Jon Ossoff speaking at our event.
The last couple of weeks have been an interesting experience for me as our volunteer group has gone through the process of deciding which candidate to support and gearing up to start our volunteering. Things have happened quickly…
First, our leadership group of about 10 of us had a chance to meet with a local politician who gave us a lot of great information. She encouraged us to start getting involved locally and showed us the things we could do to start. She was very pleased with what she has been seeing on the ground in the last couple of months as the party is making some excellent steps to start rebuilding. And finally, she felt Ossoff had a big advantage over the other Democrats in terms of his chances to make a runoff - he has a lot more money and organization. She personally thinks he is a fine candidate, some positives, some negatives, but one who had a chance to win and who we would be pleased with.
Our group’s only goal is to win this election. While we’re pretty liberal, this is a conservative district that’s going to rely on cross-over votes for us to win (Hillary got some and we’ll need some). Finding the right candidate was our first goal. Hearing her words convinced us to make a final decision that we would be supporting Jon Ossoff and would no longer be considering the other Democratic contenders.
Next, my wife arranged a campaign event for Jon to speak and meet some of us. The picture above is Jon at the podium giving his speech. We actually had arranged this before we decided to back Jon, so our goal at the time was to hear about him and the other candidates to make our decision. Well, by the time of the event, we were fully backing him and now just wanted to see how he would do. The event grew to about 150 people, our full capacity, and Jon gave a great speech. He did a wonderful job of addressing some of the concerns folks might have.
Why does he live outside the district? His long-time girlfriend goes to Emory medical school, and since she has to get there art 4am each day, they live walking distance. He lived in the district prior to them moving and has committed to moving back as soon as she graduates.
What about Al Jazeera? Well, he didn’t discuss that directly, but he talked very persuasively about how he has spent time working on investigative films that have exposed corruption in places like West Africa. To me, if you’re going to be working in the media prior to becoming a politician, it sounded like a great thing to have been doing.
Is he going to be able to reach across the aisle and attract some Republican support that is required to win a red-leaning district like this? He talked about his prior military background and his work exposing corruption. He made clear he is not going to be a fire-brand screaming at how horrible Republicans are. In fact, he made clear he will never attach voters. And me was very clear and direct that he knew he had to reach out to be successful.
One last thing I’ll say about him is he looks very young (and so does his staff), but he has a deep voice that sounds much older. He spoke very eloquently, not raising his voice much, but also making clear how embarrassing Trump was and our need to send a message. In answering questions, he seemed very knowledgeable and able to think on his feet. He’ll do very well giving a speech or in a debate with other candidates. Everyone I talked to after the event agreed that he did a great job, and we were very happy to have him as our candidate.
Today was my first canvassing event since Obama in 2008 (I’ve done voter registration and phone banks since, but no door-to-door). It’s always nice when you’re doing the Democratic outreach stuff (as opposed to persuasion), as you are usually knocking on friendly doors. Three of us went out together and hit about 90 apartments. Maybe 15 or so were home, and almost all of them knew did not know about this upcoming special election. You can really see how important it is to get out the word because several were quite excited to hear of our chance to send a message to our Fascist-in-Chief.
This was the first time I have done something directly with the campaign rather than through my local volunteer group. They seemed pretty well organized — they had canvassing packages with instructions and brochures to hand out, food and drinks, and several people showing you what to do. I had a picture of our training session, but I don't know how to insert a second picture. We grabbed the 43rd and 44th packages, and I would guess there were eventually 100 or so volunteers. I’d guess it will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 doors and 700 to 800 contacts that we accomplished. We really enjoyed it.
After getting home, we quickly cleaned our basement in time for the arrival of our newest house guest. We have agreed to house one of the campaign workers. It’s a great way to help our candidate, and if we’re lucky, we’ll get some awesome insight into how this type of campaign works. Our visitor is another young-un of 25, something the campaign seems to have a lot of. We only spoke briefly as he dropped his stuff off before he was out the door and back to work.
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