It's politics 101, you phone bank to ID voters and raise your own name recognition and give you a benchmark on how your campaign's doing so far. It's basic stuff. In the Pennsylvania 9th Congressional district; however, the land that time and it seems the Democrats have forgotten, it's never quite that simple.
What follows are accounts of real phone bank responses.
I'm new to active politics so I've never seen a phone bank script before, never made those calls; I've been on the receiving end of a few, but this is the first time I've made them.
But before we get to that, let me give you a little background.
Someone once described Pennsylvania as Pittsburgh on one end, Philly on the other and Alabama in the middle, which is a terrible thing to say about Alabama but you get the point. The PA-9th would be the base of that so called "T" section of PA. Gerrymandering by the GOP has created a monstrous district, some 15 counties are represented and the GOP has had them pretty much to themselves since the 70's, the 1870's. Since the 1970's it's been Shuster, first Bud and now Bill "bud-lite" Shuster who initially got the job by appointment after Bud was featured on a "60 minutes" expose. They rule the district with a small carrot and very big stick.
The Democrats have been wasting away, in large part of the District, Democratic County Committees meet only twice a year, even in Blair County, where there is a decent size city, Altoona, the Democratic Committee has been meeting once a month but only now does it have a small core of activists trying to actually win an election or two.
Enter Tony Barr, a teacher from Claysburg PA, young, smart, energetic, personable, and willing to at least try to take on a monster. Of course, I want to help his campaign, Tony would make a great Congressman, of course I want to help rid PA and America of the bushites, of course, I want to end the career of milquetoast political wannabe whose very initials are B. S. It's a seat in Congress not hereditary title
So what can I do? I can blog...duh and I can help on the phone banks, something I've never done before but what the hell. I get my script. I get my list, I start dialin', the responses almost always sound like this;
Tony Barr?, Who? Running against Shuster?, omigod, that's amazing, you can count on my vote, can I volunteer?, can I contribute?, I don't ask them to volunteer, I don't ask for contributions, they offer, hell I'm not even at that point in the script, yet, then there is talk of issues which I won't bore you with, some of them are unique to PA but the call always ends with a very excited voter and a very motivated caller. It's not just me, it's every phone bank volunteer I've talked to about this. My point is that with a hostile media and less money than one might like to begin a campaign with, the Tony Barr for Congress campaign that began as a successful write-in is growing into a juggernaut.
All you pundits and campaign watchers who have long since written off the PA 9th as unwinnable by a Democrat would do well to list this campaign among the ones to watch.
Learn more about the Tony Barr campaign at:
http://www.tonybarr2006.com