Yes We Did.

I had breakfast alone this morning. I went back to Lucille’s, the delicious creole restaurant, and sat there reading the paper and eating my eggs. Nobody talked to me except the waitress. It was quiet. There were no volunteers to train, no numbers to report, no fires to put out. I haven’t sat by myself quietly like that for a month. I didn’t quite know what to do with myself.

Last night, after a bizarrely slow Election Day with barely a hiccup at the polling stations, a bunch of us gathered at a Hawaiian-themed sports bar to watch the returns come in. I have no idea how we ended up there – the entire night had a first-month-of-college feel to it, a lemming-mentality. First the networks called NH quickly, giving Jeanne Shaheen her Senate seat. The quickness of the call was a good omen since McCain had put resources into trying to pick the state off. Then PA fell for Obama, then Ohio, and we knew we were headed for the win. Someone ordered shots and we stepped outside into the unseasonably warm night to smoke the victory cigarillos I had covertly bought earlier in the day. It was a mix of people I have come to be close friends with and some I don’t care for at all, but we all had the same bond of time and energy committed. It’s a bizarre feeling, to have worked so hard for something, to have been all-consumed, and then to celebrate. Lacking a central gathering place like Times Square, we headed for the Democratic Party’s gala at the Marriott, catching the tail end of Markey’s victory speech. Some of my best volunteers were there and we celebrated, standing on chairs, drinking our beers, and shouting across the convention room. From there my recollections of the night become fuzzy. Mike and I were interviewed by some radio station. Rooms were procured upstairs and the party spilled up into the hotel, but it felt strangely like an after-prom party and around 1:30 I headed home, spent.

It’s strange for this to be over. I can honestly say that, however selfless this sacrifice may have seemed, there were more basic reasons for me to do this. I needed to get out of NY. My job is stultifying. And I wanted Obama to win. Yet I have still received so many texts, emails, and calls from my friends – all messages of sincere thanks – that it overwhelms me. When the networks called the election for Obama, I called my parents and cried. I haven’t worked this hard for something in a long time, if ever. And I’m proud. Proud to have won, proud to have devoted myself so thoroughly to something so challenging and new, but mostly proud to have put myself to good use. My job has not given me that satisfaction in at least a year, and although I knew I felt that way on some level, I underestimated how invigorating and emotional it would make me.

I have made some wonderful friends on this trip – friends that I intend to keep: Mike, Geetha, Betty. I intend to make Betty my mentor whether she likes it or not. I have given standing orders to Mike that he should call me so I can be a ringer for the next election he works on, showing up with two weeks to go. I couldn’t do it for a living, I don’t think, but it is a great vacation in its own way.

My sister texted me this morning. She wrote, simply, “yes we can.” And I, in response, corrected her. “Yes we DID.”

Yes we did.

Front Range Blue

More later when my brain resumes functioning, but in the end we turned Colorado blue. Larimer County in particular had 90% turnout and went democratic for the first time since 1908.
Blue, baby. Blue.

Mutiny

The tension among volunteers can sometimes boil over. They want to win, yet they are stuck executing roles that don’t always seem to be as efficient as they could be, or are frustrating in their repetition. An example. Earlier today, our phone bank manager, Zaha, made an honest mistake. We had instructed her that all day long, people would be making calls but not leaving messages. The logic behind this is that apathetic sporadically-voting democrats are much more likely to be energized by face-to-face or voice-to-voice interactions. If they haven’t voted already, it’s unlikely that a voicemessage will do the trick. But Zaha had accidentally told our phone bankers to leave messages starting at the beginning of the day. When Mike and I caught wind of this, he headed into the room to make sure everyone was following the plan. I followed, but after watching him speak for a minute realized there was no point in us both being there and left.

Five minutes later, I walked by and realized that not only was everyone still standing around, but voices were raised, and those voices didn’t belong to Mike. As he tells it, a few of the volunteers, led by a middle-aged woman named AJ, had protested the idea that they not leave messages. To them, it seemed a waste to just keep calling through the same list over and over again. They wanted to do something, not just hang up on answering machines. AJ had actually suggested, loudly, that the volunteers stage “a revolt” and do whatever they wanted.

Look, I’m first in line when it comes to critiquing the campaign’s strategies, but this was a bit much. By the time I walked in and figured out what had happened, there were five people talking at once, three of them were furious, and Mike was looking off towards the ceiling counting numbers in his head to avoid doing bodily harm. I whistled, loud, to quiet everyone down. I thanked them so much for their time. I told them I knew how badly they wanted to win and how frustrating phone banking can be. I explained the strategy of motivating apathetic voters via live conversation as opposed to voice messages. I  thanked them again. And then I asked them to help us out by sticking to a national strategy and having faith in the campaign.

For a moment, it was quiet. And then AJ, twitching slightly and manically combing her fingers through her bleached hair, threw her fleece over her shoulder and said, “This is bullshit. I’m leaving. You guys have no idea what you’re doing.” And she left, claiming that she was going to another Obama office, even though I pointed out that they too would be using the same strategy. “Is everyone else OK?” People nodded, and I thought the storm had passed. AJ was gone, people knew the game plan, and I was fairly certain Mike wasn’t going to punch anyone. But then Claire spoke up. Claire is a bit of a special case. She’s been here for the entirety of the last week entering data for us. She doesn’t like making calls and refuses to walk packets, so she’s not the ideal volunteer, but we take what we can get. She is special for two reasons. One, she was tragically born without a sense of humor. Two, she has regaled us all with a story about how she was recently struck by lightning, a story that seems…specious. It involves sitting in a valley along a river and being struck by lightning when there is no storm nearby, no witnesses, and no burn marks. We nod and smile. So Claire speaks up in the silence and says, “Can I say something? I just want to say that I don’t like the way that problem was solved. I’m a conflict mediator and I feel like that was not the right way to solve that problem. AJ should be able to make the calls however she likes them.” It was about then that Mike began explaining that AJ can make calls however she wants, but when she starts fomenting a revolt, it’s probably a good idea to let her leave if she wants to. I left. I’d had enough.

Desk Drawer

At this point, it’s clear to me that this machine is moving of its own accord. We did our calls and canvassing in the last month, and we have all our walk packets out today (plus our extra crop, now referred to as the “desk drawer” or DD set) but ultimately and frustratingly, we just sit here and watch the numbers come in every few hours. Betty has stopped by and is a calming force; she is more sanguine as the numbers arrive, insisting that Democrats vote after work and Republicans vote early. She says that if we don’t see a Democratic spike at 4pm then we’re in trouble. Of course, if there’s no spike at 4pm it’s too late to do anything.

Some more numbers have just rolled in from Eric, and they have a better feel to them (all numbers are for Larimer County). In the 18-25 age bracket, we’re seeing this: 61% of dems have turned out, which is pretty good since of all people college kids are expected to vote late in the day. However, 64% of republican 18-25 year olds have turned out as well. At first, we processed this and decided it wasn’t so bad since there has to be more college-age democrats than republicans, so our 61% should be a larger number. But then a second email arrived showing the actual figures. About 4,700 young democrats have voted. Good and well. But the republican number was shockingly close: 4,400. It was the last number that told the story, however: over 7,000 unafilliated 18-25 year olds have voted already today. And we suspect those voters are breaking heavily towards us. Incidentally, these people are the exact target of the desk-drawer packets that we are walking above and beyond what the campaign wants.

We can’t really legitimately take credit for this bump, but we will anyway.

Anteclimax

I am sitting in the dim morning light at the staging location on Election Day morning and it is dead quiet. The polls are open and our polling place personnel are in place, watching the voters come and go. The gears are turning. This sucker is happening.
After almost five weeks of intense on-the-job training it comes as a big surprise to me to discover that Election Day is this quiet, even at its dawn. I expected something more like the bridge of an aircraft carrier under attack, but instead it is still. I am not the only one who feels this way. Mike, who has worked two elections before this one, is also stupefied. His previous experiences were nothing like this; in Florida, he didn’t sleep the night before. Election Day. But this time it is different, maybe because 65% of the state has already voted, or maybe because the media expects either an Obama victory or an Obama landslide but not much else.

Yesterday was surprisingly busy, mostly with completely new faces – a good sign. The campaign had been telling us again and again that we should expect a busy Monday, but it hadn’t made sense to me. Those who could afford to take a weekday off would take Election Day, I reasoned, not the day before. But we did see our fair share of walk-ups. And since there was no data to be entered last night, we got a head start on prepping for this morning.

We have six canvass captains, each of whom is responsible for one to two precincts and a team of at least six. Their cars are stocked with lunchbags, water, and flashlights and glow in the dark bracelets for the canvassers after dark. Each canvasser walking turf will have their canvass captain’s contact information if they have problems. If new canvassers show up at our door, we’ll send them out with their walk packet and notify the captain that there are new people walking in that turf, that way we can keep track of how many canvassers we have in a given precinct at a time. In a normal county where people had to vote by precinct, this information would be hugely helpful. But in Larimer County, where everyone can vote at any vote center in the county, we’re not sure why we’re being instructed to do this. Regardless, it’s a reasonable system.

At around 8:30, Betty and Sue showed up making their rounds. Betty has given up in her fight with Kevin – it’s strange to me that she wouldn’t just go toe to toe with him and squish him like a bug – but this being her last campaign, she just  doesn’t seem to have the fire in her belly to cause the stir. She also doesn’t get any backup from Denver. And so even though she’s far and away the better manager and has more experience, she allowed herself to get muscled out of the overt command structure. Kevin gave her no role on Election Day, booting his GOTV Director out on the one day she’s supposed to be running the show. This is ironic because quietly over the last 24 hours, the desk drawer list – the list of democratic and unaffiliated 18-30 year olds who the campaign hasn’t yet contacted – has made its rounds to all the teams in the city, all of whom are staring at remarkably low GOTV targets. And all of them have incorporated that list into their assigned tasks. Kevin has no idea.

There was a small share of drama last night as well. Earlier this week when Sonja was deathly ill and Kevin was repeatedly calling her and chewing her out for being sick at the wrong time, she made a rookie mistake. Or so the story goes. According to Kevin, in the heat of the conversation, desperate to get him to simply leave her alone and let her hack phlegm in peace, Sonja told Kevin that her absence from work had been approved by Betty. Kevin, of course, saw this as a threat to his hegemony and berated Betty for approving staff absences without telling him. Betty, in turn, became furious that Sonja had falsely invoked her approval. She seethed. Frankly, I couldn’t care about any of it. If Sonja did in fact lie and say Betty had given her the day off just to get Kevin to leave her alone, then it was a rookie mistake and with all the abuse she’s taken from her co-workers I almost wouldn’t blame her. And since I hold Kevin in such low regard I’m tempted to say he made it up. Sonja insists she never said it. Either way, Betty effectively took Sonja out behind the woodshed. I realize I haven’t exactly raved about Sonja myself – she is uncannily slow, easily distracted, and inexperienced at prioritizing – but she is younger than everyone else and clearly in over her head. Nobody deserves to take the amount of abuse she’s received. Campaign work is not for the thin-skinned or self-doubting.

It is strangely quiet around here. Lines at the polling places are long, a few machines are already down here and there, but otherwise we’re sitting quietly waiting for the volunteers to arrive.

Sunset

The view behind our staging location looks out across the freight tracks towards the semi-urban sprawl of the interior of the block. There is a lonely tower of a Hilton – the nearby polling place – and a scarecrow tree. Other than that, it’s a clean shot to the foothills. I took this picture from the utility hallway, through the wire mesh window at sunset.
Just one more day.

Shrinking Universe

I saw the fox again this morning. He’s a brazen little guy. As I walked out to the rental car with my extra hour of clock-changed sleep, he was prancing across the road not even sticking to the shadows. He froze in the middle of the street when I got close, about ten feet away, and stared at me, then trotted away with his paws jumping after each step. He rounded the corner still staying in the street, and then finally slipped through the hedge into my hy hosts’ garden, his big bushy tail catching the brambles on the way through.

The PT Cruiser is no more. We had to return it after mysterious noises began emanating from the engine. It drove fine but sounded as if there were a very small remote controlled car hidden inside the car that drove at exactly the same speed you did. If you pushed the pedal down, the engine made its expected hum, but you also heard the high-pitched whine as well. Now we’re stuck with a Ford Focus that drives like a tin can.

The weekend has been busy although like last weekend it still feels empty in here even when we’re busy. We spend all day thinking we’re having a lousy day since the office is so sparsely populated, but then at the end of the day when we tally we’re surprised; the numbers far exceed our expectations. The high-tech reputation of the campaign has definitely taken a hit this weekend, though. We were supposed to have a set universe of voters to contact this weekend, meaning that once Saturday’s packets were returned, we’d enter the data into the database and reprint the packets with slightly fewer contacts. But someone at HQ decided they’d found some new voters who needed contacting (this close to the election, it’s strange that they’re still finding new people to contact), so as the packets came in yesterday, we compared them to the ones we had printed for Sunday and crossed people off with black marker if we’d already met with them.

This is a good sign, in its own way, since it means that the canvassers and phonebankers have contacted everyone the campaign initially intended to contact. Or they’ve already voted. The information we’ve been given – the new people added to our universe – is not as reliable. Many of our canvassers come back telling us that quite a few of the doors they’ve knocked on were opened by a totally different person who pointed out that the Mr Johnson they’re looking for moved a good three years ago. Frustrating for the volunteers, and for me who has to hear them complain, but a good sign. The campaign is scraping the  bottom of the barrel looking for new people to identify as Obama supporters so we can hound them on Tuesday.

Last night, after a slow starting day (much like today – are people complacent? At church?) we ended up at the Fort Collins HQ to meet up with some other campaign staff and volunteers for beer. (Workdays have been ending earlier this week since the database masters have informed us that we no longer have to enter all the “not homes”. They now only want to know who’s been contacted and how they’re voting) Betty showed us a set of numbers that surprised us: the number of known Obama supporters in our district who have yet to vote. It is less than a thousand, a number so low we immediately started asking ourselves, “How are we going to keep our volunteers busy on Tuesday?” More surprisingly, this number will shrink between now and Tuesday morning as mail-in ballots are processed. It should be our worst problem.

Otherwise, it has been an entertaining if exhausting last few days. Working closely with Mike is nonstop inappropriate humor; the inside jokes are piling up. We try to keep our volunteers laughing as much as possible by having absurd dance parties, giving the volunteers nicknames, and keeping the energy level high. Since we’re beyond punchy, it isn’t too hard to entertain people. We just risk our reputations as sane people.

Two days. I’m excited to head home and do normal people things like see a movie.

Sproing

Strange goings-on yesterday. About mid-afternoon, a new character showed up at our office. A tall lanky guy with bushy curly hair, I first saw him when I walked by a windowed office and Mike beckoned me in. The two of them, Mike and Eric, were hunched over a laptop and having an animated conversation. Eric flailed around, waving his arms in herky-jerky motion like a marionette under the hands of a novice, not even stopping when i walked in. He paced in circles. The laptop had a spreadsheet on it showing, as they explained to me, the numbers of people who had already voted in Larimer County and what numbers were needed to earn an Obama victory in the county. There was a disconnect. Even though the campaign was telling us, via their numbers, that we had exceeded their contact expectations and that they were seemingly expecting a victory, Eric was here telling us the opposite. He showed us numbers that explained that even if we got every registered democrat to vote, we would still be at risk of losing. The early voting tallies showed that republicans were voting at a higher clip than democrats.

I cycled through a few reactions. First, I began to suspect that, being in a room with two political junkies, that they were creating an adventure for themselves – that the declining intensity of the campaign wasn’t exciting enough. They insisted that this wasn’t the case. Then, having thought through the numbers, I realized that I understood what they were saying but I didn’t have enough experience to effectively play voting-statistics devil’s advocate. I asked Eric to play it himself; what would Denver HQ say to this? I have more than my share of criticisms of how this campaign is run at the local level, but on a national and statewide level, the campaign has proven pretty brilliant over the last few months. They may not close out well – see the never ending primary battle – but otherwise they pull their weight. Regardless, how could they be overlooking such clear numbers that show the county at risk? No matter how overwhelmed they might be, I assumed they must be looking at different numbers.

Ultimately, the number that confused us the most was the fact that the age bracket that was the most under-represented in early voting was the youngest: 21-30. And that is exactly the age bracket that leans towards Obama. So while the campaign was giving us a light GOTV load on election day by sending us out to cajole the remaining known Obama supporters into voting, they were strangely ignoring the apathetic college students who, if taken to the polls, would vote for Obama at a roughly 60/40 clip? What gives? We talked this over for half an hour and finally decided to put it in the drawer, as Mike says, to have it close at hand and perhaps act on it if Election Day slowed down.

We spent the rest of the day trying to nail down our Election Day staffing lists and entering the mountains of data from the day’s canvassers. It was our last night of data entry, and so we celebrated the dwindling stacks as we went. For the second day in a row, there was a data lag and we were being told that later in the night we would receive a strike list – we were instructed to print our turf early and then, once we received the strike list, flip through our printed walk packets and cross out all the people who had been contacted that week. But as the night wore on and no strike list packet arrived, we became frustrated. It wasn’t until 10:30 that the confession came through: the strike list wouldn’t be available until 9:30 the following morning, giving us only half an hour to flip through the packets before the canvassers arrived. If this were a cartoon robot, this would be the first spring that sproinged out of the mechanical innards. Not a good sign.

We finished the night by visiting Geetha at her southern location, helping her collate her walk packets for the next day and having a group rant session.

This morning, upon arriving at our staging location, word was passed down: the strike lists were complete but our number was zero. Mike was furious. We had spent a good five hours entering data mindlessly in order for it to be incorporated into the strike list. All of the contacts we had made yesterday were supposed to be included on that list so we could make our volunteers as efficient as possible – but now Denver had clearly either ignored our lost our five hours of data entry.

Yesterday’s theme, which as continued on into today for me, is that things are just not adding up. How could a campaign ignore a youth vote when it only stands to gain? Why would they rest on their laurels when the data coming in from the secretary of state doesn’t show them winning? Why is all our data being discarded or lost? I don’t buy conspiracy theories, I just suspect there’s a lot I don’t know.

Notes During a Busy Day

Not enough people showed up to canvass for us this morning. Strange, you’d think that with the election three days away there would be more folks coming out of the woodwork. Maybe they’re getting complacent? Or maybe they’re all at the main office hoping to meet Wesley Clark, who is here to turn out the vote (and sell his book, I imagine).
Last night we were forced to participate in the statewide conference call, which has everyone dial in on a muted line to listen to the pep talk/redundant and patronizin instructions from state HQ. This week, Forward Colorado has joined the calls and is helping us out. They are the office that runs the downticket campaigns for US Senate and House of Reps. Someone from that group accidentally dialed in using the non-muted passcode and spent the entire time talking over the state GOTV director thinking they were on mute. Classic stuff. Lines overheard by everyone include, “I want to play! Let me play!” “Yay! I have no pants on!” and “Now I’ll take my pants off so we’re even.” Conference calls: where mindless people go to waste time but feel professional.

Wig and a Mu-Mu

Today started miserably. Getting up is rarely a problem for me. The alarm goes off and yes, I’d rather sleep, but I don’t make a scene of it. I get up, I dress, and I roll. No melodrama. I accomplished all of that today as well, but as soon as I reached the office I was hit with that nagging feeling of being overwhelmed – the kind of panicky mood that makes me want to make lists and cross things off. This weekend is the official beginning of the GOTV process – when all rules for phone banking and canvassing suddenly change - and I was keenly aware of how under-prepared I was. Geetha has become the master of the database, and while that’s helpful to the team as a whole, she’ll be in our other staging location from Saturday on, leaving me in the lurch. Plus, the constant onslaught of poorly-written, contradictory emails from Denver make me want to throw myself through a plate glass window. It is typical to receive emails over the course of the day that begin with, “Ignore the previous email regarding call lists. Instead please use the following instructions.” And they all are subjected with some variation on, “MUST READ,” a sure sign they’re not worth reading. There is a universal rule here somehow similar to the one that states that if a restaurant’s sign insists the food is delicious, it must not be.

And so the three of us, Geetha, Mike, and I, all sat down intending to create a to-do list and wrap our minds around the oncoming weekend. Instead, we all began talking over each other, layering one question on another until I reached that ultimate point of complete stress. And just about when I had hit my limit, one of our regular canvassers, Jon, showed up. He’s from California, Jon is, but you’d never know it from his folksy mannerisms. He’s a back-slapping, aw shucks kind of feller who will talk to you as you walk away and into the bathroom. He has also, for three straight days, taken a canvass packet out into the field and returned half an hour later not having been able to find the area on his city map. Impressive work. This morning he was in a particularly good mood, setting a clear opposite to the mood of the room. Undeterred, he ambled in, took one look around and shouted, “Gosh, you guys look so stressed! You really need to have some more fun!” He walked around, patted us all on the back, eliciting winces from each of us cynical east-coasters in turn, and then insisted we all head out in front of his car (a PT Cruiser covered in Obama paraphenalia and no irony intended) to take a round of photographs. He loves his work. He comes back every afternoon from  his canvassing shift and regales us with stories regardless of how busily we are engaged. He is completely socially tone-deaf. But he’s voting and volunteering, so god bless him.

Ultimately, we made some progress. I picked up Sonja and set her to work making confirmation calls to all the people who the database insisted were coming to help on Election Day. We knew this list was flawed since half the people had signed up at last Sunday’s Barack Obama speaking event and had done so merely to make the person with the clipboard in front of them leave them alone. Then Kirk, a volunteer with Forward Colorado, the office for the US Senate and Congressional candidates, showed up. And we put him to work cutting all our turf for the upcoming weekend. This was good. We were crossing off tasks and keeping people busy. And slowly but surely I got a handle on things. By mid-afternoon, I was downright relaxed, and by the evening we were so on top of our game that we were done by 10pm, the earliest I’ve ever finished off a day here in Fort Collins.

After closing up shop, we headed off for dinner, stopping along the way at the old HQ and pilfering cellphones and chargers. There is a perpetual shortage of office supplies throughout the campaign, and since Mike, Geetha, and I all view the rest of the crew as a bunch of hyenas interested only in their own districts (last Friday night’s clipboard fiasco being the prime example), we sunk to the lowest common denominator and looked after our own interests. Denver is supposedly sending a shipment of new cellphones to us to aide in phone banking (it proves difficult to make calls sans cellphones or landlines), but until it comes, we are now well stocked.

And finally, during dinner, someone described a woman on the campaign as, “James Gandolfini in a wig and a mu-mu.” Not kind, certainly, but shockingly accurate.