About the Birddogger
Mark Dunau was born in Washington, DC in 1952, and is the son of two labor lawyers. He researched and wrote the analysis of DontSubmit.org because his view (with supporting data) that today’s Democratic Party needs to explicitly represent the self-employed does not exist anywhere else.
Mark makes his living growing vegetables in Hancock, NY. He and his wife, Lisa Wujnovich, have two children, and are the owner/operators of Mountain Dell Farm, which has been farm-to-table since its first sales in 1990.
Mark got involved in politics in 1996, when his long deceased father, Bernard Dunau, came to him in a dream with a political path forward focusing on the self-employed, rural, trade and environmental issues. In 1998, he ran for Congress as a write-in candidate for what he described as a Rural Party; in 2000, he won a statewide NY Primary to be the Green Party nominee for US Senate.
Since 2004, Mark has been birddogging candidates for President on behalf of the self-employed in the New Hampshire Primary. “Birddogging” is an expression used to describe the activities of an advocate who follows political candidates for the purpose of declaring a point of view, and hopefully moving candidates to that same position. In 2004, Mark birddogged in New Hampshire the Democratic candidates for President; in 2007, again it was the Democratic candidates for President; and in 2012, it was the Republican candidates for President.
His 2012 birddog campaign for the self-employed was covered in the NY Times.
His 2012 birddog was also made into the short documentary, Hang On to Your Heart. This election is in the dustbin of history, but the first fifteen minutes of the film offer insights into today’s politics.
Mark did not participate in the 2016 New Hampshire Primary.
In 2018, he birddogged Antonio Delgado, the Democratic nominee for NY’s 19th CD. Delgado won, and working with New York Farm Bureau, Mark succeeded in getting Representative Delgado to introduce the bipartisan Tax Fairness for the Self-Employed Act (HR 3880), which would enable the self-employed to deduct their health insurance premiums as a business expense.
See Mark’s farm in the music video “Truck Driving Dog”.
He can be contacted at mldunau@tds.net