Today I took my long-promised plunge into supporting Joe Sestak in his run for Congress in Pennsylvania's District 7 against Curt Weldon. Step One: helping out with phone banking at Sestak HQ in Media, PA. It was a lot easier than I had imagined, and the results, while they may not knock you flat, I found pretty gratifying.
I showed up at headquarters and quickly got ushered to a corner to wait until a phone could be plugged in for me. This gave me a chance to observe what was going on - and there was plenty to observe. Men and women in suits met behind closed doors, staffers worked the phones signing up volunteers, people dropped by to pick up yard signs, lonely people with nothing else to do hung out and tried to discuss the issues with staffers and volunteers who were too busy to engage them, two guys were preparing something media-related on a lap top, a "reverse trick-or-treater" came by handing out Reese's Peanut Butter Cups from a plastic pumpkin, and I'm thinking, "Wow, this is already rewarding . . . "
Most of the staffers looked exhausted, and about half of them seemed to have bad colds. Take better care of yourselves, guys! There is still a ways to go. One staffer brought in soothing garlic soup as a curative - I'm sure that made for interesting times at today's staff meeting. But anything for the cause . . . .
Finally, I'm up. The assignment is straight-forward and well organized. I hope this isn't classified information: tonight, we are calling registered Republicans who have been previously identified as "undecided." You place the call and tally up the results - how many people did you actually talk to (the majority of the calls were to answering machines, and we were instructed not to leave messages, because we were trying to find out if any of the previously "undecideds" had now hopped over into the "decided" column), did they have any questions about "Joe's" stance on any of the issues, and finally, how are you planning to vote? They could answer "Sestak" (No. 1 on the tally sheet, of course), "Weldon" (No. 2; say no more), "Still undecided" (the deep thinkers, I guess), and "Declined/Refused." This last was just one category, but I mentally coded the rude ones as "Refused" and the polite ones as "Declined." (That'll teach `em . . . ) If they claimed they would vote for Sestak, we were supposed to ask them if they wanted to volunteer to help his campaign, but since these were all Republican responders, that didn't seem to me like a very productive line of questioning, so I usually abandoned it and moved on to the next call. Of those I did ask, there were no volunteers.
The phone bank coordinators provided a nicely worded script for the phone calls, along with a sheet succinctly listing the issues and both Sestak's and Weldon's position on each. There was also a list of answers to the tough questions that we might have got (I didn't, though) that responded to some of the negative campaign literature the Republicans have been sending out - most of it pretty lame, truthfully. They must not have found much dirt to dig up on Sestak.
If I had followed the script word for word, it would have sounded like exactly the kind of political call I hate to get myself, so I followed the guidelines of the script, but used my own words to sound a little less like a robot and more like an actual human being. I kept a big smile on my face so I would sound upbeat on the phone ("Democracy! It's crazy fun!"), and of course I was super polite, even on the rare occasions when someone got mad at me for calling (and I understand that it is frustrating when one gets a lot of political calls, so I didn't take it personally).
During the time I was there, I dialed about 85 calls. Among all the answering machines and no answers, I ended up talking to about 22 people - and five of them had decided to vote for Sestak since they were last called! Only one confessed to a planned vote for Weldon. Most of the rest of them declined to state their preference, and a few hold outs were still undecided - their fate is sealed, as I am sure they'll get another call from someone at Sestak headquarters pretty soon.
Of course, some people didn't want to talk at all, and a very few were openly hostile. I'm pretty sure a handful lied to me and said such-and-such wasn't home, when he/she probably was. Most were very polite, and just wanted to get off the phone as quickly as possible. At first, I felt bad at the prospect of disturbing the more elderly voters, but they generally turned out to be glad for the company! I had some very nice chats, but of course I couldn't linger over them.
My favorite chat was with an older-sounding woman who was in a deep quandary (and who is not?) about the war in Iraq. I loved that she was pondering this difficult issue so seriously. She foresaw grave consequences no matter what, and agonized over identifying the best of some really bad choices. She said, confidingly, "You know, I'm a Republican, but I just don't know what we should do about Iraq." I explained Sestak's position - that he had considerable military experience dealing with terrorism, and favored a measured troop draw-down to positions where they could deploy back to Iraq if needed, but could keep out of harm's way in the meantime. He thinks we've done pretty much everything we can in Iraq militarily, but that we still should provide plenty of economic and other support for the embryonic Iraq democracy. I asked her what other issues were of concern. She asked for Sestak's position on abortion. I said, "Well, he believes that women have the right to that choice." "Oh, dear," she said. "I am a Catholic." I said, "Oh, that makes it very hard, I know. It is a really difficult issue for everyone. But Joe Sestak does not believe that the government should have a say in a decision that is so private. It should be up to the woman to decide." She replied, "Yes, you are right, it should be up to the woman." I asked her for her voting preference (still undecided), and thanked her for her time. We parted friends. I like to think that maybe, the next time someone dials her from Sestak HQ, she won't be "undecided" anymore.