This is my first diary entry (although I've been a faithful reader for quite some time), so please bear with me.
As a field organizer in my state of Montana, I'm always curious whenever I see a canvasser or petitioner going about their business. Usually, a quick exchange lets me know exactly what the particular canvasser is doing and who they're doing it for. However, my experience with one group during our Western Montana Fair during the last few days has me asking a lot of questions.
My first encounter with the group happened last night when I saw the canvassers enter the building where my Missoula County Democrats booth was set up and I quickly recognized one of them as being Mike Spreadbury. If people have forgotten, Spreadbury was at the center of the lawsuits filed in AZ by the state's Demo Party.
Curious, I approached the group and asked one of them who they were canvassing for and I was told that they were a fundraising canvass for Greenpeace. This quickly struck me as funny because I just had just given money to a Greenpeace canvasser the day before who was in an official tee-shirt and had laminated full-color brochures, etc... This guy had a petition that he wouldn't show me (he had seen me leave the Demo booth).
Later, I approached Spreadbury and engaged him in a conversation where he told me he was from Missoula (my hometown). Then, later that night with a slightly different appearance and setting, I again small-talked with him and was told Massachusetts. Finally today, he explained he was from Arizona.
When I finally told him about all of the misinformation him and his group had given me, he accused me of being a "shadow" paid by Kerry and made accusations that I could be a member of a "shadow group" that ruined his attempts to gather petitions last weekend at a farmer's market. He then said that I should be aware that interfering with a canvass in Montana was illegal and that he had people that would prosecute -- to which I promptly said that I was sorry if I had interrupted him and was simply trying to figure out who they really were and bid him goodnight.
There are at least 5 of them here in Missoula, which doesn't make sense because Nader is already on the ballot here. The Greenpeace thing would be an explanation if they were truly working for them. However, I listened in on a conversation that the guy who claimed he was working for Greenpeace today and heard him solicit a Nader signature.
More than anything, I'm confused and I don't appreciate being lied to or patronized. Already, I've been mislead at least four times by this group and I'm ready to have their insurance credentials checked (our fair requires supplementary insurance for the event itself -- which I doubt they have) and get them booted.
Basically, are there any readers out there who can vouch for this groups' legitimacy or lack-thereof?