How I Spent My Autumn Vacation

My reader, Nomi Hurwitz, has expressed interest in the tale of my campaign activities in Pennsylvania during the recent election. To satisfy her curiosity, here's how I came to be there.

I was planning all along to do something or other leading up to the election, so I took off work during the first week in November. My final decision was influenced by the McCain campaign's insistance that it was going to make its last throw of the dice in Pennsylvania. I was born and raised in northern Delaware, within thirty miles of Pennsylvania, and several close members of my family still live there. I could travel there during my vacation, get to spend some time with my family, and also sneak across the border to Pennsylvania to do some campaigning there for Obama. So that's what I did.

I spent Sunday driving from Rhode Island to Delaware and settling in with my parents. A quick perusal of mybarackobama.com found an Obama field office in nearby Chester, Pa., at Bethany Baptist Church. I set out there on Monday morning, and by a quarter past nine I was in the parking lot, greeting two women named Molly and Sara who were with the local campaign team. I spent the next eight hours in Chester, knocking on doors and leaving campaign literature. Most of the people in Chester are black, and somewhere between half and two thirds of the houses there had Obama-Biden lawn signs sitting out front. As is usually the case with door-knocking, most of the time there was nobody home, but on the rare occasions when there was, the people answering the door were usually happy to see me and assured me that they would be voting for Obama. I met several people who had attended a rally with Obama himself the week before.

Tuesday morning found me back at Bethany Baptist, and once more I was out knocking on doors, this time to sort out who had voted from who hadn't. The church basement where the Obama field office was located was a hive of activity, as volunteers arrived in a steady stream and were as quickly given orientation and canvassing packets and sent out again. There were boxes of campaign literature and door hangers, and at one end of the room was a widescreen TV tuned to CNN.

Canvassing is pretty lonely work. There's just you and a list of addresses to visit, and the day is spent going from one house to the next, and there's usually nobody home. When you finish canvassing an area and return to the field office, the constrast is startling. Suddenly, instead of being alone in a strange neighborhood, you're in a large room full of enthusiastic fellow campaigners, loud and bustling. All you want to do is sit down and soak in the energy, and it takes a conscious effort of will to get up, grab another canvassing packet, and head on out to another strange neighborhood to do some more lonely door knocking.

Twelve hours of canvassing finally ended at eight o'clock in the evening, when the polls closed in Pennsylvania. After that, those of us who remained in the field office sat around eating donated food and watching the returns come in on CNN. There was a big cheer when CNN called Pennsylvania for Obama (thereby driving the last nail in the McCain campaign's coffin), and we all started cleaning up. I left for Delaware around 9:30, then spent the next few hours watching the election returns in my parents' living room, grinning like an idiot when the polls closed on the west coast and the election was called for Obama. I stayed up long enough to see Obama's victory speech, then dragged myself off to bed.

Peter Martin for the win!

Yeah, so I'm a little late with the news.* So sue me.

Per the Rhode Island Board of Elections, the final results were:

Peter Martin - 2823 (54.7%)
Steve Coaty - 2336 (45.3%)

And the precinct breakdown was as follows:

2108 - Martin 313, Coaty 256
2109 - Martin 385, Coaty 410
2110 - Martin 422, Coaty 306
2111 - Martin 351, Coaty 317
2112 - Martin 449, Coaty 264
2113 - Martin 421, Coaty 378

As Prince Edmund Plantagenet might aptly say, "At last, a chance for some real power!"

For those of you interested in helping Peter celebrate his victory, you can join him at the Hibernian Hall at 2 Wellington Avenue from 4 to 8 P.M. on Sunday, November 16.

*In my defense, I was busy helping Barack Obama turn back the McCain onslaught in Pennsylvania, and you don't recover quickly from that sort of thing.