I skipped today’s rally in downtown Madison and headed about 75 miles northeast, to the town of Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin. Fond Du Lac sits on the south shore of Lake Winnebago and is represented in the state Senate by the now infamous Randy Hopper. Hopper’s estranged wife made news a few days ago when she announced that her husband no longer lived in the district and was living in Madison with his 25-year-old girlfriend. The girlfriend recently got a state job at a 35% higher salary than the person she replaced. Her previous employer was “Persuasion Partners”, a lobbying firm that no doubt did some high-intensity persuadin’ on Mr. Hopper, who claims he had nothing to do with his mistress securing a cushy state job.
Uh huh. Right.
I went to Fond Du Lac to help gather signatures on a petition to force a recall election in Mr. Hopper’s senate district. I could have stayed a bit closer to home and volunteered in another district, but Hopper is such a sleaze-ball that I felt I had to drive the extra twenty miles.
Hopper’s corrupt and disgusting behavior gave me the extra motivation I needed to gather signatures. You see, I hate – absolutely hate – knocking on doors and talking to strangers. I would rather clean the toilets at the temporary recall headquarters than ask people I’ve never met to sign controversial petitions.
I did some phone banking for John Kerry. I went door-to-door for Barack Obama. I don’t like it but I do these things because they matter.
I was paired with another volunteer and assigned a couple of blocks of an established residential neighborhood that we were told has a high concentration of public employees. We each took one side of the street (I had the even numbers) and started knocking. We had lists of names and addresses and we were only directed to houses whose residents the organizers had some indication might be sympathetic to the cause.
Being Saturday, a lot of people were not home (or were hiding from the stranger with the clipboard) but we got a good number of people to at least open the door.
“Hi, my name is Giles Goat Boy (not my real name) and I’m volunteering with the campaign to recall state Senator Hopper. Were you aware that there is a drive underway to recall the senator?”
Answered ranged from “Oh, yeah, where do I sign?” to “Yep, I already signed” to “No thanks” to “Absolutely not!”
I didn’t have to do much more explaining at most houses, but I did tell a couple people about why I was involved in the recall and about all the budget cuts and union-busting going on. By accident I knocked on the door of one house that was not on my list. It was a group home. The nice young woman who was working there said she really didn’t know much about it, so I gave her a few details. She took a flyer but didn’t want to sign while working for fear it might get her in trouble with her employer.
Nobody was rude. This is Wisconsin, after all. Interestingly, people who signed my paper or had previously signed the petition were eager to talk about the issues. I had a college student tell me that it looked like he was going to lose some grant money and that his tuition was going way up. One woman, in her bathrobe and with two half-dressed kids running around, was all smiles. Her husband is a state worker, she told me.
The man who answered firmly “Absolutely not!”, who looked to be of retirement age, was closing his door when his friend rushed out to engage me in conversation.
“Do you know what Roosevelt said about public unions?” he asked.
“Yes, I do,” I answered neutrally and nodded.
He then went on to explain all sorts of personal details about his social security disability, his wife’s troubles at her non-union job, and that Scott Walker was doing things right and everything was Obama’s fault.
Huh?
I nodded a lot. He went on and on, hitting all the talking points he’s learned from Fox News this past month, unaware that the examples he used from his own life contradicted all the Fox propaganda. I had a very similar one-sided conversation with a Tea Party protestor on the capitol square a few weeks ago. As I had with that man, I nodded and nodded, and finally shook the man’s hand and said “I got a lot of doors to knock on. Nice talking to you,” but he continued on.
Finally his friend, the owner of the house, came back out and said “Come on! Are you going to debate this all day?”
I think he would have, and not just to delay me. He was very sincere, a little confused or overwhelmed by it all, and just wanted someone to listen. I might have made a good priest if I could have mustered up any belief in supernatural forces. I truly feel sorry for these older men. They have a look in their eye that I’m getting very good at noticing immediately. One of my fears, in addition to knocking on doors, is that I will become the "Get off my lawn!" guy in my neighborhood, so I recognize that trait in others easily.
The postman walking through the neighborhood asked us what we were up to. When we told him he said “Good. You saved me a stop” and signed the petition. We talked to him for a good 10 minutes. He is a steward for his union, and said he “grew up” during the civil rights era. Very interesting man who seemed very grounded and in the moment delivering the mail. He expressed a lot of admiration for Martin Luther King, Jr. and said it was too bad that so many people in towns like Fond Du Lac didn’t understand what King was doing for all people.
“There were almost no black people here, then” he said. “People thought it was just about the south.”
I got the sense that maybe there was a little more to his personal history. He, too, would have made a good priest. I imagine he is a well-liked postman who knows everyone on his route. The neighborhood is old enough that the mail is delivered door to door, not in mailboxes on the street.
For 2 hours work, we gathered about 10 signatures between us. Lots of folks, as I said, have already signed. There are a lot of volunteers, and the organizer said they just started going door-to-door. They have a lot of volunteers set up at roadside and parking lot stands, and I saw four people stop in to the office to sign the petition in the 20 minutes I was there.
I’m encouraged.