I'm staff on the Ellen Simon for Congress (AZ-01) campaign. The last couple of days have been especially crazy, so I thought to give those of you who aren't able to take this kind of job a bit of a peek at what it's like, I'd post a diary of them. I work in a field office in Flagstaff, about 50 miles from the campaign headquarters in Sedona; most of my job is recruiting volunteers and running phone banks and the like, although I'm also the campaign's data geek and sometimes get pulled to do research.
Friday, 9:00 AM (continued after the break...)
Friday, 9:00 AM: My car died a couple of months ago, and efforts to buy a new one have been unsuccessful so far. My roommate's bike has a problem that I haven't had time to repair, so she's on my bike today, and I'm walking the couple of miles to work. That's all right; it's another beautiful fall day in Flagstaff. But I overslept a bit, so the lost time is not so good. I stop at the grocery store on the way in and grab a box of green tea. I'm trying to keep my caffeine abuse under a modicum of control, at least until next week.
9:30 AM: Arrive at the office. A couple of the local stalwarts are loading up a pickup truck to go to the Western Navajo Nation Fair, in Tuba City. I can't in good conscience sit down at my desk while a pair of fifty-something ladies drag around tables and boxes of candidate lit, so there go my plans for the next half hour.
10:00 AM: Write a draft of my first campaign diary for Kos and send it to my communications director and a couple of my friends for criticism. My boss calls - he needs counts of voters who are doing early voting and meet various criteria, so I set that going. Discover some of my counties don't have early voting data in the database. Call the state party's data geek to find out who I need to yell at about that. Turns out it's the county recorders. Make a note to yell at them later. The comm director calls; my candidate needs to come up here to do an interview with the local TV station at 11:30.
10:30 AM: Send data to my boss. Munch some chocolate a volunteer was kind enough to give us. Realize this is the first thing I've eaten today. Contemplate that for a few seconds. Start cleaning up the office for the TV cameras; it's OK if it's messy because we work hard, but three-day-old coffee cups won't do. Urgent call from the folks on the way to Tuba City - their cell service is spotty, so they need me to call the state party's native american outreach person for them with some questions. Spend a good ten minutes tracking her down.
11:00 AM: Finally get to make myself a cup of that tea. Start fixing some problems with our volunteer database that meant some people haven't gotten our weekly messages. Start worrying about where my candidate is. TV guys show up; help them pick a spot where the lighting is decent, which means moving a staffer from another campaign from his desk for a while. Worry some more about where candidate is. Volunteer to help stuff envelopes turns up early; try to keep her and the TV guys entertained. Think about doing a juggling act with a few apples. Fortunately Ellen shows up at this point.
11:30 AM: Chat with the volunteer, who's new, and start setting up the envelope-stuffing assembly line. Staff from main office arrive with the rest of the stuff for the mailing, which is a fundraising push to 3,000 people who've given us some money in the past. At three pieces per envelope, plus folding stuff and putting on mailing labels, this is going to take a while; go back to finish fixing that database problem. Start wondering where the rest of my volunteers are.
12:00 PM: Join the envelope stuffing squad. If you haven't done this before, you may not be able to imagine how tedious or time-consuming it is. Notice that my dad is on the recipients list. Resolve to keep an eye out for his envelope so I can write "Hi, Dad!" on it. Eventually most of the volunteers who signed up do arrive to help. Will be doing this the rest of the day; never do find that envelope. Ellen leaves for her next event. Post my Kos diary.
12:30 PM: Begin being interrupted with innumerable phone calls; most notably, trying to give Ellen and her staffer-for-the-day directions to that next event. I'm very bad at giving directions. Oy. Check the comments on my Kos diary for the first of at least a hundred times. Call an elections official - last night's phone bank hit a couple of independents who wanted to vote but are in Iraq; need to clarify what their options are. Turns out they've been sent ballots already but, no big surprise, haven't received them. They can vote by fax, if they can find a fax. Will call their families back tonight. Eat a bagel. Back to envelopes...
4:30 PM: Ellen is supposed to do a newspaper interview at 5:00, and the comm director had me print out some things she `absolutely HAD' to read before the interview. It would be good, then, if she got back soon. The newspaper reporter arrives. Try to chat her up while not saying anything that could in any conceivable way look bad in the next morning's paper. Sort out a map to our next event.
5:00 PM: Ellen arrives. Makes an excuse to the reporter so as to have ten minutes to read that stuff. Start packing lit and other materials for the next event, a meet-and-greet party at the house of a Hispanic supporter. Stuff a few more envelopes.
5:30 PM: Interview is still going. Since the event started at 5:00, this is worrisome. Finally it ends. Head over to the party. Suffer a major scare when it seems like we've driven too far and not gotten there yet. Turns out the map was just misleading.
6:00 PM: Event is going well, with Ellen and Secretary-of-State-candidate Israel Torres doing an excellent job speaking. I keep getting interrupted by cell phone calls. The folks at Tuba City desperately need me to join them tomorrow for the parade. Which means leaving town at about 3 AM. Great. Roommate wants to know when I'll be home; I tell her I have no real idea. Try and entertain a small child so she doesn't get bored and disrupt the party. Snag a healthy dinner of cheese, olives and cookies. Ask a volunteer to stand in for me at a meeting tomorrow, since I'll be at the parade.
7:00 PM: Return to office. Help the envelope-stuffers pack up; they'll have to do what's left tomorrow or something. Write a long message to my volunteer telling her what to say at the meeting. Chat with the local county chair about the meeting agenda. Realize I still need to produce and print a massive stack of walking lists for it. Start packing materials for the parade.
8:00 PM: Begin printing 2,100 pages of walking lists. Even on the big office laser printer I picked up for a song and repaired, this is going to take a while. Use the time to catch up on Kos and Eschaton; I'd gotten no news today. Eat more chocolate.
11:00 PM: Start walking back home. No point sleeping when I'm leaving in three hours, and what if my alarm didn't wake me? Instead I eat some leftovers, and spend the time trying to clean my disaster-zone of an apartment before something in the kitchen gains sentience and starts demanding the remote control.
3:15 AM: My ride to Tuba City shows up, and we're off into the desert on a rainy night.