Ohio for Obama
Editors note: This is a guest post by my dear friend Jen Walling. Jen is a triple Illini who works in Democratic politics. She was a campus superstar while at Illinois, and played a leading role in the UIUC campus making a serious commitment to sustainability. She has also worked hard to create citizen police review boards in the Champaign-Urbana community. This weekend Jen was in Cincinati canvassing for Obama, and I invited her to write a guest post telling us about her experience. I’m thankful she has done so, and I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to comment!
~ by Jen Walling
When I got an invitation from a friend to canvas on Ohio for Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign a few weeks ago, I was skeptical and initially, I turned it down. I’m a busy person; what good would it do for me to go out to a state that I knew very little about? What impact could I have on race as huge as a presidential campaign? But as I watched the poll numbers in Ohio tighten over the past week, I knew that if I wanted to have a Democratic nominee that I would be proud to support, I would have to work for it.
Our group, made up of 110 Chicagoans including families, students, experienced politicos, and political neophytes left Chicago for Cincinnati on Friday. On Saturday and Sunday, we headed out to knock on doors all day long. Walk packets and canvas routes were expertly arranged by the Obama campaign.
My group of five canvassers knocked on doors in diverse areas of the city. We knocked on doors in areas that were clearly economically impoverished and in areas with million dollar homes. We spoke to rural residents and urban apartment dwellers. I thought that being from out of state might be a liability, but Ohio voters were impressed that we drove six hours for our candidate and excited to speak to someone from a state that had already elected Obama to the state legislature and U.S. Senate.
Most of the voters that we spoke to were undecided about their vote in the presidential primary. Most had been bombarded by mail, tv, and radio ads by both candidates. However, none of the thousands of voters that we talked to this weekend had been visited by a volunteer for Clinton. If Obama wins the race, it’s clear that his volunteer operation in Ohio will have made a great difference.
My most inspiring moment came when talking to an African American woman and her two children. I knocked on her door and told her I was from the Obama campaign. She told me that she was still undecided about who to vote for and that she had a lot of questions. She pulled me into her apartment and got a girlfriend on the phone who also had questions. She was an army vet working hard to take care of her kids. She asked me specific questions about health care, the war in Iraq, and tax policy. She was thrilled that I stopped by and her kids were clearly Obama supporters. By the time that I walked out, she and the girlfriends that she called wanted a yard sign.
All of our canvassers had similar inspiring moments throughout the day where our one on one contact made up someone’s mind. Even if we didn’t swing every voter towards Senator Obama for the primary, these voters will think about our door to door contact when the general election rolls around and our candidate needs support in this critical swing state.
I came home from the weekend thoroughly inspired, hopeful, and ready to give my time to Obama as he works to become our next president. After this weekend, it is crystal clear to me that Obama motivates and brings together the people that are needed to solve the big problems that our country faces. I’m excited to have had the chance to work for such an amazing candidate.
Comment by Anonymous on 3 March 2008 at 12:10 am:
How were the households you visited picked?
Comment by Anonymous on 3 March 2008 at 9:17 pm:
Thanks for the great post Jen, and for what you did in Ohio!