Desperate Times take one out of comfort zone – Canvassing

My involvement in politics has been limited aside from financial support. I did do some phone banking in 2016 and lots of postcards in 2024. While I had heard from others that canvassing was fun and rewarding, I was not convinced that would be the case for me.

The Robertson County Democratic Party Treasurer, Donna, has become a friend and she had never conversed either. The RCDP Chair was concerned that canvassing for the Primary Election would burn people out and they would not want to canvass for the General Election. He may be right given the level of energy members have been willing to put in so far, but I think people will engage for a a few hours of canvassing over a couple of weekends prior to the Primary. To NOT make an effort to get democratic voters engaged in selection of the candidate they will be hounded to vote for in the General election strikes me as one of the the many things that led to our defeat in 2024.

So Donna and I decided to go canvassing for a few hours as an experiment. I had a list of people and addresses in my district of Robertson County that had recently voted democratic. The list was not geographically arranged so I hand plotted addresses on a hard copy of a map to create an area to canvass. I then created a list of the addresses in “walking” order and we set out. I now know that the Vote Builder software can generate the map of neighborhoods for canvassing.

In 2.25 hours we walked 3 miles, visited 25 addresses, had 9 Doors answered and 8 conversations. One woman took materials for her daughter. We dropped materials at the other 14 addresses. This was a new development and everyone had cameras in their doorbells. After I started showing the Town Hall flyer in the camera, it seemed like more people came to the door. One person was aware and one person vaguely aware of the Special Election. People were VERY happy that we were out raising awareness about the Special Election. We developed a nice little rhythm going back and forth with our key points and we got more comfortable as we went. We had a great time.

Donna was so excited that she wanted to make a “training” video to share with her network of friends to encourage them to do some canvassing. We did this while she and her husband Mike were out at the Garden observing a podcast. Unfortunately I can’t upload the video without upgrading to a premium account.

We each introduced ourselves and then I did the initial talking and looked to her to do her part and she just stared back at me. I asked if she wanted to add anything and she said “NO”.

Well, our training video ended here. We tried a couple of more times but they didn’t record. Technology and older persons can make for interesting times. At least we try.

She sent the video out to her friends anyway and I am going to put it on Facebook. I am going to go way outside of my comfort zone on FB and ask for donations to the RCDP if I can include the ActBlue link. RCDP has very little money and the Chair is very uncomfortable asking for money. He says we need to start fundraising and need to plan a fundraising event which is way more work than directly telling members we need money. We have an Executive Committee of 28 people and a email list of over 250 names. In April I started a small monthly donation and encouraged the rest of the EC to do the same. Few, if any did.

It seems like the Robertson County Democrats have been in hiding for decades and while they enjoy the camaraderie and support that comes from the monthly meetings they can’t quite grasp the with enough sweat equity and money we have an opportunity with this Special Election to gain a Democratic seat in the US House. THIS IS A BFD.

Craig and I are doing everything we can to make things happen. Craig designed this to go with a RCDP flyer about our Town Hall that while informational (time and place) was not motivating. We are both so scared for our democracy that NOT doing everything we can think of is NOT an option for either one of us.

Donna and I are going to try to get some people out to canvass next weekend. It will be interesting to see if more people will have time after Labor Day.

Craig and I are unique in that we don’t have ties to the community so we don’t have a lot of other friend groups or activities to occupy our time and we don’t have grandkids’ events to go to. This means we don’t have many distractions as other RCDP members do. Hopefully our energy/fear will be infectious over the next few weeks.