I Wasn't Sure
I Should Run.
A plain account of how a composting project led me to Point Reyes, how Point Reyes led me to doubt myself, and how I ended up on the ballot anyway.
I am not a politician. I have never held elected office, run a campaign, or raised money for anyone including myself. I am a 61-year-old San Rafael native with a public health degree, a background in special education and clinical engineering, and thirty years of work in behavioral health. I drive a used car. I tip 20% always.
What follows is the honest story of how I came to be on the June 2026 ballot — told in the order it actually happened. I'm telling it now, before my opponents do, because transparency is not a campaign strategy for me. It's the whole point.
A Composting Proposal.
Not a Campaign.
Long before I thought seriously about running for Congress, I had been developing a policy proposal I called the Biomass Logistics & Community Resilience Pilot Program — a seven-year voluntary program to connect Marin County's two biggest environmental liabilities: hazardous forest slash in the Wildland-Urban Interface, and methane-producing dairy manure in West Marin.
The idea was simple: a county-employed logistics coordinator — not a regulator, a facilitator — who would route that waste to anaerobic digesters, turning it into biogas energy and carbon-sequestering compost. A 90/10 revenue split, private-sector first, with the 10% county share funding "Zone Zero" wildfire safety grants for low-income homeowners. I had identified over $20 million in available state and federal grant funding to pay for it. No new taxes.
On December 9, 2025, I presented this proposal to the Marin County Board of Supervisors. It was filmed. I am a congressional candidate making that disclosure now — but I was not a candidate yet on December 9th. I was a citizen with a policy idea asking for an appointment.
"Biomass Logistics & Community Resilience Pilot" — Marin County Board of Supervisors
Filmed December 9, 2025. I was not yet a candidate. This is the project that led me to Point Reyes.
I'm sharing this video because it establishes something verifiable: I came to Point Reyes through a composting project, not through politics. While researching dairy operations for the Biomass Pilot, I discovered the January 2025 settlement that had ended ranching at the National Seashore — a decision made behind closed doors, without a public hearing, funded by private money, and sealed with non-disclosure agreements.
What I found disturbed me. I am a former CDC Public Health Officer with an MPH in environmental health. I understand NEPA. I understand what "no public comment period" means. I went looking for a composting solution and found a constitutional problem instead.
400 Miles North.
To See If I Belonged.
A week before the Board of Supervisors presentation, I drove north alone. Alturas, Modoc County. Yreka, Siskiyou County. I wanted to see with my own eyes the parts of the newly redrawn CA-2 district that I had never represented and would need to understand — the high desert ranch country, the timber communities, the places that have elected Republicans for decades and are now, under Proposition 50's redistricting, folded into a coastal district centered in Marin.
It was daunting. Not because the people weren't welcoming — they were. But because the distance between Marin and Modoc is not just geographic. It's economic, cultural, and political in ways that a day trip cannot fully bridge. Modoc County has one of the highest poverty rates in California. Siskiyou has watched its timber economy collapse. These are communities where the federal government's management of public lands is not an abstraction — it determines whether families stay or leave.
"I went up there to decide whether to run. What I found was a question I hadn't asked myself: do I have the right to represent people this different from me?"
— Greg Burgess, reflecting on the Modoc-Siskiyou tripI came back uncertain. The trip did not make me feel confident. It made me feel responsible — which is different. When I then discovered the Point Reyes settlement, I saw the same pattern I'd witnessed in Modoc and Siskiyou: federal decisions of enormous consequence to rural communities made without those communities at the table.
Dispatches from Modoc & Siskiyou — "Should I Run?"
Shot December 3–5, 2025. These are the communities in the northern counties of the redrawn CA-2. I went there to listen before I decided to run.
Collecting Signatures.
While Angry About Point Reyes.
I began collecting the nomination signatures required to get on the ballot on December 19, 2025. By February 4, 2026, I had enough. I was self-funding within federal limits — no PACs, no donors, no bundlers. My campaign slogan, printed on the sweatshirt I wore while collecting signatures, read: "I Want Your Vote, Not Your Money."
During those same six weeks, I was deep in research on the Point Reyes settlement. I filed a formal complaint with the DOI Office of Inspector General on December 26, 2025. I filed a 25-category Freedom of Information Act request with the National Park Service on February 10, 2026. I attended The Nature Conservancy's community open houses in February. I mailed letters to West Marin residents at my own expense.
My first letter to the Point Reyes community — and my first op-ed, "The Land That Raised Me Is Being Sold Off" — were written while I was genuinely angry. I had just discovered what I believed was a serious democratic failure, and the heat of that discovery shows in those early documents. Some of my language was imprecise. I described TNC's acquisition as "sold to the highest bidder" — which was emotionally accurate to my feeling but factually wrong, since TNC paid well below market value, which is actually the stronger argument.
After meeting with TNC's Greg Richardson and Rod in February 2026, I reassessed. I wrote publicly that I no longer view The Nature Conservancy as a villain in this story, but as a neutral party — an organization that stepped into a role that government should have handled through open democratic channels. My later letters reflect a more careful and accurate analysis. I'm not hiding the earlier ones. They are all on this website. I changed my mind where the evidence warranted it. That's what I'll do in Congress.
The Point Reyes Light
Called Me Jimmy Stewart.
On March 4, 2026, the Point Reyes Light published a profile of my campaign. The reporter compared me to Jimmy Stewart's character in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I take that as a compliment, though I'm aware Mr. Smith loses a lot of sleep before the Senate finally listens.
The profile noted that I have no political experience, no campaign staff, and $13,000 in the bank — $8,000 of it from my tax refund. My opponent Jared Huffman has roughly $1 million. The article quoted me saying: "You've got to speak out, even if no one is listening." I meant it when I said it. I mean it now.
I am also the person who filed the FOIA request tracking as DOI-2026-003984, acknowledged by Superintendent Anne Altman on February 26, 2026, with a response expected by April 24, 2026. The filing is public record. Whatever NPS releases will be posted on this website immediately.
"There's a little bit of Jimmy Stewart in Greg Burgess. He has no political experience, no campaign staff and very little money. But he's not short on idealism."
— Point Reyes Light, March 4, 2026What I Want You to Know
I am not running because I think I will definitely win. I am running because I believe the issues I have uncovered — at Point Reyes, in Modoc and Siskiyou, in the procedural shortcuts that affect rural communities across CA-2 — deserve a voice on the record in the June 2026 primary. If the democratic process produces a different outcome, I will respect it. That is what I have always said, and I will not change that position.
My opponents will use my early letters to argue I was partisan or anti-environment. I was neither. I was angry about a process failure, and I did the work to understand it better. The full archive of every letter I wrote is on this website. Nothing is hidden. That is the Show Your Work standard I set for this campaign, and I hold myself to it too.
The Modoc trip taught me that humility is a precondition for representation. The Board of Supervisors presentation taught me that constructive solutions are more durable than complaints. The Point Reyes research taught me that democratic process is not a technicality — it is the protection itself.
I grew up in Mill Valley, took field trips to Point Reyes with naturalist Elizabeth Terwilliger, birded there with my uncle Stuart Keith, and drank milk from those dairies as a child. This district raised me. I am asking for the chance to serve it.