Confessions of a DFL door knocker
Thursday, November 06, 2008 at 12:04 pm
- 4 Comments
You know who we haven’t heard from enough? Those door knockers who walked themselves wobbly in the months, weeks, days, and hours before the election. Lord knows they have stories. Annette Price was one of those door knockers. By the time polls closed on Tuesday she was sure she had met every kind of crazy. Here’s a snapshot from a single Minneapolis block:
There was the guy who said he couldn’t go to the polls because his wife upstairs was “under the influence.”
“As it turned out,” Price says, “so was he.”
The couple was going to be voting for “The Maverick,” he told her. “Then he asked us if we thought The Maverick was drunk today.”
Then there was the woman who “wanted things to be the way they used to be, when election day campaigning was illegal.” She said she’d be writing the DFL immediately to protest.
And there was the screamer. “The man yelled so loudly at my canvassing partner I could hear him three houses down and across the street. He wants us to stop ‘harassing’ him and resented our using the hangtag to identify his house as a ‘do not knock’ for evening canvassers.”
“Oh!” he shouted. “So I have to be tagged now!?!”
Finally–on that block–there was Crazy Eyes. “He kept firing question after question at me,” Price says.
“Are you canvassing all over the state?”
“Yes.”
“Are you canvassing all over the country?”
“Yup.”
“Are you canvassing in Republican areas?”
“Nope, the campaign IDs Republican households.”
Then this zinger: “Are you going to keep canvassing after the election?”
“He was getting physically agitated at this point,” says Price. “I bade him a good day and walked off. He seemed disappointed at my sudden disengagement with him.”
4 Comments
Comment posted November 6, 2008 @ 12:28 pm
I met some really nice people door knocking. I avoided the McCain Palin sign houses. It is the best way to get out the vote. Sure beats the robo calls.
Comment posted November 6, 2008 @ 2:10 pm
@lazercat — Oh, I met a lot of great people too. I highly recommend canvassing, and I’d do it again.
I wanted to clarify, as was mentioned in the story, these were *not* McCain Palin households. It bears repeating, because the Obama campaign was the most organized and efficient I’ve ever seen [and I've worked with quite a few over the years]. The campaign made sure to flag the Republican households on our canvassing materials, since we did not want to work our butts off to get out *that* vote, naturally.
—AP
Comment posted November 6, 2008 @ 3:37 pm
I knocked on a door in South Minneapolis and a lady came out from around back with fire in her eyes. I asked if she planned to vote today. “Yes and if I get one more phone call or door knock from the DFL I’m going to vote Republican.” As she walked away she muttered, “Yes, I am going to vote.” “Promise” I asked. “Yes, I promise” as she disappeared behind the house.
Another much friendlier gentleman seemed impressed by the DFL canvassing effort. For some reason he was not flagged as a Republican. He remarked, “Your party is really strong this year, I haven’t seen one republican out here.” His door was knocked by DFL volunteers on 3 separate occasions.
Comment posted November 7, 2008 @ 12:42 am
It was definitely well organized. I did some of the voter ID doorknocking earlier in the campaign to identify the republicans and crazies. I did think three times were overkill, because while it increased the chances of contacting someone once, the people who answered the door three times found it irritating. I got three canvassers, even though I had a slough of DFL signs in my hard. We still have some improving to do, like skipping yards with signs, and the door hangers need to have instructions printed on them to turn them to one side to avoid being canvassed again. Though having that systems was a great idea. I knocked the late shift two years ago, and almost everyone who answered the door had voted. I’ll also add that election day seems like the least useful day for knocking, because people are gone or have voted already.
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