Canvassing the district

[minx]

I volunteered to canvass the White Oak area.  You drive around and leave campaign literature on people's door or put it in their paper box.  And you only do registered Democrats (in my case).

Some observations...

1) Most people don't have paper boxes anymore.  I have grown a new appreciation for those who's mailbox sits on a wooden 'L' structure, as you can rubber band the stuff to that.
2) A disturbingly large number of people do not have clear numbers on either their home or mailbox.  I was left wondering what said folks would do in the event of an emergency at night when first responders couldn't easily find their home.
3) White Oak is a very large area that is terribly laid out.  Lots of older homes on the 'main drag' (say Bethel Church Road), with a side street that has a dozen new houses.  So you'd drive a mile, turn onto a street, put down flyers, turn around (all of them had no outlet), go back to Bethel Church (where no one wants to label their mailbox), go down another mile or two and repeat.
4) There are more Democrats out there than I originally thought.
5) The Stafford County Democrats in our little slice of the county do bust their butts to promote candidates and get the vote out.
6) 95% of those pamphlets will probably be in tomorrow's trash pick-up.

It took 3 hours to do 90% of the area - I'll go back and get the other 10% later this week.

But, it was a beautiful day yesterday for a drive, and many of those back roads are very nice to drive - had the sunroof open and the windows down.  And took a lot of allergy medicine when I arrived back home.

An interesting look at a different side of the election process.

[k9krap]

Ha! I just read a post (and comments) in one of the Grafton Village groups, complaining about the “political door knockers” and the pamphlets they leave “to blow around everywhere”. Some commenters say they refuse to vote for any of the candidates on the flyers. 🤣

[minx]

Then I guess they're not voting, cause both parties are out there!

[k9krap]

I know. It just struck me as funny after reading your post.

[Dave's Not Here Man]

Yeah that's some bull. Their minds were made up whether or not to vote and who they were going to vote for were decided well before the first flyer arrived in or on their junk mail pile. Talk is cheap that's why errbody gots so much of it.

[minx]

Agreed. One thing I do like about Joshua Cole is that he gets his ass out there and meets with people.

I met him during his first campaign for house of delegates and he was a really cool person who was well-versed in the issues, but took the time to listen to my beef on the school funding formulas. He explained how they currently worked, the obstacles to changing them, and what he wanted to do. Other people brought up concerns about other things - if he didn't have an answer, he asked what they'd like to see, and actually listened to them. Holy hell, right?

That's what people running for office need to do, especially at the local level - meet the people they want to represent, listen to what they feel is important and share what they can (or are willing to do)

[Dave's Not Here Man]

I never met a candidate that didn't try to seem sincere. The problem is that they hear but they aren't listening. The one exception to that was way back when T-Mobile wanted to put a cell tower in our fucking back yard. There was an REC substation just beyond the Verizon major fiber right of way (the same one we have running behind our current property) and they had made a deal with REC to put the tower on the substation's grounds. So we get a notice about a "informational meeting" that we were invited to attend. Our rep from the BOS was also in attendance and after I told the T-Mobile lady that her smile wasn't necessary while blowing smoke up my ass, he asked to talk to me and a few of the neighbors after she wrapped it up. He said there was no way he would let this move forward and lo and behold the planning or whoever shit on it. I wish I could remember his name because he was the only person I ever thought was looking out for me/us. As I said though, he was already on the BOs and not a candidate at the time, which I feel like one mode is completely different from the other. Promises vs Action.

[minx]

Well, to give Cole his due, he did try to get a bill passed to change the school funding formulas (he wanted to take property taxes out of the equations so that richer counties didn't benefit at the expense of poorer ones), but it got shot down in committee.