After spending the weekend considering whether or not to run, Jim Middaugh—City Commissioner Erik Sten’s chief of staff—filed the paperwork in a bid for his boss’ newly vacated seat.

Middaugh’s running as a publicly financed candidate, and has two weeks and three days to collect 1,000 $5 contributions and signatures to qualify, “an extremely challenging thing,” Middaugh notes.

“I talked to about 100 people over the weekend, and the response was extremely positive,” he says. He gathered commitments from people willing to solicit contributions on his behalf, and tallied them up in a spreadsheet. “I broke the 1,000 threshold in people committing to getting them.”

“The commitment in my brain is there to try and pull it off. I’m going to have a lot of fun,” he says.