David Blair Entrepreneur and Political Activist

Published: Dec. 20, 2018, 11:03 p.m.

b'David Blair, Entrepreneur and Political Activist, on his experience running for political office for the first time ~\\n\\n"It\'s an incredible experience. It\'s a life changing experience and the amount of gratitude that I feel for having been through that process, no regrets with running. It was that phenomenal...It was the hardest thing I\'ve done. I ran a public company for 15 years and I thought that was hard. . .."\\n\\nDavid Blair, Entrepreneur and Political Activist, and host Andy Ockershausen in studio interview\\n\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tThis is Andy Ockershausen and this is Our Town. And I am so delighted to welcome a young man to Our Town, who I met on cold morning for breakfast at a place in Bethesda, and welcome to Our Town, David Blair.\\nDavid Blair:\\tThank you Andy, it\'s great to be here.\\nDavid Blair\'s Experience Running for County Executive\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tIt was such a great morning \'cause Doro Koch and Eric Shuster, Eric said "you gotta come and meet David Blair". I didn\'t know you from the man in the moon, and Doro called and said you gotta do it and her sister in law, and we met for breakfast and they announced to me that you were planning to run for Montgomery County Executive. And I was impressed.\\nDavid Blair:\\tThat\'s right. I remember that breakfast well.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tAnd you did.\\nDavid Blair:\\tYeah.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tAnd you couldn\'t have had a better supporter than Doro Koch and Eric Shuster.\\nDavid Blair:\\tMm-hmm (affirmative).\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\t\'Course it didn\'t help you win the seat. Or win a position, but you must have had a wonderful time, David.\\nDavid Blair:\\tIt\'s an incredible experience. So it\'s a life changing experience and the amount of gratitude that I feel for having been through that process, no regrets with running. It was that phenomenal.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tWell for no other reason than just in the race, that politicians deserve a lot of credit. I don\'t wanna, it\'s bigger than credit, but they really throw their lives into it. It\'s not a causal job. It\'s full time.\\nDavid Blair:\\tIt was the hardest thing I\'ve done. So I ran a public company for 15 years and I thought that was hard and we used to say oh wow, we have to work for a week on this project or we have to pull an all nighter. Running for office was up early, 7 a.m., home you know 9 or 10 o\'clock and then it was seven days a week. And so one of the challenges was you never got a chance to exhale. Like you would look at your calendar at like 10 o\'clock the night before the next day and you just went all day. It was an extremely hard thing to do.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tBut you were managed, \'cause you have to do that. Before we get to your political career, I\'d like to talk about the early David Blair.\\nDavid Blair:\\tSure.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tAre you a native of Montgomery County?\\nBlair is Lifelong Resident of Montgomery County, MD - It\'s in His Blood\\nDavid Blair:\\tI am. Born and raised here.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tAnd where\'d you go to high school?\\nDavid Blair:\\tSo I was born in Silver Spring. Most of my life I was in Darnestown, as a kid growing up and went to the Darnestown elementary school and there was a middle school out there and I ended up going to high school at Bullis which is in Potomac.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tYeah, great school.\\nDavid Blair:\\tYeah, it was.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tIt used to be in the city years ago, but that was before your time.\\nDavid Blair:\\tThat\'s right.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tBut Bullis is a fine school and a lot of great graduates of Bullis that went to college and so forth. And then you decided to stay in Montgomery County. I mean you opened your first business in Montgomery County?\\nDavid Blair:\\tI did. So I went to school at Clemson University in South Carolina.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tOh that\'s right. Oh we gotta hear about Clemson here again.\\nDavid Blair:\\tWell now it\'s easy to talk about them because of the football team.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tWow.\\nFollows His Dad\'s Footsteps'