Week Three

Now photos!

Bob arrived! He is my old pal from Washington DC who has joined me for my electioneering adventures since 2018. Now that was an amazing experience. You can look back in my blog for what happened there.

In the meantime, Gail and I and now Bob were getting things together for canvassing in Eloy this weekend. Eloy is a small, town northwest of Tucson. This is a strategically important area to pull as many Democratic voters out for the Dems in this conservative area of Kirsten’s district.

We needed to prepare 20 packets of 40 sets of materials each with literature from Harris, Engel, some down ballot candidates, and Prop 139 - codifying Roe in the state. If you do the math, and I did, that’s 800 sets/doors or 4,800 pieces of lit. We took boxes home to assemble at Diana’s dining room table. A lot of rubber bands.

Word got out that Bob was keen on organizing materials, so we were tasked with prepping for the 100 packets of 40 sets for the Engel office weekend canvass. They had 30 done. That meant we needed another 2,800 sets. And another 20 packets were needed for a different area to canvass. In all a whopping 4,400 sets/doors and more than 20,000 pieces of literature.

And for good measure, all other literature strewn about the office was needing to be deconstructed and rubber banded in piles of 40. Ah, the glamorous work of election campaigning.

Luckily, Diane Linn and her partner, Adam, and friend, Charity were coming in on Thursday afternoon through Sunday to knock on doors and help where needed. I met Diane in about 1989 when she was the Executive Director of Oregon NARAL and. Sheryl’s boss. She was also the former Chair of the Multnomah County Council. She’s a powerhouse.

They hit the doors on Thursday when they got in and spent Friday assembling packets with us before heading out in the blistering 98/37 degree heat to talk to more voters. Unstoppable!

It’s a funny thing. I read not one piece of all the lit we assembled. I know how much time and energy goes into choosing the right message and words to put in these things, but I do wonder how many people actually read them.

When we weren't assembling literature, Bob and I went out canvassing in the Tucson area. The weather being what it was (blistering hot) we only went out until noon or one. We did make it out on Halloween and saw some epic spooky displays. This is definitely a Halloween town.

Saturday, I drove our team (Gail and Bob) in my rental car out to Eloy to meet up with the Engel Organizer, Maxine and two interns to knock doors. The Democratic Coordinated Committee had “cut” the turf for us, meaning they mapped out areas for us to canvass specific voters. We don’t knock on doors unless we think they are supporters and need encouragement to vote or are possible supporters to persuade. Unfortunately, early voting had started, and they forgot to eliminate people who had already voted. Gail’s turf was only 12 doors. In addition, Gail’s area was located in a clearly wealthy development with golf courses, a nice restaurant, and, weirdly, lawn. This is the middle of the desert.

I dropped her off and Bob and I went to quite a different turf. What looked on the map like a nice grid of streets with lots of houses turned into driving door to door. Ug. My least favorite.

And it was very, very poor. The houses were dilapidated or rundown mobile homes. Many of their huge, hard pan properties had chain link fences to keep their angry, vicious dogs guarding the yard. I did have a few good conversations with voters, some I hope I persuaded to vote for Kamala and Kirsten.

Lots of the voters said they didn’t didn’t like either candidate. I tried to remind them that thousands of people died of Covid because of Trump and that he said he created manufacturing jobs and he didn’t. I also borrowed lines from Kirsten’s speeches talking about how her opponent hadn’t delivered anything for the district and supported the 1864 anti-abortion law resurrected in Arizona after the Dobbs decision. It did move some.

I did have one young woman tell me she’s voting for Trump. Now, normally I just close the conversation with a “thanks for letting me know “ because it does help. We won’t remind them to vote. In this case, I asked her why. She said, “because he’s with God”. So I said, “he’s a convicted rapist”. She didn’t respond.Okumaya devam et