I remember picking up my first campaign check from the P.O. box I had rented. I knew the name: a gruff older man in the community who had stopped me at a social function to ask if I was indeed running for office. Now I held his writing in my hands, a small bid for support in a realm I had very little experience in.

There's energy in that exchange, whether we like it or not.

I was a relatively normal person who decided to run for office. While my career path has been littered with random detours, I had been steadily homing in on the idea that I liked to tell stories, particularly others'. My undergraduate degree is in journalism, but I always leaned toward more human-interest work. I once freelanced with a political journalist I still admire and helped cover an election season, but chasing down politicians and their stories was not my favorite work.

After I got elected, that journalist kindly said they were surprised I had run for office. I told them it surprised me too.

Through telling stories, I had spent enough time in my town getting to know different people, some in the political world. So when a city councilor asked me if I wanted to run, it sounded like the next weird chapter.

I knew running a campaign cost money, and I discussed the risk with my husband. Could I raise money? Would I use savings? Was any of this actually smart?

Then checks started arriving, most under a hundred dollars, with one or two big-ticket donors of a few hundred or a thousand. It was strange to have trust translated into money. A paycheck feels different. You do the work; they pay. This money expressed hope in who someone thought I was and what they thought I might do.

All told, I raised about $11,000.

I didn't have a ton of expenses. Unlike opponents, I did not want my mug on billboards and figured the city didn't need that either. My most expensive purchase was a stilted political commercial. The awkwardness was entirely mine, not the videographers'. I wasn't used to being the story.

After I won, I used the remaining money for three things. I paid my campaign manager, a fairy godmother type who had swooped in to save the campaign. I paid my treasurer, a high school friend who took my small check with relief; it would help buy her kids Christmas presents.

I wrote the last check, down to the cents, to a charitable nonprofit in my district to cover a community event. It all zeroed out, and I closed the campaign account.

Then I got some calls.

The callers said they would buy my campaign debt. Since my honesty is both my strength and weakness, I told them I didn't have any.

There was that energy again. However, it was the first time I felt a grossness settle in from where I was. No one said what the money would buy. That's almost the point. Nobody had to.

I think about that when I read campaign finance reports, particularly when money flows from an industry toward someone who may soon have power over that industry's future. The defense is often that money won't influence the decision, and I believe that's entirely possible. I've taken campaign contributions and later disagreed with people who gave them to me. A check is not a contract.

But I don't believe it is nothing, either.

Money carries something with it. Sometimes it's trust. Sometimes it's hope. Sometimes it's access, gratitude, or the expectation that when the phone rings, somebody will answer. And sometimes the person receiving it has no idea what the person giving it believes they have purchased.

That's why those calls bothered me so much.

I think we spend too much time asking whether campaign money buys a vote, because that's the easiest version of the question. Most of us know corruption when someone slides an envelope across a table and names a price. A harder question is what happens when no price is named at all.

I go back to holding that first check and feeling like someone had placed a little bit of faith in my hands. That was the energy of the exchange. But I've learned to pay attention when the energy feels different, because it's then when the story changes.

Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at [email protected]. To learn more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Nathan Dumlao at Unsplash