100 Days and Counting

This past weekend marked 100 days until the election in November. I hosted a phone bank to call registered voters of various political parties and inclinations to identify supporters of President Obama. We need more volunteers in Lake Nona as the pace of grassroots organizing picks up.

Our small but very industrious phone crew included four new recruits to the effort. The challenge is to grow the team, with volunteers coming back again and again to events. I emailed about 100 people yesterday, inviting them to a phone bank tomorrow night. I will follow up with calls this evening to recruit volunteers. I will be delighted if eight people show up. I just keep emailing and calling.

Some of you have asked about my avatar, Eileen from the Obama campaign. Who do you think is making all those calls?

It Takes One

Michelle Obama announced a new campaign initiative just in time to save me from deep feelings of failure last Saturday. The theme is "It Takes One," and the goal is to have each person now working in the campaign bring in one more supporter. I kept this theme in mind after Vicki and I spent three hours on a very hot July afternoon registering voters in a small strip shopping center just north of my Lake Nona neighborhood. Our total results? You guessed it. One new voter registered. But hey! It Takes One.

Reaching out to at-risk kids

We registered to vote about 275 students at two alternative high schools during three events. The students range in age from 16 to 21. They are working toward their high school diplomas after dropping out or having difficulty in more traditional school settings. To provide educational value, we presented an overview of the history of voter rights in the United States, from the first days of the Republic to the present, and talked about the importance of voting for their futures. We then offered them the opportunity to register.

Did we connect with them? Maybe a few now have a greater understanding of how elections affect their lives. Will everyone who registered actually vote? Probably not. Do I believe that there will be more voters in that group than if we had not shown up with our PowerPoint and concern for their futures? Absolutely yes. My thanks to Vicki, Ramon, Joseph, Maria, Isa, Carol and Jeffrey for being part of our great voter registration team.

Fabric of Cosmos Meets Chaos of Campaign

Wow! What a week. As I was preparing for my first Lake Nona canvass for President Obama, the physicists at CERN announced that they had really found the Higgs boson, which gives mass to the universe so we can walk and talk and go on canvasses. Gail Collins was quick to show how this breakthrough discovery in particle physics can be a game-changer for our Presidential campaign in yesterday's column.

Torn between reading more about the Standard Model or the President's promises kept, I was once again reminded that political campaigns do not conform to the known laws of the universe. Chaos reigns. My current OFA handler called to tell me that the canvass was off. Quick pivot to a phone bank to invite supporters to hear the FLOTUS speak at UCF on Tuesday. I handed off to my avatar, Eileen from the Obama campaign, who is much better than I am at changing course quickly. We headed to Publix to get snacks for the next afternoon and reached out to everyone who had signed up to canvass about the change in plans. Our small but industrious group made 240 calls Saturday afternoon and signed up quite a few people for the event. A new member of our group was a one-man interpreter team; fluent in English, French, Spanish and Creole, he was the go-to person for a number of calls.

We will canvass for President Obama another day, secure in the knowledge that the Higgs boson is out there.