Kowabunga

The last two days have been busier than can be, especially for the many volunteers working for the re-election of President Bush.

Saturday morning there was a big gathering of Election Judges and Poll Watchers (I'll be working a Minneapolis precinct on election day), going over things to watch for, what to take, and numbers to call (if you are a poll watcher).

Election Judges run the actual election process in the precinct and work for either their municipality or for the county. No more than 50% of election judges on duty can be from the same political party. Each political party can have only one Poll Challenger in a precinct at any given time.

After the training class was completed, it was back to work for Allison, from fetching more tables from a party supply place, to continuing the prep for the door-to-door campaign.

Mid-afternoon I departed for Northfield to work out of that office, taking with me several stacks of cards for the Northfield area.

Once there, I found out that the cards for Faribult had been done wrong: They had the wrong Congressional Candidate pictured on them. Oops!

A volunteer showed up with some Kline stickers to cover-up the boo-boo, but no where near enough. Fast run up to Burnsville to the Kline HQ, where I was able to get a few rolls of stickers.

Back in Northfield, it had been called "a day", and the team from DC running the ground show there had headed over to Grundy's for beer, where I joined them. We made some plans for an early (after church) start to finish fixing the door-hangers for the ground campaign, and talk about politics in general.

One of the guys, Larry, grew up in Fresno, CA, same as me. He went to Clovis High graduating 90-something. I went to McLane, graduating several years before, so there was little likelyhood that we would know any of the same people. And we didn't.

Larry is a speech writer for a Congressman. Okay, it's not just any Congressman he works for, but the Speaker of the House.

Mike, the other chap from DC, works for the Department of Agriculture, and is well plugged into the Washington circuit, amd would like to run for Congress someday. I beleive he'll be a darn good Representative.

Sunday morning we met as planned, finished fixing the boo-boo on the Faribult cards, and began working on the Game Day phone calling list.

Congressman Kline stopped by for a few minutes to say hello (picture coming later today), and chatted with some of the volunteers, the guys from DC and State Senator Tom Nueville.

After that, it was decided that someone needed to canvas Faribult Precinct 5. I was the likely candidate, so off I went.

There, most of the people I talked to were friendly, or at least courteous, only two were less than so. At least for those that were A) home, and B) willing to answer the door (a few didn't). Some were ready for this election to be over as they were tired of the deluge of literature and phone calls they were receivning. I told them I could relate to that myself.

The campaign for Minnestoa is a hard fought campaign. It has been said that both sides believe they can win in Minnesota. I believe it is more accurate to say that President Bush believes he can (and will) win Minnesota, while Senator Kerry fears he will lose it. I have no doubt that Bush will win Minnesota. There are a lot of people getting out their and doing everything neccessary to make this state go for Bush, and going more than the extra mile, especially now that we are in the home stretch.