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We Held an Election Here

Posted November 11, 2008

With Election Day just a week behind us, we are joined by Penner, a Guest Whiner, community activist, and keen observer of what life has been like — and what people have been feeling — during these tumultuous times. Penner lives in a Battleground State. When every vote matters as much as it does here, it’s no wonder that neighbors are always looking out for “election signs.” And, acting on them.

We returned from a night out Saturday to find a yard sign for a Republican incumbent planted next to our Obama sign. (Since trash day approached and we didn’t want the sign, we stripped the plastic off it and saved the frame to recycle.)

Our street is one block long, and the neighbors get along so well that we share e-mails for every resident and throw an annual block party. But we are not all Democrats or Independents. Some neighbors play “sign games,” planting signs for obscure coroner races on each other’s property or creating signs on which they themselves run for dog-catcher.

On Sunday morning, I checked my email and found the neighborhood busybody had written us all with concern about “my family’s” sign going up and then down. She said one of her signs had been stolen. The firefighter on the block worried that the sign he’d “ordered” from the local campaign had never arrived. Turns out it had been delivered to the wrong lawn (ours). When I explained that we opposed that candidate, he termed that opposition “harsh.”

A young family on the street has never voted. But its mother of two became the only new voter registered last summer at the local church strawberry festival. A friend of our family, Dave, staffed the nonpartisan registration table and confided later his view that she’d vote Republican. Last week, an Obama sign went up in her yard. (Sometimes, any one of us can read the “election signs” wrong.) The black firefighter across the street was a McCain man (a fellow Annapolis grad) until Colin Powell’s endorsement.

All in all, our little street had over a dozen yard signs posted before the election.

This is no quaint little bedroom community. Outside of town, here in the Slate Belt, where I managed polling place lines including one at the local gun club, one can find some recent KKK history and unembarrassed lawn jockeys. My town, the county seat, has always been sort of integrated, yet racism (both institutional and individual) can be found in it everywhere. We’ve got Rust Belt labor troubles, town-gown tension, urban renewal, historic landmarks, a wild and scenic river, and an old boy network.

The local Obama HQ was in a vacant hair salon next door to a historic home from the 18th century. The roomier (and gorgeous) black church eleven blocks away became our staging area.

This election has been intensely local for us — a quality I attribute to Obama’s organization — and the election’s consequences will, I hope, continue to be intensely local, fostering civic engagement and civll discourse. I’m left with so many memories of experiences and emotions, people I won’t forget, moments that will stay with me forever. To those who wonder what the Election was truly like in a Battleground State, I offer these fragments:

“I have to fit in working at Larry’s with helping with food at Capitol Auto Parts in Bangor,” one volunteer told me, the day before the Election. “It will be a f**ed-up day. Then tomorrow, we all have off. I’m not working anywhere except at Capitol. George too. My kids have off school and they’ll just have to tag along or be cool here at home. I’m anxious for it all to be over.”

I’m sitting next to Fritz, who is making phone calls for Obama’s campaign. “Hello, this is Fritz.” Click. He turns to me. “How can they not be ‘interested’?” We keep making calls.

My friend Dave tells me about his own experience, which was exhausting, but exhilarating. He kept relaying information to Stephanie about voter lines. Every time she answered the phone she would rattle off, “Barack Obama’s Campaign for Change, this is Stephanie.” At one point, when it was clear that we had a massive turnout and that all the canvassing and phone banking had worked, Dave told her she should say, “This is Stephanie, making history!”

There has never been a Get-Out-The-Vote operation in this area as extensive as this one and although we will never know how many votes our part of it yielded, we can all be proud of the job we did together.

Early morning, on Election Day, I planted the first Obama signs among the many McCain-Palin’s near polling places in the Slate Belt. It’s a long day and we work hard. Late that night, at Larry Holmes’ Ringside Restaurant and Bar, someone told me, “Now my fiance and I can have children right away! I have my life back.”

On November 5th, everything has a heightened sense of reality. I pass two middle-aged white women on the street. One says, “I had no idea that electing a black president was such a big deal for black people.” “I’m glad you see that now. It’s a big deal for all of us,” the other replied.

This is the day when we emptied the downtown Obama HQ. Everytime we peel another poster or picture from the storefront windows and walls, we can’t throw it away. It goes into the pile to be claimed for posterity as the day goes on. A corner near the window is given over to piles of plastic food containers. Campaign cell phones are transported to the local shelter for victims of domestic violence.

A city public works employee pokes his head in to say, “you guys did such a great job,” over and over again. The security guard who’s been on the sidewalk outside for months now hangs out inside. Volunteer team leaders hand our paid staffer a gift — a spa day at this vacant salon’s new location.

Twice a day, for so long now, I’ve driven by here to ask what was needed. To do something. We need to make other such places for ourselves.

Someone, who happens to be a neuroscientist, says, “I wrote a poem after the last election. I am so glad to feel elation today instead of despair.”

Another person: “We have to stay together, not only to continue to help Obama with his agenda but also to maintain the meaningful relationships that grew out of this campaign. He brought us together.”

There are so many more memories. How can I possibly share them all? Our so-called “Phone Tree of Life” leader told us, “You were great overnight hosts who made a wonderful impression on the out-of-town canvassers. We had an incredible voter turnout and nowhere in any of these precincts did McCain have a lead — nowhere, and this was a battleground state!”

One person recalled, “I became involved in grassroots politics when a deeply felt resentment of G.W. Bush’s policies, especially regarding Iraq and our relations with the rest of the world, grew to a contained fury. This victory makes me feel as though I have finally coughed up a huge hair ball.”

It’s a week after the Election. Twelve election signs remain up on my block, as if we need to hold on to both the success of the coughed-up hair ball and the promise of hope.

We’ll work together again.

All politics is local — we held an election here.

Reader Comments

  1. Ms.M

    I’m wondering if people spend more time wondering who their neighbors are voting for when they live in a battleground state. AND trying to convince them to vote differently. Where I live, you pretty much just assume you know how people are going to vote. Does that mean we give each other more privacy? Does that matter?