7 Things I Learned From Losing My Election For Political Office

And how I’m feeling right now

Last week at this same time, all bets were open. My phone was ringing 24/7. People I didn’t know were calling me, texting me, and leaving me voice messages. They were stroking my ego, telling me how wonderful, brilliant, and exceptional I was. They were mostly telling me that they were going to vote for me and get others to vote for me too. I was elated.

There was no doubt in their minds that I was going to win. Indeed, I’d thrown all I had at the campaign. I campaigned on social media, on the streets of Geneva, spoke to complete strangers, went to numerous events, and listened to hundreds of people speak about their daily challenges and their deepest fears. I empathized with them, I deeply understood them, I felt like a fish in water, I felt in my place.

And then last Sunday at 11:03 pm, the final results came in and I realized I had lost by only 279 votes! It stung, I’d come so close!

These are the 7 lessons that I have learned post-election day:

1. No one has time for you. Since Sunday, my world has dramatically changed, that phone that kept ringing off the hook for months has turned silent. I sometimes pick it up to see if I mistakenly placed it on silent mode, but I haven’t. There’s a deadly, telling silence. All the new friends I thought I made during the campaign have disappeared. I’ve tried to call some, written to some, and tried to establish contact, but no one seems to have the time. They are all so busy now. You see, it’s lonely to lose. Very lonely.

2. People don’t want to be loss-adjacent. When people are not busy, they send me messages with cliché phrases asking me to rise from my ashes like a phoenix. They talk about always being strong. Most don’t ask me the most basic question: how are you feeling? Again when I try to reach out to these same people to speak, to have a connection, to express vulnerability, to feel our common humanity, they’re all too busy. It seems that they don’t want to be loss-adjacent or talk to someone who lost. That too is hard to reconcile.

3. People can’t ever be trusted when politics is involved. You painfully realize that some people that said they would vote for you didn’t. This is particularly easy to see in Geneva where the granularity of election results, though still anonymous allows one to see exactly in which municipality one had the most support and in which one, one didn’t. I can clearly see where those 279 votes were cruelly lacking.

4. Losing is like the death of a loved one. I was a little bit more prepared for this one because I had anticipated it. An election is actually the final stage of a campaign. When that election is over and you lose, all the energy and excitement literally stops in a heartbeat. At one stage, you were in a Formula 1 car moving at 350 km/h and the next you come to a complete stop. They say that when you lose any election, it feels like when you lose someone. I can confirm that it feels like someone close just died.

5. You’re lost for a bit. I was tempted to think of different scenarios during the campaign. They went a little like this: «So if I don’t win, this is what I’ll do ». I decided to stop thinking that way based on the laws of attraction. You know the one that says you attract what you think of? So for weeks I just thought of myself winning and nothing else. So now, on top of my disappointment of losing – which is hard, I’m also thinking about the future because I simply can’t return to life as it was. I’ve changed and grown over the last few intense weeks. I need to integrate those learnings into my life, I can’t carry on as if nothing happened.

6. The pressure to re-commit is real. When people write to you, they immediately ask if you’re going to run again for office in the future. What they don’t realize is that that isn’t always a decision you can take a few hours after losing. In my case, I’m 52. The next election is in 5 years. Will I have the same energy and drive to run a campaign at 57 or more importantly, do I want to be in that highly-stressful environment at that age instead of taking my writing to the next level for example?

7. Beware of profiteers. And then there are those people who reach out to you with claims that they did a lot to get you elected and so you owe them a favor. And so over the last few days, I’ve received a number of requests asking me to provide a donation to an association or find a job for someone. Already during the election, people that I thought were friends sometimes even overcharged their goods and services when I asked for help. Post-campaign, there are still some trying to profit. It’s hard to reconcile this too.

In conclusion, I would add that losing is hard, but it’s how I’m going to let this loss help me grow that will be important at the end of the day. I still have 6650 people who voted for me in Geneva, and that means something, it really does. Their vote means that they trusted me to bring about a favorable change in their lives. I will not let them down. Even though I wasn’t elected, 10 other people from the movement were, and we will bring about the changes we promised. I will be working in the background.

When I announced that I was running for office in October 2022, one of my key reasons was the lack of diversity within the Geneva parliament. The good news is that 3 afro descendants were elected into parliament on Sunday’s elections. For me, that is a big victory in and of itself.

To get over my personal disappointment of not being elected, I’ve found that the best thing is to focus and connect with the people that truly love me: my family and true friends. Just before the election, I reconnected with an old friend of mine who like me shares a passion for writing. We had a conversation amongst other things about writing and that immediately made me feel better. So, you see, writing will always come to my rescue. I know for a fact that it is one election I will never lose.

Thank you for having voted for me in your heart wherever in the world you may be.

Thank you for reading my perspective.

P.S. If you’re based in Geneva, Switzerland, please vote for Pierre Maudet for the Conseil d’Etat on April 30, 2023. Thank you.