Election Time

I have never been involved in a presidential campaign as I was this past election. Not just keeping up on the issues of the campaign, or the rhetoric bantered between both parties, or issues that effect me personally. This election I volunteered at one of the local Tampa offices to lend my support and effort to help Mitt Romney with this extremely important election.

As we all now know, his campaign was unsuccessful. But I sure did learn and experience quite a bit.

Initially I was working just two nights a week, a couple hours each night, and a few hours on Saturday. This started in late September and quickly grew to many more hours each week and exploded to about 60 hours the last seven days of the campaign. I got caught up in the activities, the workload, and my belief in the candidate being the absolutely right man for the job.

I met some wonderful volunteers while working the campaign as well as having some quite interesting phone conversations during the six weeks I worked.

Originally my job was to work the phone bank. When I first started I was calling throughout the state of Florida with the sole mission of getting voters interested in voting by mail - the absentee ballot as it is called.  This activity was fairly calm and boring with one exception. Early on I spoke with a woman that, after identifying that I was volunteering for the Romney campaign, proceeded to yell and scream at me regarding how she hated Mitt Romney. Even though I wanted to pursue her anger and ask what he had done to her, I knew that would be pointless. I politely thanked her for her time and hung up. Gee, I wonder what party affiliation she was associated with.

After a couple nights of doing this, I was promoted(?) to making recruiting calls. I would spend the evenings calling registered republicans to ask if they would give of their time to help with the phone banks or neighborhood walks/door knocking. This, too, was fairly routine and boring, although for me it posed some challenge as I had to ask someone to help and donate their time. I am not comfortable with this. But actually I became somewhat good at this. Even though I had a script to work from, through trial and error, I figured out what to say to get better responses. No crazy phone calls with the recruiting calls, but it is amazing how many people are out of town on weekends when you ask for their time.

As election day drew near and I was not recruiting on the phone, our mission with phone calls changed. We now calling registered republicans and independents asking if the Republican Party and Mitt Romney could count on their support for the election. The volunteers also grew tremendously during this time. By the middle of October we would have in excess of 100 callers on any given Saturday and even more doing neighborhood walks. The intensity and dedication was impressive. The phone calls were still being made statewide while the door knocking was in the greater Tampa area. I was now recruiting during the week and phone banking on the weekends, which grew from a few hours on Saturday to a larger time on Saturday and more hours on Sunday.

Because of the intensity of this election in such a heated, battleground state as Florida, calls to potential voters became constant and overwhelming for many of them. Some became irritable, which I understand, but the calls were necessary. We were now pursuing early voting in addition to the absentee balloting.

I spoke with many, many people during this phase. Most were pleasant and understanding of what we were attempting to do. I often heard "thank You for volunteering your time" from the individual I called. As November 6 grew near though, the general public became very tired of the calls so I started hearing all kind of comments.

*I had one person asked me who Mitt Romney is. And he was serious with that question. Obviously I didn't need to continue that conversation.
*When I asked another person if we could count on his support on election day, he laced his response with the "F" bomb. He said he would vote for "F'ing Obama if we didn't quit F'ing calling him every F'ing day. That call ended abruptly also.
*I spoke to people that didn't know when election day was.
*I spoke with a gentleman who told me he just got home from the hospital for leukemia treatment, that he was dieing but was voting for Romney.
*I had another call where a woman answered. I asked for her husband and she informed me that he had just died last week but she assured me that he sent his ballot in and that he voted for Romney.
*Another woman informed me that she and her husband were both voting for Mitt Romney. She then told me that she told her children if they did not vote for Romney she was taking them out of her will. And she also assured me she would do just that.
*When door knocking, I had one man immediately respond with "What the hell do you want". I hadn't said a word, but I did have a Romney hat on.

Through the course of the six, or so, weeks that I worked at the campaign office, we had news crews from England and Australia stop by. We also had USA Today, The New York Times, Fox News, ABC, and all the locals come by to see what we were doing. I've heard that I was on a Fox News clip showing the last Romney Rally.

Because of my efforts on the phones, training other volunteers on the phones, and doing a week of door knocking, I was given a VIP pass to the final two Romney Rallies in the area. It was great. On both occasions I had the privilege of shaking Mr. Romney's hand and at the second one I spoke with him for a minute. I met Senator John McCain, Senator Marco Rubio, State Attorney General Pam Bondi, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and Congressman Connie Mack. I was also invited to the Republican Election Night party at the downtown Hyatt. Unfortunately it turned out to  be not much of a party.

 Even though Mitt Romney was not successful in his bid to win the presidency, I feel like I gave my all and I don't have to worry whether I could have done more. Again, it was quite the experience and I met some wonderful people.