boyd, 50, planned to spend this week campaigning in California before returning to Arkansas. Both states have their primaries March 3. She’ll be one of 18 candidates on the Democratic Party ballot here.

Her message is, “Rebuilding patriotism by uniting Americans around our shared values.” She said too much of today’s politics is dominated by the extremes in both parties, and politicians need to return to the middle. She said New Hampshirites seemed to agree with that message.

Boyd told me that many of the issues being discussed in the Democratic primary are “purely aspirational” and will never make it through the Senate, so she’s focusing on three that would have broader support: the opioid epidemic, school shootings, and paying off the $23 trillion national debt.

This is not Boyd’s first campaign, though she hasn’t won any since being elected to the Student Council in high school. In 2002, she ran for governor of California and collected more than 95,000 votes in the Democratic primary. She founded a political action committee, Madam President, whose goal is to elect a female president. After moving to Arkansas, she volunteered for Hillary Clinton, became active in the local and state Democratic Party, and ran for justice of the peace in 2016 and county judge in 2018.

Boyd is making a serious attempt even if her campaign lacks the funding or recognition of the top-tier candidates. She campaigned in Iowa but realized she couldn’t compete in that state’s caucus system, so she concentrated on New Hampshire, where all it takes to get on the presidential ballot as a Democrat is $1,000. (It’s $2,500 in Arkansas, or $25,000 if you want to run as a Republican.) On Jan. 27, she appeared in a “Lesser Known Candidates” forum televised on C-Span, and then she remained in New Hampshire until the primary.

Voters in that small state take the presidential campaign seriously, and politics is practiced person to person. Boyd touted her candidacy in diners, coffee shops, bookstores – even a toll booth. She said she would walk up to people and say, “Hi, my name’s Mosie. I’m running for president. Would you please consider voting for me?” Then at night she would pound her “True Grit” campaign signs into the snow-covered ground.

“It’s an adventure. Takes true grit, Steven,” she told me.

People were respectful and would give her a chance. When she handed a card to a fellow on his knees who was resupplying the candy at a gas station in the northern town of Franklin, he said, “From Arkansas, right?”

Boyd is only appearing on three state ballots, but she told me she thinks it’s possible for her to win. With a large, divided field, there could be a brokered convention where no one has the required 1,991 delegates on the first ballot. A compromise candidate could emerge at that point, and she thinks it could be her.

That sounded purely aspirational to me. When I told her someone like former nominees Hillary Clinton, Al Gore or John Kerry would be more likely to get the nod in that kind of situation, she replied, “It’s in God’s hands, and we shall see.”

When I asked Boyd what she has learned this campaign, she said, “That I love running for president, and it’s my calling.”

So maybe four years from now, she’ll be introducing herself to voters in New Hampshire again. And why not? In America, you’re not promised you’ll win a presidential campaign. But if you meet the Constitution’s qualifications, and you’re aspirational, you can at least try.