On Saturday I went out to Tom's River NJ to do some get-out-the-vote work for the Jon Runyan. Runyan is running against Jon Adler, a typical douchey Democrat who wants to save the freakin' world with your money. In covering the race from afar, it seemed like I should get a glove and get in the game.
Ace of Spades organized the event. Tagging along were Mr. Bingley (who blogs at the terrifically titled Coalition of the Swilling), ThisHeavenlyHell (a frequent commenter at Ace's place) and several other members of the Moron-Sphere (who forgot to e-mail or text me back with their handles). We all met at Runyan's campaign headquarters. At first I thought I'd be doing phone work, but instead the campaign coordinator dude asked us to do some voter canvassing of the district. It was beautiful Indian summer day for walking around the neighborhood, so I was stoked to get out of the HQ and see what the area was all about.
Toms River is actually much bigger than I had previously thought. Socio-economically speaking, it seemed fairly diverse as well. In getting to the neighborhood I was going to canvass, I drove past million dollar McMansions and worse-for-wear 1950's ranch homes, often within a few blocks of each other. The area we were canvassing was a middle/working class neighborhood. Nice homes, but nothing particularly massive or gaudy.
Better still, the people we talked to were overwhelmingly friendly. Beyond the very occasional rude jerk, squirrelly weirdo or overscheduled dude on their way out the door, it was all good in the hood. Granted, the way our canvassing lists were compiled, we were dealing with 'soft' Republicans for the most part. Even with that ideological semi-advantage, I still thought almost everybody was fairly rad to chat with for a few minutes. Many of these supposedly weak GOPers were not at all weak about expressing their intense dislike for President Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Often times, all we'd have to say to a person was "Jon Runyan is against Obama" and that would be good enough for them.
Afterwards we all gathered back at a local watering hole, scarfed down some tasty grub and quaffed a few hearty adult beverages. Discussions were made, predictions of Republican congressional gains were bandied about, jokes at Michelle Obama's expense were tossed around and a good time was had by all. Ace and the Morons are a great bunch of conversationalists and it was nice to geek out to some in-depth political inside baseball type stuff with all-around cool folks.
As far as the actual GOTV work, I gotta say it was really easy to do. I'm a grade-A doofus and if I can do it, anybody can. I didn't get on the phones, but it seemed like it would be fairly simple to grasp. I'd say walking the neighborhood was probably easier than making calls. You get to talk to people, throw a quick candidate biography/political position list at them and then remind them to vote on Election Day. QED.
So now you really have no excuse not to do this. If you're any sort of interested in conservative politics, you're 9/10's of the way to mastering canvassing/phone calls. The other 1/10 involves you just showing up. The GOTV link is here again, but if you don't want to do that just find a candidate you like, call up his or her campaign HQ (it'll be on the candidate's webpage) and ask what they need you to do. They'll be stoked that you volunteered for the cause and you'll be amped up from playing a small but vital role in kicking back the statist menace that threatens to kill the closest thing to paradise the Earth has ever seen.
Hey, there are way worse things you could be doing with your spare time.
Be The Wave, fellow conservatives.
BE. THE. WAVE.
Cross-posted at Blog De KingShamus. Thank you, Juliette.
