I'll admit it -- the midterms kind of sucked.
Many of us out there working our butts off for months to help Democrats win their races, and it was painful to see candidate after candidate go down in defeat. Yes, there were bright spots -- like the Senate, where we held seats we didn't expect to -- but overall it was a depressing and frustrating election.
So did our efforts matter at all? You bet they did. Follow me below the fold for the tale of NY-1.
My last diary here was posted on November 1. I had just spent the weekend in NY-1 working to get Tim Bishop re-elected, and was on my way back out to GOTV on e-day. This was the last big push of a long slog that involved phonebanks in NYC and trips from the city to Long Island to knock on doors.
We started making calls in June and began running canvassing trips in late July. Our calls focused on several endangered NY Congressman, but the canvassing focused on the two districts we could reach most easily from the city -- the 19th, where John Hall serves and the 1st, home of Tim Bishop.
I organized trips to CD1, along with my fellow-organizer and friend, brooklynweaver. I ran the trips leaving from Manhattan and she from Brooklyn. Our teams met en route to Long Island, canvassed together all day, then rode back to the city in the evening.
I'll admit I felt pretty confident this fall; we had had pretty good experiences canvassing. Bishop is generally well liked in the district. The campaign was well organized and they seemed to have lots of callers and canvassers. Bishops opponent had a lot going against him, and a three-way primary race had already shed light on these negatives.
But beyond anecdotal evidence, there wasn't much to go on. Bishop might indeed be doing well, or he might not. There very little polling in CD1, especially in the last month. The one public poll available showed Bishop up by 13 points.
But we knew that one poll weeks out from election day wasn't much to go on, so we put our heads down and pushed ahead as if we were ten points down. And thank god we did.
On election night, Bishop was announced the winner by about 3500 votes, but that outcome was to change a few days later when a recanvass of the voting machines resulted in his opponent having a 300+ vote lead. There was immediate talk of hand recounts and legal challenges, and there were thousands of absentee and affidavit ballots still to be counted. The only thing were were pretty sure of was that someone was going to win by a very narrow margin.
The counting of those ballots began last week. I've spent the past week frantically doing Google searches each night to get updates, and every day Bishop was gaining votes. By Friday he was up by 30 votes. As of this evening, with the counting completed, Bishop has a lead of 235 votes. There are still about 2000 ballots that were challenged (most challenged by his opponent), but it is now expected that Bishop will prevail. Halle-freakin-lujah!
I'm sure you all know the moral of this story, right?
Phone calls and door knocking aren't going to win every race, but they will win some of them. And if we're out there doing the work, the close races can be tipped in our favor.
Our efforts matter. Every volunteer -- every call and door knock -- matter. Every person who decides to do one more canvass before quitting for the day, or who decides to stop in the office to make calls for an hour on their lunch break, each of you matters.
I can't express the immense gratitude I have for all the volunteers who worked so hard this election cycle. Win or lose, they were in it, and only by being in it can you make a difference. Thank you!!