Dried off and ready to go: Schweich launches Auditor bid from WashU locker room

It's hard to tell the whole story in one tweet when you're trying to squeeze a tidbit of information and a punchline into 140 characters.  So, let me elaborate a little:

 

I see Tom at the gym almost every morning.  Until yesterday, I didn't know his name or who he was, though.

 

We were standing at the sinks in the locker room, and just to make conversation, he asked me how my summer was going.  I told him my workload isn't really tied to the academic year.  He asked what I do, and I told him that I'm a web developer for the libraries.  He said he'd just hired someone to create a site for his political campaign and had some questions about what the going rate is for that sort of thing.  I asked him what he was running for, and he said "state auditor" and casually mentioned that he'd probably put some photos on the site from the time he spent in Afghanistan as an ambassador during the Bush administration.

 

At this point, my mind was effectively blown.  I couldn't believe I was standing in a locker room talking to a candidate for state auditor and a former special ambassador to Afghanistan.  Working at Wash U is like that: lots of highly credentialed people sprinkled in with ordinary folks like me.  The guy with a locker next to mine is a neurosurgeon.

 

It was all very low key.  Just a conversation between the two of us -- not something sordid and bizarre like a press conference assembled in the sauna.  Still, it was striking enough for me to want to post a "wow, how random is this?" tweet for my friends.  One of my friends is Dave Drebes, who runs MOScout.com and ArchCityChronicle.com.

 

The fact that Tom is now getting calls from the AP because of my little post is an interesting reflection of how the media and citizen "reporting" work these days.

 

The food chain went like this:

 

me -> ACC -> Fired Up Missouri -> AP

 

FWIW, the gym and locker room at Wash U are decidedly un-spa-like.  The Y is way more posh.  Also, Tom Schweich is a Danforth-style Republican, rather than a Bush-style one.