| I met Tom Bowen a couple years ago on the Tammy Duclworth campaign. I ran into him at Yearly Kos last summer and he told me he was Bill Foster's campaign manager. Didn't know much about Foster at the time but I figured he must be doing something right to have Tom on board.
I heard we turned out about 700 volunteers on election day. We knocked on doors in our targeted precincts at least two and most of them three times yesterday out of the IBEW Hall in Warrenville.
Bill Foster himself wrote the software that pointed us to the right doorsteps. The bottom of every list had the name and address of the polling place. The back side had a map of the precinct. 2 minutes in the car looking at that map and list would help you figure your route in a neighborhood you'd never seen and maximize your time. No wasted effort at all. Patrick Murphy (PA-08) credits Foster's software with his volunteers' ability to knock on a phenomenal 200,000 doors in the last 48 hours of his race 2006. I wouldn't be surprised if we crushed that number on Saturday alone.
Scott Harper IL-13 candidate, had his staffers recruiting volunteers for Foster for over a month. I ran into him doorknocking in a barrio precinct in Aurora next to one I was doing yesterday. Scott literally walks the walk.
Jan Schakowsky (IL-9), sent staff just as she's done time and time again for about every competitive race I've seen out here. I understand she too walked a precinct. Anytime you see one of her guys like Alex Armour around you know something is getting done right. Melissa Bean (IL-08) and Dan Seals (soon to be IL-10) sent people too. Alexi Giannoulias our up and coming Treasurer helped out. The unions were all in.
Obama turned over his mybarackobama.com phonebanking set up to anyone who wanted make calls for Foster nationwide. Barack made a commercial for him and he and Durbin sent out a bunch of fundraising emails. Even the new DuPage County Dem chairman took time out from patting himself on the back to issue a press release about 3 pm on election day steering people to Obama's phonebanking site.
Late in the day one of the women came down from the phone room at the IBEW Hall to complain to one of the staffers that voters were saying they were getting too many phonecalls. That's not half the credit that's due but I'd be here all day writing this if I tried to make a complete list.
In Dekalb, home of Northern Illinois University where that awful shooting happened a few weeks ago and spring break started Friday, where you'd think kids couldn't get out of town fast enough they had more volunteers than they knew what to do with.
Some poor hispanics in Aurora, who'd evidently never seen anyone in their neighborhood, let alone at their door before asking for their vote clutched my Foster doorhanger like I was giving them their own personal copy of the constitution.
More than once I was greeted at the door by the patriarch of the family, a wizened old Mexican grandpa with gnarled hands, weather beaten face, shock of white hair and not an ounce of fat on his frame, or the grandmother wiping her hands on her apron, standing with the grandkids, the whole wide eyed brood behind them, looking at her or him, looking at me, sizing me up wondering whether this white guy on their step meant trouble. I didn't know if they understood me, they were mostly silent with stonefaced skepticism as I explained Foster is the Democrat, Oberweis the Republican, (his name would invaribly draw winces or looks of disgust), March 8 was the date and we needed their votes. Then they'd reach for the flyer and thank me. As I walked away I'd hear them calling out to everyone in the house. Rounding up the whole family, getting them together and laying down the law, telling them we are doing this, Saturday March 8, you will be here, don't forget, and we will all go together. There'd be 5 or 6 registered voters in some of these homes, all with the same last name. Man I gotta tell ya, a response like that will keep you warm all day.
Hillary did make one inadvertent contribution. Foster had a boatload of really good young ex Hillary staffers who left after IA or OH. Most of them weren't very happy with the top down disregard for their feedback about what was killing her campaign on the ground. They came here with some residual loyalty to her but after they saw what Obama coattails can do the last couple of days I think they're all converts.
We cranked this win out in the bitter cold. I felt like I was doorhanging on the Russian steppe Friday, a howling wind on the flat treeless prairie in a below zero windchill in a newer subdivision. Absolutely no windbreaks. My eyes were getting so bleary I could barely read the list. The ground was too frozen to hammer in yard signs all month. Luckily we had large snow piles we could jam them into until the last week. Just build mounds of snow around the legs to withstand the wind and hope for the best.
We said please come to Chicago and they came from all over. The first two guys I met Saturday at the Electricians' Union Hall at 9:30am were from Boston and Ohio. I drove half an hour out of my district to Geneva every other day and then another hour out to Elgin or Aurora to canvass. Some of these folks drove halfway across country.
We showed you it can be done and how to do it Democrats of America. The opening shots of 2008 have been fired. We've taken the first fight and gutted their morale and fundraising.
We've put a Fermi Lab physicist with the endorsement of 28 Nobel winners in the US House. The Enlightenment is back. And that's just for starters. |
