Looking Ahead

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis How to get involved in the elections, hands on The horrid terrorist attacks on our most important memorial day should remind us that our enemies are reviving, and Americans have to draw together in defense. We individuals can still be influential in choosing the country’s leadership by talking directly to the voters. Do the Koch Bros with their $400M and Sheldon Adelman with his $100M campaign swing funds really know how the people feel? A day on the telephone, talking with voters, might tell them something, particularly about the rape of Democracy that they are committing. Talking to voters is an experience this family has shared in a number of election years since the 1960s. Some New Yorkers already know how the public reacts in 2012, by participating in collecting of signatures on petitions designating candidates in primaries. The big national November 6 event is still ahead, with campaign professionals making not only strategy but also policy decisions for candidates. Apart from the task of finding and developing donors (at a 15% commission, with quantity and emergency discounts), what do the campaign managers do? In the campaign activity we laypeople are most familiar with, calling or visiting voters, they find campaign quarters, with telephones and address lists, and recruit workers, mostly from political club membership, then direct the workers’ calls or visits to areas where persuasive calling is most needed. An extreme was in the 1968 legendary Chicago Convention free-for-all, when some campaign workers from our then club, the late Murray Hill Reform Democrats, paid their way to the Convention, to help influence the delegates, in hoping to select Eugene McCarthy for presidency, over the machine’s favorite, Hubert Humphrey. Some of group actually climbed down the hotel’s dangerous fire ladder and through a window, to join the NY delegation’s caucus, until found and thrown out. To repeat, the mechanism for lay people to have impact on politics was belonging to an active political club, in our case the Murrays, one of the anti-Tammany Hall upstarts (the Tilden Club is another one), which, moved by Eleanor Roosevelt and Gov. Herbert Lehman, managed to turn the Dem machine of Carmine DeSapio upside down. With dues money, the club leased an office/meeting room with a capacity of maybe 10 sitting or 30 standing. Candidates visited us, officially, to proclaim their programs and ask for votes (and for financial help , minor league, by members). Fund raising was mostly by holding dinners, and beholden candidates came and took entire tables. Managing of campaigns was voluntary, and our District Leader Charles Kinsolving managed a handful of campaigns, including Herman Badillo’s several shots at Mayorality, and George McGovern’s 1972 Presidential campaign, just locally. Phone campaigns were difficult in pre digital days, the club rustled up registered Democrats’ lists and sometimes borrowed a friendly office with phones, after hours, or members took the lists home. We also got together in members’ homes, to meet candidates , or in candidates apartments, and brought picnic baskets. Since the popularity of digital gear, phoning has improved and increased. There were and are small primaries – NYS Assembly on September 13 – in an upstate art gallery, to which we came, with phones, and were surptised to find the instruments , provided by a campaign professional. We were there to call Working Family registered voters, to inform them that the 103rd Assembly District primary date of September 11 had been moved by two days, to honor the memorial, and to mark their calendars that Assemblyperson Didi Barrett was approved by their party, and that she had been working toward increasing employment by cutting taxes and using bailout funds. We had sheets of names, addresses and phone numbers, and we graded responses, 1 t0 5, or circled codes, for Not Home, Message Left, Moved, Phone Discontinued, Wrong Number, and other no-success events. In two hours, I made 25 plus calls, slowly because many people were not home, and one should try to make the message meaningful. I do not know the numbers, but in our own 74th AD, Assemblyman Brian Kavanaugh’s preliminary score is 1,607 votes, vs Juan Pagan’s 945, no word about GOP’s perennial candidate Frank Scala running. This was reminiscent of what we did in 2000 (for Al Gore), and 2004 (for John Kerry), driving to Allentown PA and Bethlehem PA, where. as informed by party sources, Democrats would have a hard time. We arrived the day before election, rented a cheap room in a special priced hotel, then made phone calls from a crowded center, using land lines leased for the occasion, also forming lots of “where you from?” instant friendships. The responses were decent, encouraging. Next, election day, the pros handed us marked Xerox maps and name and address lists, and we walked, street by street by street, in pairs, keeping up the spirits despite being tired, and getting some ambivalent and suspicious responses, but enough good ones to feel that the effort was worth it. For the 2008 Obama elect ion, the calls we made were from a union hall, in the Broadway/Wall Street are. We used our own cell phones, and the target voters were all over the Eastern seaboard. We would also explain the polling stations, and offer rides (complicated). But we won! Other hands-on electioneering involves volunteering to hand out literature and buttons near the polling place, usually a school (watch the legal distance limit!). You can also be a poll-watcher or results reporter back to the clubhouse or whatever hall, where the faithful gather to celebrate or say “next time “ to each other As for advice to activists, keep a positive attitude, cheerful voice and know some facts. And be certain that the election headquartes, tiny or large, have a decent bathroom. If you are ringing doorbells, most homeowners will respond. Good luck! Wally Dobelis regrets the recent typos.ed