SENECA — As he prepares for his first run for elected office this fall, Democrat Bill Bruehl says he doesn’t have a “stump speech” to give every time he goes out to meet voters. And he doesn’t plan to put one together.
“I don’t have any speeches to give,” Bruehl recently told The Journal. “I want to listen to people. I will go anywhere, and if somebody says, ‘OK, go ahead and talk,’ I’ll say, ‘Tell me what you want; tell me what concerns you,’ and we’ll have a conversation. If people want to shout me down, I’ll say, ‘Come on up here and we’ll talk on the stage.’ I think it’s time for us to listen to one another with respect, and that’s where I am.”
Bruehl, 86, is a retired professor and former department chair of the Theatre Arts Department at Stony Brook University in Long Island, N.Y. He has written about 25 plays in his career and in retirement still spends four to six hours a day working on his latest novel.
He and his wife, Marty, are natives of Pennsylvania and have been married for 62 years. They moved to their home on Lake Keowee in Oconee County about 17 years ago. He said they came down to visit and knew this was the area where they wanted to live because of “the natural beauty of the area.”
“We came down here because it was beautiful, the paradise we’ve been searching for all over this country — this was it,” he said. “We came down on a Friday to visit friends, and on Saturday morning we had a Realtor. Nine months later, they found this house for us. “
Bruehl said he had tried to get other friends to run for public office, but finally decided to run himself to give Democrats like him a choice in elections. He said local party leaders suggested he run for the county council seat in his district. He will face the winner of the June 12 Republican primary between John Elliott and Edda Cammick in the November general election.
“We would go to the polls every year to vote and there weren’t any Democrats — all those slots were empty,” Bruehl said. “Democrats didn’t have Democrats to vote for.”
He plans to spend the next couple of months attending meetings and studying the local issues.
“I intend to go (to council meetings) on a regular basis, watch and listen to the people see how they operate,” he said. “It gives me a chance to go to school and find out what I need to know.”
He said he would like to work to bring people together.
“The basic problem in our country is the division we have, dividing ourselves essentially into two camps that are fighting and generating hatred,” Bruehl said. “I know that’s a national issue. If I can contribute a little to undermining that division and hatred, if I can bring people together, that’s what I’d like to do.”
While he said he knows the chances of a Democrat winning a county council seat in Oconee are “pretty slim,” he is looking forward to the “adventure” of being a candidate.
“I was raised to serve,” he said. “The last time I served the country I was 19 during the Korean War, for three years. Here I am again, and I’m saying, ‘I am going to try to do this.’”
The Journal
Norm Cannada
ncannada@upstatetoday.com | (864) 973-6680
Follow on Twitter @NormCannada
