All the days are started to roll into one another. And it's only September 19th. We still have a month til early voting begins. Another three weeks til actual Election Day. And we're already in high gear.
Ah, where'd I leave off? Last update was Mike McIntyre's canvass. Not even a day of rest; we went west Sunday to canvass for Patty Philipps in Alamance County. She's absolutely amazing. It was great to have a very strong democratic woman (loves educational funding, Lillian's List endorsed, experienced councilwoman, etc.) after knocking on doors all day for a fairly conservative Democrat in an extremely conservative area.
We met over in Graham and canvassed most of the neighborhoods adjacent to what they would call "downtown." Really easy walks, and the rain held off; although it was really overcast all day. But whatever, my fair skin didn't get sunburnt so it was great. Actually, beyond great. Pretty damn incredible. We took six volunteers. For only two hours. And knocked on OVER 300 DOORS. Afterwards, we met back up with the campaign manager, Charlie, and he was blown away. Apparently we knocked out 1/20th of all the doors in their district. Which is a lot.
That's why I love local and state races. You show up for these large, national races, and it's so easy to get involved and be a part of this absolutely enormous team. But when you compare the relative impact you, yourself, are making on the campaign, it's so much more rewarding to end a day with a local race, because you're actually able to see the difference you're making: there are numbers that change simply because you went out and volunteered a couple of hours. And that's so rewarding to me.
Besides the weekend canvass, we also had our second general body meeting for the Young Dems on Monday. This week's theme was local elections. We had our lovely Lee Storrow (current town council member, UNC graduate in 2011, and former Young Dems president) swing by to speak a little on the impact Young Dems has made in the town of Chapel Hill over the past several years. Of course we loved him. After he finished, he introduced Bernadette Pelissier, who is running for a county position and really really involved with the transit tax up for a vote this November. She talked to us a good bit about the pros of the transit tax (which I believe we're all on-board with) before handing over the reins to Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt. He gave an incredibly impassioned speech about the need to be active in this campaign, always referencing the impact the Young Dems had in the past. In fact, after he was done, we had our best sign-up session yet. We had sooooo many people put their names down for our canvasses and phone banks this week.
In fact, speaking of phone banks, I just got back from one. It was by far our best of the year: we had 15 people make a total of OVER 300 CALLS for Deb McManus, who is running for the US House down in Chatham County in district 54. That is an enormous boost to her campaign. Her manager is actually Nathan Westmoreland, who not only graduated from Chapel Hill jut last year, but who I've also been great friends with since my first year here.
So yeah, it's been a great couple of days. Hopefully the rest of the week will finish suit.
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