(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)
Since the beginning of September, I’ve been volunteering my time every weekend (except for last weekend, when I was back in Connecticut) for PA-08 Democratic candidate Patrick Murphy. A recent DCCC internal poll showed Patrick up 4 points over his challenger, freshman GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick. A new independent poll by Keystone has Fitzpatrick up 9, but it includes a third-party candidate who won’t even be on the ballot, so it’s hard to take the results seriously. As the campaign enters the final countdown, the campaign’s GOTV machine has been humming to life as it prepares for Election Day. Two weeks ago was the first tuneup for the real thing, and today was a similar experience as well. Below the fold, I’ll talk about how the ground game looks with less than two weeks to go.
Before discussing some of the sentiment in the district, I do have to make one note: whatever Patrick’s campaign did with generating the canvassing and GOTV target sheets, it is a hell of a lot better than anything else I’ve ever seen used by a campaign. I’m pretty sure that all Democratic campaigns use the same database to get information from, but this is the first time I ever had all the people I was targeting listed on one sheet. Usually, canvassers receive bulky packets of addresses, some which only have 1 or 2 names on a sheet, and we’re forced to search through them to see exactly where we need to go. Nowadays, we’re given one page – addresses with names on one side and a map of the canvassing area (complete with marks of where the residences are approximately located) on the other. Additionally, the sheets actually have apartment numbers on them – something that I’ve repeatedly noted were missing in my other canvassing experiences. At one particular complex, where we had to knock on numerous doors that had no identification as to who lived where, this was a huge help.
One of the important lessons of Crashing The Gates is that single-interest groups that want to further their cause should not endorse members of a party that generally opposes their interest, even if the individual candidate supports that interest. Mike Fitzpatrick is known as something of an environmentalist, even though Progressive Punch gives him a rating barely above 50% on the issues. Nevertheless, that sort of mediocre ranking was good enough to garner the endorsement from the Sierra Club. In one of my previous entries on canvassing in PA-08, another volunteer who lives in the district said that environmental issues were fairly important at the local level, so the Sierra Club endorsement may mean something. At least Fitzpatrick’s campaign does; when I stepped off the train, I saw more green signs than I had seen before. Originally, I thought they were additional signs put up by PA State Senate candidate Paul Lang, but they all said ‘Sierra Club endorses Mike Fitzpatrick’ on them. The signs themselves are paid for by the Fitzpatrick campaign, but they are put up everywhere along Bristol Pike, one of the main roads that runs through Bucks County. Some staffers I spoke to were equally disappointed, but part of me wonders: why can’t the Sierra Club see that the GOP leadership – of which Mike Fitzpatrick is far from being a part of – has absolutely no interest in advancing their agenda? The Democratic Party needs to take a page from the Colorado state party and tell Democratic-friendly interest groups to see the bigger picture and work to get Democrats elected. I am unsure of how much this endorsement will help Fitzpatrick, but it sure doesn’t help our side.
Unfortunately, I was the only person from Penn to come out to do some ground work today (I think the recent break we had may have made some people forget that we’re in the middle of an important election), so I was paired up with John, a guy who lives in the district. This may have been the first time he was doing canvassing, but he has the same impression of the race that we all do – it’s a very tight race that will come down to the wire. Today, our assignment was to run a ‘drill’ of the actual GOTV operation that will be in place on Election Day. Our area of canvassing was in Levittown, in Bristol Township, not more than a few minutes from the campaign headquarters. Neighborhoods like these are where the Democratic base is in the 8th District, and in what could be shaping up with be an election ‘wave’, it’s important to make sure that Democrats are aware of who their candidates are and when Election Day is.
On a day that was extremely windy and oftentimes seemed as though a downpour was imminent, there were a good number of people home. If I had counted as contacts speaking to people who were at a particular residence but were not the person listed on my sheet, I probably had over a 50% contact rate, which is pretty good. The neighborhood, which was what I’d call working-middle class, had many more Murphy signs visibly than Fitzpatrick signs. For someone who is trying to call themselves ‘independent’, it probably doesn’t help when diehard GOP households group him with GOP gubernatorial nominee Lynn Swann and Sen. Rick Santorum, both of whom are heading towards double-digit defeats, if every poll that has been put out is to be believed. As I noted in the past, there have been rumors that Fitzpatrick’s campaign has been purposefully moving their publicly-posted lawn signs away from Santorum, as Bob Casey, Jr. is a much more popular figure in the Philadelphia suburbs. Additionally, Patrick’s campaign has been quite diligent in tying Fitzpatrick to Bush, someone the incumbent has been desperately running away from.
Instead of the traditional canvassing that occurs, the ‘drill’ that the GOTV operation is designed around is all about making quick contact. There’s not too much to report about sentiment, as we try not to stick around and get into lengthy conversations with the folks we speak with. A few people gave me a thumbs-up when I told them to vote for Patrick and the rest of the Democratic ticket on November 7. Others proclaimed themselves as registered Democrats and said they would be voting for us. One man who said he’d be voting for Democratic candidates claimed himself to be a registered Democrat, even though his official registration lists him as an unaffiliated voter. It’s a good time to be calling oneself a Democrat, it seems. One man I spoke to said he’d vote for us. “Who else is there to vote for?” he asked rhetorically. It’s the kind of attitude that’s more prevalent nowadays; people are beginning to recognize that voting for a Republican candidate, no matter how ‘moderate’ they claim to be, is an exercise in futility when it comes to change.
That being said, Patrick still has a name recognition problem – or Fitzpatrick’s lawn signs that do not denote his party affiliation are working to a degree. One lady I spoke to thought that Fitzpatrick was the Democratic candidate. While it’s definitely a good thing that we spoke to her, it’s evidence that even though he has gone on the air, done mailings for some time now, and has campaigned with both former president Bill Clinton and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Patrick is still an unknown quantity to many. And at another house I visited – an unaffiliated household – I was reminded of the area’s historically GOP roots. After letting the woman I was targeting know about voting for the Democratic ticket, she quickly declared, “No. I’m for all the Bush candidates!” It has to be the first time I’ve heard anything positive about Bush said on any of the canvasses I’ve done, including those where I’ve spoken to registered Republicans. There may also be a blessing in disguise, though; if that’s how most people think of the GOP candidates these days – as candidates associated with a highly unpopular Bush, instead of candidates of the Republican Party – it could make cross-over voting more palatable to undecided voters in the middle and on the right.
One particular house I visited warrants special mention, though. Composed of an unaffiliated couple, I hoped that they would be amenable to hearing about the Democratic ticket. Before I left, though, I was asked to stay and clarify Patrick’s position on Iraq. They had seen the Fitzpatrick ad that takes on the issue of putting Patrick in a negative light over what should be every Democrats’ strength, particularly his: Iraq. Essentially, it’s a clip of Patrick struggling to answer a question about the conflict on ‘Hardball’, and it could sway those who are undecided to support Fitzpatrick (even though his position on Iraq is much worse). I noted that the clip in question was old (if I recall correctly, it’s before the primary, and Patrick was a much more unpolished candidate) and that Patrick had come out with his own plan for how we should deal with Iraq. I hit on a couple of the basic points (bringing all of the National Guard home within 6 months; having a phased redeployment of our troops). The woman I spoke to nodded, and said that she wanted to know for a simple reason: her son is currently deployed, and he was injured yesterday in an attack. It’s hard to make a pitch after hearing that, and I pointed out that Patrick himself has seen combat over there and that he thinks we do need to change the course, not stay the course (I made a point to use that phrase), as Fitzpatrick would like. I gave them the campaign’s website and said that there was a comprehensive section on Iraq, and I thanked her for her time. She wanted to know ‘when the troops are coming home’, so once she reads about Patrick, hopefully she will vote for him. Personally, I think that if Patrick’s at the campaign headquarters and has 10-15 minutes to spare, he should make a personal visit. Reading about the issue is one thing, but if they hear it straight from the candidate, it could be quite helpful. 2 votes can make a difference in this race, and I suggested to the campaign that it’d be a good idea.
After returning to the office, I filled out some postcards the campaign was getting mailed out (we need to get the Family, Friends, and Neighbors tool that the campaign of CT-Sen Democratic nominee Ned Lamont uses in the hands of every campaign). I had a chance to speak with several people there – veterans, a couple of unnamed Kossacks who recognized me by my entries on the race, and a staffer for outgoing Sen. Mark Dayton (D-MN). It was interesting to hear about the reasons that Dayton decided not to run (one of the reasons was a rather honest admission – he believed he was not the best person to carry the DFL banner this year). There’s a very diverse group of people working to make sure Patrick gets elected – college students like myself, veterans of all ages, union workers – and if these trial runs are any indication, it’s just a matter of having enough volunteers on Election Day to get out the vote to put him over the top.