(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)
After a half-week of classes, in which I discovered that I will drown in work in my 6 classes, I was looking forward to going canvassing this morning for PA-08 Democratic nominee Patrick Murphy. At the opening meeting of the Penn College Democrats, where Patrick had spoken to a couple hundred of our members, we had notified members that we would be going canvassing – all expenses paid – in Bucks County for the Iraqi war veteran. To be honest, I was not sure what turnout would be like – when we had attempted to organize a similar canvassing effort for John Kerry in 2004, more students from Brown University showed up in the Philadelphia suburbs than there were Penn students. Needless to say, as one can see above, a good contingent of Penn Dems – 45 was the official count – woke up on a Saturday morning to go canvassing for Patrick. Most were freshmen, which was definitely a good sign. Below the fold is the rest of the day’s events…
Once we arrived in Levittown, we were driven over to the newly-opened campaign headquarters. Before canvassing training began for the uninitiated, campaign manager Scott Fairchild addressed us by standing on the greeting desk. His message was clear: we need to send change to Washington, and Patrick, being an Iraqi war veteran, is just the person to do the job. It seems that the Murphy campaign believes that raising Patrick’s name ID is the main goal to overcome, as an internal poll a couple months ago showed. I think that although this may be a good way to posit it to a large group of college students who may be largely unfamiliar with the candidate, I’m slightly worried that this may not be the best tack to take. Saying over and over that John Kerry was a veteran (and his opponent was a draft dodger) in 2004 didn’t seem to convince people that he was the best person to be president. To wit, I suggested to the volunteer coordinator that a broader focus in later canvassing needs to be about the issues – right now, the canvassing script literally includes no mention of any issues, and Fairchild informed us that we were not supposed to get into ‘policy debates’. However, if you tell everyone who has a policy question to go to your website, they’ll get the impression that we don’t know what Patrick stands for, and therefore, Patrick doesn’t stand for anything, even if his issues page is very thorough.
After that, the Penn Dems were split off into smaller groups for canvassing training. As an experienced canvasser, I decided to chat it up a little with the Democratic candidate for the PA State Assembly in the 142nd District, Chris King. He was taking time off from his campaign today to go canvassing for Patrick, although his flyer was attached to the literature we were handing out for Patrick. I learned that on the local level, the biggest issues are property taxes and environmental issues, such as open space and water quality, along with alternative energy sources, are big. He’s facing off against the incumbent, GOP State Rep. Matt Wright, who has been blasted for being one of the state legislators to vote for the infamous pay raise earlier this year. It’s a pay raise that rocked the primaries in May, when several senior members of the state legislature, including the State Senate Majority Leader and the President Pro Tempore (both Republicans) lost their primaries by wide margins. King said that polls showed he was doing well (I should’ve asked for more specifics, but I didn’t), and I wished him the best in his race.
Although I had come with the Penn Dems, my canvassing partner turned out to be someone who had come from New York to volunteer on Patrick’s campaign. Even more surprising was that this person recognized who I was. His name was Kevin, and he remembered me from the Ned Lamont campaign. Way back in July, I had driven him and a few others to Stamford during a canvassing trip in the more upper-class section of the city. Apparently, he’s going to be splitting his weekends between volunteering for Lamont in Connecticut and Patrick here in Pennsylvania, which is quite admirable. Although Kevin’s a lawyer by profession as of now, he said he’d gladly counsel any of the Penn students to not attend law school. He plans on eventually leaving the New York area (he actually lives in the same city that I do – White Plains) and heading down to Washington to work as a staffer on the Hill. He’s well aware that it’ll be a major paycut from his current job, but I got the impression he’d be a lot happier working in politics than he would as a lawyer. That’s the kind of spirit we need from my generation. Because of the travails we had in actually canvassing, we discussed many different subjects – the CT-Sen race, the VA-Sen race, the PA-08 race, much more about politics, and even a bit about sports. To say the least, Kevin’s the guy you’d want to have a tailgate party with before a game.
The original neighborhood we were supposed to canvass is pictured above. It’s called Shady Brook, and it’s a gated community of sorts in Middletown Township. After having incorrect directions to get there (Mapquest apparently thought a dead-end road kept going in a certain direction), we finally found our way to the residences. However, I was slightly worried that this may have been an incorrect place to canvass, as I had noticed a ‘Private Property, No Trespassing’ sign above. I called the campaign office to make sure that it was okay to canvass there. After being told it was, Kevin and I got out and began knocking on doors. I spoke with one woman who was busy but took some literature about Patrick. She seemed to be impressed with the little bit of his biography I spoke about while pulling out a flyer. Kevin spoke to a college professor who said things that would warm any Democrat’s heart: he believes that Rumsfeld should be fired and that Dick Cheney was ‘the biggest loser in the world’. Yet the college professor hadn’t decided and was hung up on an issue that I wouldn’t think a college professor – someone who ought to be more liberal than most – would not have near the top of their list: illegal immigration.
After this, we were called back by the office and told that it’d be best not to do any more canvassing in the area. That made sense, as it seemed like ordinarily, had there been someone in the checkpoint, we wouldn’t have been able to go through. Just as we were about to pull out, though, we got a call back saying that a high-ranking local Democratic official had informed us it would be okay to canvass the houses. So we jumped out and got ready to walk around the neighborhood when I got one last call informing us that someone higher up had said it’d be best if we didn’t canvass, as it would make the residents angry. We returned to the office to get a new canvassing assignment, but it was a shame that there was so much confusion about the matter – it shaved off a good 30-45 minutes of potential canvassing time that we would have had.
We returned to the office and received new turf to cover – one, unfortunately, that was much less than we had previously before. Once again, it was in Middletown Township, but this area, unlike the preceding area, was clearly middle class. In addition, I was a bit uncomfortable by the fact that many houses (definitely more than usual) had the American flag out at houses. While I’m not a big fan of flags, regardless of what nation they represent (that’s another discussion), I’ve internalized the association between portraying the American flag so openly and the Republican Party, where Bush and every big-time politician is wearing it on their lapel as if they need to show that yes, they are indeed patriots, even if their actions aren’t indicative of it. Nevertheless, I was prepared for a neighborhood that wasn’t as friendly.
As it turned out, as usual, there weren’t many people at home. In fact, I discovered that many people who answered the door would bullshit their way out of it, claiming that they were too busy. One woman said she was busy right after I had heard her turn her stereo on quite loudly, blasting what I would associate with putting one in a romantic mood. One person who was supposedly a registered Democrat made me wait at the door a full minute – she knew I was there, as her dogs were barking after I knocked – only to tell me rudely, “Please go away.” Kevin encountered many people who claimed to know about the race, but they seemed to show a complete lack of curiosity when it came to the issues or what was important to them. When you go canvassing, it often reveals that many people are quite ignorant about the issues and even about the candidates. Kevin spoke with a woman who was going to vote for Patrick because he was cute – which women tell me he is. Although he inquired about whether she had any issues that were important to her, she reaffirmed her support for Patrick merely on his looks.
I was able to speak with a few people. I approached one man as he was about to enter his car. Although he wasn’t on my list of people to contact (he lived at the same address), I approached him and made a pitch about Patrick. “Is he a Democrat or Republican?” he asked gruffly. I answered that he was a Democrat, after which came a lengthy silence, followed by a question about whether he ‘supported the war in Iraq’. I had to tred carefully, as saying ‘No’ outright could possibly lead to my answer being construed as against our soldiers – at least by the GOP’s twisted logic. Instead, I spoke about Patrick’s plan for bringing our troops home and gave him a flier. He didn’t give me an indication of what he believed, but I’d be inclined to believe he was probably a Republican, given his generally hostile attitude. One household knew about Patrick and said they’d vote for him, along with the entire slate of Democrats on the ticket. In addition, they took a lawn sign, which is important. Although Patrick’s opponent, GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, doesn’t have many lawn signs out, I have yet to see any Murphy lawn signs beyond the campaign headquarters. It’s a little discouraging, to say the least. Kevin also was able to sway one woman to support Patrick after talking about his positions on Iraq, energy, and other bread-and-butter issues.
The last person I spoke with on this canvassing trip deserves a paragraph all for himself. Initially, I wasn’t planning to spend much time chatting – after all, it was my second-to-last door to knock and I was looking forward to getting back to the office. However, this man wanted me to speak more about Patrick. The first issue I brought up was Iraq, where I spoke about Patrick’s belief that we need to redeploy our troops and focus more on the real war on terrorism. He guffawed at this and pointed out that terrorists acted in a completely different manner than we do – they strike quickly and disappear. This man supported immediate withdrawal from Iraq, but he believed that all the politicians – Republicans and Democrats alike – would push the same policy. Instead, he said that the United States should become a terrorist group itself – striking out against nations simply to instill fear in them of us. It seemed odd that he was calling our current foreign policy ‘passive’, and he thought we needed to be even more aggressive. After claiming not to be a ‘faggot Chink pinko treehugger’ (and then stating he wasn’t discriminatory), he backed off a little and said that we needed to have a more sensible foreign policy. I agreed and was about to go on my way when he returned to his rant about the U.S. becoming a terrorist state itself. He used what is an historically accurate analogy – the American Revolution – in claiming that we ‘created terrorism’. Towards the end, he said that we should put a death-row inmate on a plane and fly it into a building full of Muslims. To say the least, I tried to smile as little as possible without eliciting a reaction, and I simply mumbled incoherently occasionally. The man said he’d consider Patrick because of his beliefs on Iraq (he was visibly impressed when I told him that Patrick had served in this conflict, not Desert Storm as he had believed, and that he was a former prosecutor and a law professor). In addition, he said that he’d always been interested in running for local office, and he gave an indication that he was pissed off that local money was being spent on repaving roads when there were other things it could be spent on. He perused my canvassing clipboard and asked my name, after which he proclaimed, “You must be Irish!” (I’m half-Japanese). While it was a light-hearted way to end the conversation, I wondered how he could possibly be a Democrat with that kind of attitude.
Afterwards, Kevin and I returned to the campaign headquarters and hand-wrote postcards to leaners and undecided people we had chatted with. As the Penn Dems rolled in, some were clearly weary from the canvassing experience, but most seemed to have enjoyed it. One thing that seemed to occur a bit was that some people – remember, we canvassed Democrats and independents who vote Democratic in presidential elections – were voting for Fitzpatrick because they had known him in the past. Whether he be a ‘family friend’ or someone they had known in high school, he’s a local boy they believe has done good, and they’re going to vote for him not on the issues, but out of personal loyalty. I overheard one story where someone was vehemently claiming to campaign against Patrick because he wasn’t from the area – even though he grew up in Northeast Philadelphia and attended local colleges. To say the least, Fitzpatrick is definitely a known quantity, and it’s important to continue getting Patrick’s name out.
In the end, it was great to see so many Penn Dems, especially freshmen, come out for the canvassing. It’d be nice to see at least half of them (as one predicted) come back to volunteer, but it’ll be difficult to inspire students to keep coming out to do this once a week. Several times, I tried to speak to some about the importance of making sure they volunteered their time. Having a great candidate is a bonus – but this sign in Patrick’s office says it all:
We’ve got to keep hitting the streets up to Election Day.
