Back from NV.
I photo blogged a bit over at Facebook, using my status for mini posts.
I had a great time. The campaign there is awesome. I wonder what the numbers were on people who drove in from CA since my regional office probably had a hundred people show up, and the one my friend went to had something like 500. That was just two offices (we were region 3 and region 6 and who knows how many there were total) and just one weekend!
We were then sent to a smaller regional office for true orientation and packet pickup, where I met many wonderful people.
Voter registration time is over in NV but early voting just started on Saturday, so our goal was to get people to vote
right now. The lists we were given were for homes that were pro-Obama or leaning Obama so it wasn't really about persuasion. We were given one brochure about his medical coverage policy but I never even had to talk that up. We were to tell them their local early vote site and ask if they wanted a ride to the polls. I was bummed that no one I talked to seemed interested in the ride, since we could actually call it in and they'd send someone over immediately.
We asked whether they were voting for a local Dem, Shelley Berkeley. The other local Dem, Kelvin Atkinson, was a lock so we didn't have to worry about him, but we handed out flyers for both. Berkeley's flyer included a caricature of her sitting on the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. She's a classic Vegas old lady, heh.
Bill Clinton was in town, at a rally on Sunday, so we talked that up too. People seemed the most excited about that pitch and many said they'd be interested in going. I never in my life thought I'd be advertising a Bill Clinton appearance.
The last thing we asked for is volunteers but I had no real takers. A couple of people asked for the number to call. There were only 16 days left so we were supposed to actually get people to commit to a day and time.
So the pitch was pretty easy, though I did get some people who were annoyed that we were hitting their houses even though they had already told us they were pro-Obama. The worst person I dealt with was an Obama
delegate. He was livid that we were bugging him. I tried to explain that this was about early voting but he wasn't having it.
The neighborhoods we were in were middle class tract homes. You'd go from one block to another and you'd jump up and down the tax brackets. One strip was early 70's architecture and large families, all at home on a Saturday, and the next neighborhood was late 90's two story places with humongous front doors and almost no one at home. All areas were predominately black, with latinos and whites the even minority.
I have to say, when a big black man answers the door and I, the little white girl from out of town, asks "are you voting for Barack Obama", it seems kind of stupid. I got a lot of, "Um, yeah", with a silent "DUH!" tacked on. But not in a negative way. They seemed really happy to see me, a little white girl, spending her weekend walking in the sun to visit them, wearing my buttons and t-shirt.
I think any time I meet another supporter, regardless of their race or how involved they are, I feel just that much better about everything. I could see it in their eyes, too.
This made the whole task that much more rewarding.
Most people weren't home. The best ratio was about 7 to 1. But when I got that one person, it made the rest easy.
The list included specific voters, so I'd knock on the door and the 45 year old dad would answer, but I didn't want to talk to him. I'd ask for his teen son and then his dad would hang around the doorway while I chatted the kid up. Talking to enthusiastic teens and their supportive parents happened a few times and it was amazing.
I did have a couple doors literally slammed in my face, and it was liberating, in a way, because I had worried about how that would be, and it wasn't a big deal, I just moved on. I vastly prefer it to a true debate (which never happened to me, no one asked me word one about his policies). I was kind of excited when the sheet said they were registered Republican or Independent, gearing myself up to tell my own story, but even they were 100% Obama at this point and needed no persuasion.
I did have some people shoo me away, refuse to open the door, pretend they weren't home, etc.....and there was one scary white guy who looked like a serial killer and said in a slow, deliberate way, "We're not
interested." When I drove past the same house later, he was on the lawn talking to someone else and totally stared me down as I passed. Kinda scary. We were out in pairs, but at that point my partner was a lady who wanted to have her own car, so we were rather separated. After a while I realized that these 80% black neighborhoods were the safest place for me to be while wearing all my O stuff.
Have to go, more later perhaps....