Flipping the Tenth: The day before

The Monday before election day I canvassed in Virginia's Tenth Congressional District to the west of me for three hours, completing my assignment of knocking on 47 doors (or at least walking by them) in the hopes of speaking to 75 registered voters inside those houses.  I was working a list that had been worked for the two days prior, with notes of conversations the Jennifer Wexton campaign volunteers had with persons who opened their doors and check marks for the designation, Not Home. My instructions were to knock on every door in the hopes of speaking to a person in those Not Home houses, and to converse again with those who had been actually contacted either or both of the two days before.

I was dubious about re-canvassing houses where the people had already said the day before that they were voting for Wexton or against Barbara Comstock, the two-term republican Congresswoman. My common sense doubt proved itself at the first two houses where occupants answered.  At the first, a child answered and declared who I was and who I was working for and asked to speak to her mother.  The young girl went off to get her mom, leaving the door ajar. A moment later the door invisibly closed and I heard the lock click.

At the next house where the door opened, a trim well groomed elderly man listened to my preamble and came out on the porch with a hard look on his face and announced that this was the third day in a row "you people" have come by and noting my University of Colorado cap I graduated from that university), said "You must have come straight from Colorado [where they have legalized recreational marijuana], been smoking' that weed, and think that if you bother me enough times I'll do what you want.  Take me off your list!"  My thoughts flashed back to my second day of canvassing where such a menace-laden situation had developed suddenly and the occupant threatened to shoot me.  I learned a long time ago (during my policeman days) that the best initial response is deescalation and I hurriedly and pointedly made scribbling marks on my clipboard, and looked up at him and winked.  His visage softening a little with hints of mirth, he said, "I have never voted for Comstock but by God this could put me over the edge.  Now, when you leave, young man, be careful going down those stairs so you don't fall or I'll surely get sued."  I apologized, said I could understand how he would feel annoyed, lamely blamed all those voters who stayed home in 2016 because the outcome was so "certain" and, uh, I was merely following orders.  We got to talking about old times and departed a few minutes later as friends waving goodbye to each other.  But I thereupon junked the experiment of chatting up yet again persons in houses where a pollster had already talked to the occupant(s) that weekend, marking the Not Home box as I walked by the house.

This quickened the completion of my dedicated list on this rain-soaked day, and all other persons I spoke with were positive and some even grateful that I came by.  I am very encouraged and fairly confident that this district will vote blue today after four decades of being in the republican column.  My reward for my final canvassing effort in the Tenth was running into my Congressman Don Beyer at the Wexton HQ, about to go out and canvass himself for Wexton.

Flipping the Tenth: The final Sunday

On a beautiful fall day I travelled twenty miles outside of the beltway to canvass in Virginia's Tenth Congressional District, held by the GOP for four decades. Not after tomorrow!

In an affluent compact subdivision of narrow culture-de-sacs sprouting off secondary through-roads like buds off a branch, I knocked on 59 doors in the hope of speaking to 81 registered voters and had a response from about half the houses.  The energy to vote was palpable as, unstated, a referendum on Trump two years in.  The door-answerer in a couple of houses gave me guarded, laconic answers to my conversational questions about how they were inclined to vote and I got the message to back off and I thanked them for speaking with me and left, realizing the favorable contrast of polite tight-lippedness to the unhinged threat to shoot me in the initial exchange, as happened to me further west in the district on my second day of canvassing.

I ran into a lot of pockets of fervent occupants on my dedicated who had plans for the whole household to vote for the democratic challenger Jennifer Wexton against the republican incumbent congresswoman Barbara Comstock. A man who answered at one house where I was seeking four registered voters said that he was a fifth occupant of the house, and all five were voting for Wexton.  Is that a signal of what's coming down tomorrow, or an outlier in this "safe" red district?

We're all Americans, and all (except for Indians) immigrants.  We all work together, and get together to point towards a greater future for our country, like the great cross-pollination of southerners and northerners, city-dwellers and rural boys, easterners and westerners in the great American wave of soldiers who swept across the Pacific and the Atlantic in WW2 winning that tragic conflagration by cooperating magnificently for a more humane world by the Greatest Generation, my parents and for many Americans, their grandparents.

Flipping the Tenth: The penultimate weekend

When I came home on Saturday after canvassing in Virginia's Tenth Congressional District, working to unseat two-term Congresswoman Barbara Comstock from this seat held by the GOP for four decades, I walked in my house to the news that the worst attack on Jews in American history had happened even while I was knocking on doors to put a check on Trump.  In this political climate of hatred and divisiveness driven by constant odious comments from the top, now realized in murderous actions by lunatics inspired by such rhetoric, I knew I had to go west to canvass in the tenth again on Sunday.

The campaign HQ of Comstock's democratic opponent, State Senator Jennifer Wexton, was humming.  Delegates Jennifer Boysko and Kathleen Murphy were there to knock on doors for the candidate.  I received a list of 43 houses with 60 voters to go contact in a subdivision full of closed end blocks emanating off a windy main road.

The block long neighborhoods were full of houses displaying American flags, vehicles sporting Tea Party license plates, and barking dogs in yards and houses signaling that a stranger was on the block.  I always went to the end of each cup-de-sac and then worked my way back towards my car, knocking on the designated doors as I backtracked.  I generally got a favorable response, as there were several voters in households on my list who were motivated to vote the democratic slate, seemingly as a negative reaction to the president with Comstock acting as his surrogate on the ballot.

The only overtly negative response I got was at one house where I was speaking with a 20 year-old listed voter when his father came to the porch and intervened, saying the household knew the positions of the candidates and he'd already voted in response to their positions on partial-birth abortions.  His glare told me that he was not a Wexton supporter and I asked his son if that was his position too.  The young man announced that he was not voting because of all the "noise" out there and I thanked them both for speaking with me and walked away, wondering if I had just started a war in that household or perhaps inadvertently put a vote, the son's, in the Comstock column when his hard-visaged father got through with him.

Vote on November 6th!

    

Flipping the Tenth in Virginia

Twice before I had gone far west on I-66 in Virginia to canvass for State Senator Jennifer Wexton, a democrat running against two-time republican incumbent Congresswoman Barbara Comstock in the Tenth Congressional District, a safe republican district for four decades that stretches from McLean to West Virginia, prompted by the sham Kavanaugh hearings and his bogus confirmation. Wexton is ahead in the polls, seemingly safely, due to anti-Trumpism that percolates through this educated and affluent district, especially in its furtherest east parts, but the polls have tightened, and the president's rhetoric, especially lately, has created a climate of hatred and division in the country, culminating in more than a dozen bombs being sent by an extreme Trumpite to journalists, Jews and democratic politicians, that has to be addressed by patriotic Americans, so I went down I-66 again on Saturday to knock on doors to ensure that the tenth flips and real change can begin.

I received a dedicated list of 41 doors to knock on in an large apartment complex of tall buildings encircling a central interior parking lot in Sterling, about 15 miles west of the beltway. The first thing I noticed as I walked alone into the inward facing series of long, fortress-like 4-story structures almost touching each other like a laager square, was the stairs I would be walking up on the outside of each building to reach the top floor--40. Two days later my calfs are still sore from walking up and down the equivalent of 108 flights of stairs but I knocked on every door except for those two or three designated doors in the two buildings that were clearly marked, No Solicitation.

The persons I spoke with in this complex were almost exclusively motivated to vote democratic, although some said they were undecided on the congrssional level because they did not know who Jennifer Wexton was, so I left behind with them a placard outing her positions. Some said their primary issues were education or health care, but surprisingly several said their main issue was immigration. This is an answer I heard more often when I was canvassing further west, in the predominantly republican sections of the state, in an exclusionary and fearful tone, but in this complex with many recent arrivals to the country, it was a different take on immigration, one that bespoke of welcoming those coming behind them and bringing their expertise and skills and drive to make America even greater, as the waves of preceding immigrants did.

I felt it was a 3-hour stint well done, and agreeably received, and I drove home blaring a Doors album on the CD player and happily went inside my house to turn on the news and relax. In my face again was the current state of America, a synagogue shot up in Pittsburgh, and I knew I would be heading west on the morrow again to try to make a difference in America beginning with adding a democratic seat to congress to start presenting a check on our wannabe strongman at top who is busy sowing division and discord and wrecking our country and its standing in the community of nations.