get donkey! presents: Election 2004–The Road to the Precinct Chairpersonship
This afternoon at lunch, I dropped all 275 of my campaign postcards into the mailbox at the Heights post office. There is no getting out of it now. This campaign is for real.
Since early voting begins on Monday, I wanted to get the postcards out earlier in the week, but I ran into a few roadblocks that nearly derailed the entire operation. First, my crappy old HP 712C “printer” decided that the only color it would print was green. Even after I purchased new ink cartridges for it. I have hated this printer since the day I took it out of the box. It has never worked properly, and now it had decided to function as the G. Gordon Liddy of computer peripherals. Luckily, I convinced my campaign treasurer (Mrs. get donkey!) to allocate funds for the purchase of a new printer. On Tuesday, I welcomed my new printing department, Mr. Epson Stylus C84 (I highly recommend this printer, BTW), to the campaign staff. I unceremoniously exiled the blasted 712C to the attic where it will sit and rot in perpetuity.
The next problem involved a miscommunication between two Microsoft products designed to communicate with each other. I should have known better that to use an Access database, but it was all that was handy at the time. My tech department (me) is still working on porting the whole shebang over to mySQL and creating a web-based PHP application to manipulate the data, but I do not want to spend too much time on it until I actually find out if I have won.
Technical snafus behind me, by 10:00PM last night, I had all the postcards, and labels printed and by midnight had all the labels on the cards. On the way home for lunch this afternoon I picked up the stamps from the post office and feverishly adhered them to the cards while I scarfed down my luncheon salad. I also had to fight off the two cats that were determined to steal the rolls of stamps from me. Then it was back to the post office for the official launch of the campaign at the drive-up mailbox. I am not sure the guy in the car behind me was too impressed as I idled there feeding 275 postcards into the mail slot.
Now I guess I have to plan my next campaign activity. I am not sure how many people actually vote early for the Democratic Primary, so I do not know how effective it will be to block walk after this weekend, and I am not sure I can convince my chief of staff (Mrs. get donkey!) to go out canvassing with me this weekend. I guess the only way to find out is to do it. Unfortunately, because I got a bit of a late start and am understaffed, I don’t think there is much chance that I can cover my entire precinct between now and election-day. As voting precincts go, mine is spread out geographically with the northern half located in part of my neighborhood, and southern half located in another. A single, mile-long stretch of road divides the two halves. Visualize a dumbbell and you will get the picture (of the precinct, not of me). I think my game plan will be to start with the northern part for now and see how far I get. I will start on Redan, then go to Regan, then to Pecore, then to Railey, then to Cottage, then all the way to West Temple… Yeeeaaaargh!
Anyway, it will be interesting canvassing on my own behalf. I am not sure how many people are actually aware of what a Democratic Precinct Chair is, but I suppose it will be a good chance to get to know some neighbors. At least I know the candidate pretty well.
Rob,
Admittedly, my own road was a bit smoother sailing. I got appointed to fill a vacancy. All it took was getting an approval from my Senate District vacancy chair, showing up at the last county party meeting (which I’m not even 100% sure was even really necessary, but still), and that was it. Total campaign expenditure: $1 .. my car broke down on the way, so I bussed it on in. William Proxmire, eat your heart out!!!
That said, I do need to do a mailer for my State Rep.
Comment by Greg Wythe | 2/22/2004