Once again, I got back last night to my state from next door Ohio, canvassing to nudge Obama voters to the polls. This time we were dispatched to deep red and sometimes rabidly Tea Party neighborhoods in Hamilton County. And boy was it quite the experience. As we drove into the Delhi subdivision where our staging site was located, my canvass partner (a 72-yer old bundle of energy who carpooled with me on the drive to Ohio) and I quickly realized that this was gonna be challenging on several counts. The visual overload of seeing an endless sea of not just Romney/Ryan signs but angry bold Tea party diatribes – i.e. Brown kills Jobs, Obama threatens religious FREEDOM, Defend Bill of Rights, Save the Constitution—required all the intestinal fortitude we could muster.
In the midst of all this, we made the turn to the final street and voila, our eyes were richly rewarded with the calming Obama-blue signage & buntings that festooned the OFA volunteer’s house-turned-staging site for this final GOTV push. T’was a sight to behold and even more soothing as we and other Kentucky volunteers crowded into this warm cottage-style house to receive our instructions and canvass packets while the aroma of chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookies wafted through our nostrils. Took a few bites of course.
As OFA’s memo released on Nov 3rd stated, we were part of the volunteer army being deployed to do the final stage GOTV. There are:
5,117 get-out-the-vote (GOTV) staging locations in the battleground states that will decide this election, they began to execute the final phase of a ground game unlike any American politics has ever seen. These staging locations are even more localized versions of our field offices – set up in supporters’ homes, businesses or any area that can serve as a central hub for a team’s GOTV activities in the final days….From these hyper-local Obama hubs, volunteers have signed up for 698,799 shifts to get out the vote over the final four days of this campaign , a number that grows by the minute as organizers continue assigning supporters who have expressed an interest in volunteering.
More over the squiggleys…
Then it was out the door to hunt for Democratic voters and nudge them to the polls in these deep red working & middle class neighborhoods. This was the first canvass beat for me since doing GOTV in Ohio that was difficult to walk because the houses were so flung apart, or addresses hard to find due to hidden driveways, or absent/obscure/skipped number markings. And it rained most of the time we did our two shifts finishing at 6:30 instead of 4 PM. But we would not be deterred. Actually my partner who did a lot of the running up to door-knock in those sections where the houses were too far apart to walk, while I drove, was the yeoman.
Being from a non-battleground state, and canvassing in the heart of what our trainer called “hostile territory” in these last hours of the campaign does indeed feel like running raids into the opponent’s house while their signage artillery is all loaded up and ready to fire. As for the smattering of hard core Democratic voters who proudly put up their signs and Obama geegaws, the dueling lawn sign battlelines drew a smile. But I wondered what it must be like for sporadic Democratic voters living in such neighborhoods and worse of all, living under the same roof with Repubs.
I had to do a double take as I approached the address of one of the names on my canvass list. The lawn was all strewn with Romney/Ryan and Defend Bill of Rights signs, as well as something about a local ballot initiative. Summoned some strength and knocked on the door and out comes a wiry male who categorically told me his wife was not home but she was gonna vote for Romney. I then said to him that she was on our list because she had previously voted as a Democrat. He just breezed past what I said and repeated his earlier assertion. I did not mark on my sheet that she was voting for Romney. Instead, marked the box “Not Home”, then briefly wrote his remarks by her name on my sheet. Perhaps phonebankers later can still nudge her towards voting for democrats like she once did. What an overbearing hubby?
Another woman also had to shush me away telling me this was not a good time, just as a male barked at her in the background wondering who was at the door. Talk about fear! My partner on the canvass beat also told me about yet another woman who said she’d supported Democrats in the past but believes Romney is better for women because of abortion and faith. ?!@#4d? Yep kinda like chickens rooting for Col Sanders.
Also encountered one of those vaunted species -- the Democratic Undecided voter. No amount of laying out the President’s actions/agenda specific to Ohio, or Sherrod Brown’s record fighting for working class Ohioans, or Romney et al’s plans for this country, would budge this person. An offer to email or suggest websites for additional info to help make a decision were rejected. Well, too bad. Had to move on and hope there aren’t too many of those voters left in Ohio.
Of course, the high points of our canvass beat were when we scored positive contacts, such as gungho Democrats committing to vote and offering to volunteer on Election Day for GOTV, or newly registered college students voters who had mailed in their absentee ballots, or whole families who turned out to be early Obama voters but only one was on our list. And some pleasant surprise vote conversions from Undecided to Committed.
When we turned in our second shift packets, the Team Leader confirmed that our task was tougher at this and other staging sites in deep red neighborhoods. But they were designed to help run up the score and more importantly offset potential vote loses at heavily Democratic precincts due to mechanical or other voter suppression shenanigans. She said ours were the “1st pass”, and that other shifts would return to those same doors that we knocked to do a “2nd pass” make certain as many of those votes got banked as possible even on Election Day. Yep we are leaving nothing to chance! Leave no Vote behind!
All my GOTV trips to Ohio have been worth it, plus I achieved my selfish goal of walking off some bodyfat. Now like many of you, will do phonebanking, I hope we all work hard to bring it home on Tuesday. Victory, baby! Nothing to regret!
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