Prologue to an Usurpation
On why you should ignore rules committees; understand that I'm not electable; I was a vapid Millennial
Welcome to The LongShot Campaign, a personal diary of Damjan DeNoble (that’s me), about my time on the very unique campaign trail of CT-03, a district in which there has never been a single primary challenger to a sitting incumbent, in the entire history of Connecticut. Where currently we have an 18 term Congresswoman, Rosa DeLauro, who is 82 years old. Where despite having a full raft of viable replacements for the Congresswoman, not a single person on political tree is willing to step up in our district, so I am stepping up to force the issue (of retirement).
In the first few diary entries, I am going to go long. It’s because we have to do a little catch up. I officially announced this campaign on July 15th, 41 days ago, and I had to unofficially launch the week before, around July 08, because, as a rank-file amateur campaigner, I had filed my FEC candidate paperwork not realizing that the filing would trigger a flood of social media bots to announce my entering the race. So, I am going to start the story at around 50 days ago, and work my way up to today. After the first few chapters, things should be less scrunched together. Oh, and I’ll try to provide a “cliffhanger” after each chapter, like the one at the bottom of this entry.
But, having said that, they might not be. I don’t actually want to set down any rules, or anything like that, for what you can expect. I believe that in most things in life—politics, a dance competition, or content creation on TikTok—there are no real rules. There are only rules committees: groups of people who benefit from telling you what you can and can’t do. They exist to protect a system that serves them, not to foster fair play. As a lawyer, I know you can’t always ignore these people, but you have to get around them if you mean to get anything done.
This distinction is crucial, because in this diary I’m going to spend a lot of time talking about the Democratic Party’s own “rules committee” and my efforts to bypass them (looking at you, DTCs and DNC). In this race, the goal is to get on the ballot against an incumbent, a thing which, as a reminder, has never been done in the history of this district. When you face a barrier that absolute, you can safely assume the existing rules were designed to stifle competition, not encourage it. . (Shout out to the brilliant civil rights attorney and democracy-champion Alex Taubes).
With that said, I want to jump into it. But, I have to do one more bit of housekeeping by offering a little primer on me. This is necessarily self-indulgent, so I’ll try to keep it honest.
First, I need you to know that I can be very petty, like send an imperious, passive-aggressive email once every eight-to-nine weeks to someone to let them know why I’m right and they’re wrong petty. This is important to know, because what it really comes down to is that I overthink things and I get caught up in details, small or big, which means I am stewing and hanging on to things much too long, and much longer than anyone on the either side of an email exchange is. This gets me into trouble a lot.
But, I am usually better about it if I can write down what I want to say to someone without having to send it to them. That being the case, Substack is an ideal solution for one of my major personal demons. I am going to use this diary to tell you everything that I think about this campaign and the people - names and obvious identifying details of the exchange always changed - I interact with, that I can’t say out loud anywhere else. TikTok and Instagram, while fun, just don’t let me get out all the pettiness out of my system in the same way. Here on Substack, I can provide context for a petty thought, and I can offer an appraisal of any behavior I might have engaged in that was less than stellar. I can also just make it part of a larger narrative, with the goal being for you, the reader, to help me make sense of it. A lot of people say “don’t judge me!”. I say judge me, but realize I always judge myself harsher than you could possibly hope to. So take my petty moments and just contextualize them, then send me some feedback, and we’ll both be better off.
The second thing you need to know is that despite my LinkedIn Profile, which states I am law school graduate with a masters degree in Chinese studies, and an undergraduate degree from the very tony Duke University, I’ve never been very good at mastering corporate-speak or fitting into polite society. This is why after I completed liberal finishing school at Duke University, I opted to pursue stand-up comedy instead of a job. It’s why my TikTok is what it is, a compendium of my observations about the campaign and politics told through a microphone and in a space where I have license to talk like me, not like some version of me that is supposed to be “electable” or even “respectable.” I promise you, I likely am not either of those things when put under a microscope.
The third thing you need to know is that I am firmly an early Millennial. Born in 1985, in Split, Croatia, it was 2007 when I graduated from college, and I figured then that since history had ended in 1991, and there was nothing but upside for the United States, after a minor blip in 2001, I would just fuck off for a few years to China, pursue Chinese language studies and comedy, and then come back, in my infamous words to my wide-eyed, incredulous mother, to “an $80,000.00 per year consulting job, when I was good and ready, because they are just handing them out to graduates like me.”
I didn’t know, enveloped as I was in all of my vapid and deluded glory born of a serious lack of self-esteem, that it would take me twelve years before I sniffed that amount of money in my career. And I, of course, did not know that 2008 would be the year that the economy would crash and the Millennial positivity party would start its slow decline to where, in 2025, the early optimism of Millennials pre-2008 and pre-09/11 is looked at with a mix of both awe and disbelief by the now-mostly-jaded middle-age Millennials and the generations that have come after them.
I would come back from China in late 2009, follow my wife to graduate school, where she would work hard to become a medical doctor, and I would work on an as-needed basis to complete my law degree, with the full expectation that I would likely not pursue law, but an entrepreneurial venture. I hadn’t found a comedy career in Beijing, where I mostly stayed for two and half years after college, but I did discover I could start businesses, and get people to pay me for ideas. So I figured if I could do it there, I could do it in the United States, too.
Which brings me to the final thing you should know about me - I have never applied for a job and I have instead always opted to either work with people I like and/or admire on novel ventures, or I have started my own small endeavors. Between 2007 and 2025 this has included a stint managing restaurants in Beijing, opening a healthcare marketing agency focused on the China market, developing a consultancy that was acquired by a major company in 2016, opening an immigration and labor law firm I still operate, and founding a non-profit called Mi Maletin, later renamed FronteraTECH.Org, that won a major tech startup competition and sought to develop tech to aid in the intake of detained immigrants and isolated refugees inside the United States, and on the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border. Not to brag but to talk about myself in a positive way meant to win your admiration, I am featured as a heroic immigration lawyer in an upcoming book by Bloomsbury, called “Stopping the Deportation Machine.”
Combine these four things and you might understand better the story about why I started this campaign. You can focus on the window dressing, like the fact that I came to the U.S. as a refugee from Sarajevo and became a naturalized citizen, but to be very honest with you, that is my parents’ story, not mine. By the time I was fully formed as a young adult, all of that was already prologue. So the first four factors I listed are enough, as far as touchstones for understanding me go, because my prologue is already incorporated in those factors by proxy.
I am so glad you got through all that with me. You’ll never have do it ever again. I feel like I can finally start the story. So here we go.
Chapter 1: I get an email from Propark, in New Haven
On May 2, 2025, I received an email from ProPark telling me that my parking spot, in New Haven, CT, would no longer be mine, as of June 01:
“Hi Damjan,
I received your email from someone at Pro Park. I'm very sorry to give you the bad news. I would just like to provide an explanation for everything. I own the parking lot along with the office building at 1345 Elmo Street and Propark manages the parking lot for me. There are technically only 47 parking spaces in this parking lot. For a while, Propark had been renting 52 monthly parkers for 47 parking spaces. It has worked fine for the most part as there would rarely ever be more than 47 parkers at any one time. However, over the last 6 months the parking lot has been full on multiple occasions and various tenants have had issues numerous times where the parking lot is completely full and they have nowhere to park. Tenants have been calling me up furious and demanding I do something. The last 2 months have particularly gotten worse. I do not want to have to cancel you from the parking lot but unfortunately I'm left with no other choice. I can't have my tenants threaten to leave my building because I'm not providing them with the proper parking spots that they pay for. I have to give priority to my tenants. Would you ever consider moving your offices to 59 Elm Street? We have great spaces available of all different square footage amounts. If you were a tenant then I can try to figure out a way to help you with the parking. Thanks,”
Chapter 1 continues in the next entry.