It’s crowded at Darcy Burner’s Bellevue headquarters, even more than it has been over the last month. I quit my job at Microsoft a couple of months ago (partly to do more politically, partly for family and it was just time) and have been spending time during the week working on Darcy’s campaign. I’ve done a bunch of different things from reading local newspapers looking for references to Darcy or her opponent, working on some spreadsheets and pivot charts for donors and voters, transcribing ads and debates, and of course, doing some phone calls.
Today the office was packed with people and phones. Every nook and corner of a desk was occupied by a person and a phone or a computer. The pizza rolled in around noon and there were home-baked cookies and lots of Halloween candy. I did some of the usual GOTV calls. Then the Obama folks (who share space in the office) had some of us working with the computer dialer, sort of like those telemarketing people use. We just hang on the line until we hear the beep and then start talking because there’s (usually) a real person on the line. Those calls were going all over Washington State. A lot of people had voted already and most who would say had voted for Obama & Gregoire (governor). (Since they were not necessarily in the 8th district, I don’t know about their congressional vote.) Some refused to talk, of course. I only got one person who said he voted for Obama but not Gregoire. I talked to one guy who said he tried to vote for Obama on a machine and the machine kept asking him why he would want to do that. I wasn’t sure if he was anti-Obama or not (but it was obvious he was making this up, joking around). Finally he said he had already voted for Obama and the straight Dem ticket. He said he was a veteran and liked McCain, but really disliked Palin. After a break I went back to calling 8th district voters the usual way.
I saw Darcy there and she gave me the fist bump. She said she was spending a lot of today calling voters, too. And I had the pleasure of getting to meet the awesome front pager mcjoan.
The office was humming with activity. Some discussing where to canvass based on the latest data coming from VoteBuilder (the tool that keeps all that voter data: Likely Dem, Strong Dem, etc., who’s already voted...). Some were lamenting how long it was likely to take before we would know the outcome of the race, because of the slow count of absentee votes. (The consensus is that we probably won’t know for sure until the next day, and if it’s really close, then the next week.) People were coming in to get their canvassing orders. Some volunteers had to be sent to the nearby Gregoire office to make calls, because every phone was occupied. And lots and lots of phone calls.
So tomorrow, I’ll be there doing the same thing one more day and then we wait for the results. I can tell you this. Everyone in Darcy’s office is very very grateful for all of the visibility that kos and mcjoan and Matt Stoller (OpenLeft) have given WA-08, and for all of the incredible support the DailyKos community and the entire NetRoots community has shown for this race. I think we're going to win this.
One more day.