No need to panic; John Laesch has not been replaced on the ballot. He is still running against Dennis Hastert. But Hastert has an unknown yet formidable foe:
Michelle, Phone-Bank Coordinator Extraordinaire.
Call her John Laesch's secret weapon. While the rest of us make it into the public eye from time to time, for most people, Michelle only exists as an e-mail address, or "in person" over the phone.
But in her phone bank domain, there is no one more effective, no one more determined, and no one more dedicated than Michelle. Except for John himself, I have come to believe there is no one Hastert needs to worry about more than the Michelles of this campaign.
We know the Hastert campaign monitors our diaries here, so they know a handful of our names, those of us who are Laesch staffers and Kossacks include our names and roles in our signature lines. They've probably also caught on to the fact that there are unnamed Kossacks who are our graphic designers, our researchers, and our sounding boards. But there are so many Michelles they have yet to identify, working behind the scenes, coordinating phone banks or making calls, canvassing for an afternoon or coordinating canvassing for an entire city.
It's a regular GOTV Army and now that they know about them too, they should be afraid, because Michelle is one of our captains. This particular GOTV Army has been training, doing voter id, persuading and even turning out early votes since October 16. And though our GOTV Army is strong and prepared, it is getting ready to go fearlessly face-to-face with the reputedly fearsome GOP 72 hour machine.
Michelle tells me she could use reinforcements.
So if you can lend an hour and half of your time and your cell phone minutes, maybe two, please e-mail Michelle, michelle@john06.com and she will welcome you gladly, provide you with detailed instructions, and a list of fifty phone numbers.
Can you help?