The following account was told by a general officer in the military. I heard it first hand:
A colonel retired from the military after a full and brilliant career. His wife, who was from a very backwoods, hayseed area of the country, insisted that their retirement home be in the area where she was raised. The colonel had spent two years in remote assignments and several short duration temporary duty assignments
away from his wife. With some fear and trembling he said , " Let's head for the hills!"Retirement in an area where the ZIP code was E-I-E-I-O frustrated the retired colonel to no end. A relative of his wife encouraged him to run for political office. With little reflection, or analysis, he said, "OK, I will." He had been in the area long enough to meet the residency requirement, but lacked any name recognition with the home folks who did not like strangers.
He received some advice from a party hack who said the only way to gain support was to let the locals help him and they would spread the word. The people always helped someone in need, even if it was an outsider.
Several weeks of campaigning came to an end and on election night it was reported an outsider won a landslide vote against a well known and well liked incumbent. When asked by the local paper how he was able to pull off this shocking surprise, the colonel, now county sheriff, said"It was easy. I just ran out of gas 47 times!!!
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