I've written before about phonebanking for Obama in Ohio, but I've done a lot since then, and I thought I'd share the experiences of the last two days with you.
First of all, Obama's ground game is of historic proportions, both in size and talent. I'm at the Oxford, Ohio office--which was written about in this excellent article at the Huffington Post--under the command of the unquestionably awesome Patrick Frank. In the last few days, dozens of volunteers canvassed not only the college town areas (Oxford, OH is the home of Miami University) but the most rural areas on the edge of town and in the cornfields beyond.
On Monday, even more people showed up to hang up door hangers on the homes of sporadic and newly-registered Dems. The door hangers had information on what voters would need to bring to the polls, and where their polling station was. Whether we worked very quickly, had a large number of volunteers, or some combination of the two, we finished coating Oxford in door hangers by late afternoon, and Oxford Obama HQ started sending folks to Hamilton, Middletown, Fairfield, and other cities who needed extra boots on the ground.
I stuck around with a small group of our best phonebankers. In a rather surprising turn of events, West Chester, OH, one of the most conservative Republican areas of southeast Ohio, was being receptive to our phonebankers and canvassers. The West Chester Obama office provided pages and pages of names and numbers to call. I can only speak to my own results, but of the people I called who were home (which was less than two-thirds of the houses I called, just for scale) I only talked to 2 McCain supporters and 2 undecided voters. Everyone else in West Chester I talked to was voting for Obama.
We called and called until 9 PM, then started loading boxes of election materials into a rented van. Signs, buttons, door hangers, bottles of water, and--most importantly--clipboards of canvassing territories throughout Miami University, all of which we brought to a meeting of College Democrats in the third floor of the student union. They, in turn, provided us with sheet signs (the only college-approved way of putting signs up for anything) for Obama, pre-painted, prepped with strings and weights, and ready to go. One pair of students included a young Republican girl. The College Dems were surprised to see her, but she said that, ever since Colin Powell's endorsement, she was splitting her ticket. "I'm still a Republican." she said, "But I'm voting for Obama." We blitzed the campus with at least 50 signs from midnight to 1 AM, then I went home and collapsed, while at Obama HQ, things kept moving.
The next morning, I skipped my usual check of the morning blogs, and headed straight to HQ. The strategy for today was to hit all of our territory not once, not twice, but three times, checking voters off our lists as they voted, until we had all our support accounted for. I walked three canvassing routes, mostly near downtown Oxford. When I got back, all manner of delicious food was waiting to keep us going, thanks to the "Comfort Captains." I fed myself and made another run with a fellow volunteer to one of the poorest areas outside the city. We stopped at an ancient set of low-rent apartments, where men gathered in lawn chairs in the parking lot to drink beer and watch their kids play, while others gathered in little groups to watch my fellow canvasser and I knock on doors. Two encounters stay in my mind here.
The first was a guy who, along with some of his drinking buddies, asked me if I was voting for Obama. I pointed to the Obama buttons and stickers on my shirt and said
"Of course!"
"You know he's gonna be assassinated, right?"
"I hope not, but there's a lot of crazy people out there."
"Yeah, I heard about the two skinhead who wanted to kill him. Well, if he wants to die so badly, he can have it."
I left it at that, and moved on, but he caught me again later.
"Hey man, you know I was just playing with you. So, do you think he's going to win this thing?"
I told him about Dixville Notch, and how it had voted Republican in the last five elections (the one tidbit I remembered from my brief search of the blogs before I went to bed last night). "Obama won 15 to 6. Now that's change."
"Whoo-ee. Sure is. Hope he gets it."
The second encounter came as I was looking for a woman's apartment. I gave another woman who passed by the name, and asked if she'd voted yet.
"She hasn't, but don't knock on her door--she's a Republican through and through."
I checked "Not a Supporter" on my clipboard, and moved on. I didn't see the woman until right after I was about to leave.
"Hey, how can I vote for Obama?" she asked.
"Did you register?"
"Yeah. Someone registered me a while back."
"Great. Would you like a sample ballot?"
"Uh, sure...but I can't read."
"That's fine." I said, thinking on my feet. "You can just match up the letters on the ballot with the letters on the voting machine."
"Oh, OK!"
I walked her back to my canvassing partner, who didn't have sample ballots, but did have the notes his mother had used to vote.
"My mother's very sweet." he told our new voter.
"Oh good! I trust her!" she said.
We made sure she knew where to vote and what ID to bring, then she thanked us and walked away with a big smile on her face.
"That's one person who wouldn't have voted if it wasn't for you. Nice job."
I was speechless, wiping away a tear. You can understand why.
We drove back to HQ, where I picked up two more routes that needed to completed, as well as a new volunteer, a girl from the university who had just voted, and wandered in to see what was going on. I gave her some canvassing training as we drove back out into the country and finished what the last group hadn't. It was 4:30, and I noticed that the territory we were covering was already our third pass. We were running 3 hours ahead of schedule!
By the time I returned to HQ, the Oxford volunteers had done their jobs. All of the new and sporadic Dems on our list had their doors knocked on three times. Some volunteers were hitting the phones, trying to contact voters who hadn't been home earlier today, but I was sent out with two others to the inner city of Dayton, OH, where they were desperate for volunteers. We jumped in our cars and drove the hour (or 40 minutes if you sped like I did) to Dayton. I did a straw poll of presidential signs on the way. Preble County had all Obama signs, while McCain dominated Montgomery County. We got to Dayton, checked in, were assigned jobs as line managers (who keep folks in line and encouraged--telling them to STFIL, but more nicely), and also make sure nobody was disenfranchised. Three people were sent to one polling place where a McCain supporter had been hassling people earlier in the day. I was sent to a much quieter polling place. Indeed, it was empty. Most of Dayton's African American population had voted early, according to one of the two Obama line managers who had been in place since as early as 6:30 AM. We gave them the chicken and cookies and water that we'd brought from Dayton's Obama HQ, chatted with a woman from a voter protection group, and waited as 4 more people voted--hardly the line we'd been sent to manage. At 7:30, we packed up and headed home. Listening to NPR on the way, early exit polls showed Obama up by 5. That would shrink to a 51-47% Obama victory when all was said and done.
I drove back solo, listening to NPR more on the way. When Pennsylvania was called, I whooped with joy, already sure we'd done enough to win. I called my fiance and father and chatted excitedly about Vigo Country, IN and senate wins on the east coast. I sped back home to pick up some Chinese food for an election watch party. There were two guys working the counter--one an Obama supporter I had canvassed twice in the last week. He recognized me and we chatted about PA and the election. He went to get my order, and the other guy asked:
"You voted for Obama?"
"Two weeks ago, I've been working on his campaign since. You?"
"I've got a lot of family in small businesses, so I voted for McCain."
"Well, Obama's got a lot of exclusions for small businesses for health care, and a lot of small businesses don't make $250,000 a year in profits, so their taxes should go down. Trust me, you'll find something to cheer about with an Obama presidency. For me, it's health care. I'm one of those people with pre-existing medical conditions. I can buy my medicine or buy a Porsche each year, same cost. I just got off my parent's health insurance, and there's no insurance company in America that would cover me if they could avoid it. Obama's mom died in part because her insurance wouldn't cover her pre-existing conditions. If McCain does pull this out, I'll have to move to somewhere with nationalized health care. That's not American to me."
He nodded, and was clearly thinking about something, but I couldn't tell you what. I paid for my food, flashed a smile to the Obama supporter.
And then, I went home to watch the results. The rest, as they say, is history.