The streets stretch out beneath the big blue sky in a crazy quilt work of sage-covered fields, empty lots, and tracts of split-level homes with Spanish tile roofs and multi-colored stucco facades. Many of the front yards are unplanted, and some of the homes have foreclosure locks on the front doors. It’s the New West and the names of the streets — Prairie Avenue, Paiute, Cheyenne, and Homestead Road — bare testimony to that refrain. Here and there are remnants of the Old West: a ranch, an ostrich farm; an abandoned trailer.
Political canvassing by car in Pahrump, Nevada can be challenging. Google maps are often dated, showing non-existent addresses or uncompleted streets. Some streets abruptly dead-end only to resume on the far side of an undeveloped tract. Mailbox numbers sometimes don’t follow any logical sequence, indicating that homes were built at different times. Mailboxes are on one side, making it difficult initially to determine which side of the street is odd or even numbered.
Eight years ago when President Bush captured the vote of this rural township, it had a population of 35,000. Today it numbers 47,000 people due to the influx of newcomers, many of them California retirees and Las Vegas commuters. The town, once remote and staunchly conservative, sits on a fault line of cultural change. Now a bedroom community of Las Vegas, it has become more expensive, more diverse, more populated, and more divided at a time when Nevada’s economy is faltering badly and Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has become the signature movement of change in this country.
After training at Camp Obama in San Diego, I am here to work as a volunteer for a week in the local Obama office, located in a mini-mall off Highway 160 at Mesquite. Julie Grogan-Brown and Pete Greyshock, an unpaid staffer whom I met at Camp Obama, head the campaign here. Red, white, and blue cutout American flags line the walls. Plastic tables are strewn with voter registration lists, google maps, canvassing scripts, issue statements, and brochures. The only thing missing are Obama buttons, bumper stickers, and house signs. Driving in that Saturday morning my friend Alicia and I didn’t see a single Obama sign, and I wondered why. Maybe this explains it.
By 9:30 a.m., volunteers begin to drift in. Among the dozen or so new faces, I meet Trudy, a Hillary Clinton supporter recently laid off from the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facility; Jim, a construction worker on workmen’s comp; Sid, a retired postal service worker, and Layle, an African-American who works as a special events coordinator and loves horses.
We divide up into teams of two: one driver and one canvasser. Pete distributes our route assignments, scripts, early voting flyers, and explains how we should mark the registration sheets. The lists have the names of only democrats and non-partisans, no republicans. Our job is to find out whom the voter supports or may support. We are told to target undecided voters. Engage them in a conversation, find out which issue or issues concern them, and try to sway them to consider voting for Barack.
Nevada is a "battleground state"—a state that is re-aligning itself, changing its political stripe from red to blue. In the last election, registered republicans in the state outnumbered democrats by 12,000 votes. By mid-October, registered democrats outnumbered republicans by 80,000 voters. Our mission is clear: make sure to Get Out The Vote (GOTV).
Pete reminds us that one way we can connect with voters is to share our "story of self" with them. Why did each of us decide to support Barack’s candidacy? What are our stories, why does his election matter to us—to our country? This is something that we learned at Camp Obama, a weekend training program to recruit and train field organizers to grow the campaign at the grassroots level.
Little did I realize it then, but I was about to embark on a journey—not a journey of self, but a journey into the lives of others. On that first day, Saturday, Jim and I cover a lower-income precinct off South Blaig Street. The houses are small and drab, set back from the streets on a flat, hardscrabble landscape. There’s not a tree or lawn in sight. At a shoebox-size corner house with two small cement steps, I meet Charlie, a stout, gray-haired retiree from Ohio. His youngest son Martin, a non-partisan, is registered here, but is in Vegas at the moment. Charlie is at the house to take care of his other son, Kevin, 46, who is recovering from a heart attack and is on disability. Charlie lives on social security.
Charlie tells me that Kevin and he are voting for Barack because of his health insurance plan. "We need somebody in there who cares about working people, about seniors, about us," he says in a measured voice. Listening to Charlie talk about his small-town Ohio upbringing and his deceased uncle, a one-time mayor with an "honesty as tough as a walnut tree," I realize that his support springs from something far deeper than policy or issues. It’s about reestablishing truth in government—about reaffirming trust in the highest office in the land. I would hear different versions of this refrain on many occasions while canvassing in Pahrump. People feel personally betrayed—"wounded" as one of them put it—by the Bush-Cheney regime.
Margaret, who is 59 and from Vietnam, lives with her husband, a Vietnam vet, in an attractive cream-colored stucco house on Prairie Avenue. The oval-shaped entrance has ornamental Doric pilasters and potted plants. Funny how canvassers always remember front porches. I ask Margaret, a registered democrat, which issues are most important to her. "The economy, the war," she says emphatically. "Our family has served in two wars: my husband in Vietnam and my son now in Iraq. And for what—weapons of mass destruction, to fight terrorists, to overthrow Saddam Hussein? This war is a terrible abuse of power, and McCain will only continue it. The country needs a new direction, a new leadership." Margaret and her husband are voting for the Obama-Biden ticket.
Later that afternoon, I stop at a trailer court. Most of the tenants are not home. I see a few guys sitting around a picnic table in the shade of a big, gnarled tree. I ask them if they know where Tommy lives? "He’s next door," one of them says, pointing to an old trailer with two rickety steps. Tommy’s standing on the deck. When he sees my Obama button, his face flashes a big grin. He’s missing a front tooth. "I’m voting for Obama. We haven’t had a president for eight years!" he says. I ask him what he worries about the most with the election. He pauses, and then says, "I hope he’s not murdered. That’s my biggest worry. He’s black, but he’s also white; so, maybe he’ll be okay."
A few days later, Pete and I drive out Highway 160 to canvass in the recently developed south end of town. We decide to split up to expedite our afternoon shift. At an L-shaped home with a two-car garage no one appears to be home. I stuff some campaign literature in the front doorknob. As I turn around, a well-built middle-aged man with a chiseled face appears around the corner of the garage. I introduce myself as an Obama volunteer. He nods. I ask him if Donna is home. He tells me that she isn’t because she works in Las Vegas.
Donna is his eldest daughter. I ask if it’s okay to leave the literature. He says that is fine since she’s a democrat and will probably vote for Obama. I ask him how things are going. "Tough," he mumbles. "I’ve seen a lot of foreclosure locks on front doors,." I reply. "Yeah, and you may see one here," he says sternly. "The economy, I guess, is what you’re most concerned about?" "No," he says, "it’s more personal than that. It’s work." I learn that he’s a roofer, and hasn’t had steady work in months. I wish him good luck in finding work. "Good luck to you and the campaign," he says, his voice trailing off preoccupied with his own struggle.
A few blocks away, I speak to Michael, a 34-year old non-partisan. He lives in a recently built stucco home with a split-level roof. After introducing myself, I ask him which issues concern him. He looks at me somewhat hesitantly and says, "(Illegal) immigration. It needs to be stopped." I ask how it has personally affected him. "It’s lowering our standard of living, our wages. I can’t support a family on $5 or $6 an hour like illegals do," he replies. "No one can live on that," I tell him. I explain that Senator Obama supports border security and a comprehensive immigration program that will better enable employers to hire only eligible workers (and penalize them if they don’t), will help Mexico’s economic development, and will allow undocumented immigrants to become citizens after paying a fine and learning English. His eyes reveal that he is wary of the latter idea. I tell him that border security by itself will not solve illegal immigration, drug and gun running, or the threat of terrorism. They require a multi-faceted approach and cooperation from our allies and our neighbors.
At the end of our conversation, I ask him if he has made up his mind for whom he will vote. He tells me Obama. "Bush and the Republicans had their chance. It’s time for change," he says with a measure of confidence.
On another day late in the afternoon, I approach a large house set back from the street. I can see an older man working outside through an imposing wrought iron electronic black gate. As he approaches, I begin to think about the gate’s symbolism—the privacy it represents that many Nevadans apparently covet.
Warren, I learn, is a retired worker from Alaska who moved to Nevada four years ago. He’s a hunter, a member of the NRA, and a registered non-partisan. He asks me what Obama thinks about the 2nd amendment. I tell him that Obama supports the right of citizens to bear arms, and that the American Hunters and Shooters Association has endorsed him. "Where he draws the line," I mention, "is the sale of Ak-47s and other high-powered firearms used by drug lords and hardened criminals to kill people—a world I know something about having lived in Oakland."
Warren begins to warm up, talking freely about the dignity and importance of work, the lack of discipline in schools, and the rising rate of delinquency among young people. I tell him that Senator Harry Reid will be at the Obama office in Pahrump the next morning. "Maybe we could talk some more," I say. He nods appreciatively, snakes my hand through the fence, and tells me that he will be voting for Barack.
Three things stand out as a result of canvassing. First, the voters in Pahrump to whom I spoke, non-partisans and democrats alike despise Bush. Second, few of them expressed support for McCain—something I found rather ironic given the presence of so many McCain-Palin signs. Third, most of them were either very angry or troubled by Congress’s $700 billion bailout or rescue of plummeting financial assets (Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008).
"Empower, Respect, Include"—this is the motto of the Obama campaign. What we have learned is to reach out, to engage voters in a conversation or dialogue. Listen to them in order to understand them.
No one better exemplifies this approach than Senator Obama does. His rejection of partisanship and appeal to unity — E Pluribus Unum (Out of many, ONE)—has galvanized the country like no other presidential candidate in recent memory except possibly Bobby Kennedy in 1968.
Senator Obama expressed his vision of a common direction perhaps most eloquently in his speech, "A More Perfect Union," on March 19th at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. "We cannot solve the challenges of our time," he said, "unless we solve them together—unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we many not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren."
Look back at America’s history. It rose to greatness—what Abraham Lincoln once called "the better angels of our nature"—in times of crisis like the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II when people came together to forge a common destiny. We are at that time again. "This campaign is only the beginning," an older African-American gentleman powerfully reminded us at Camp Obama.
The Obama campaign’s legacy is that it has brought millions of voters, volunteers, and donors into the Democratic Party. Their energy and commitment is a testimony to the power of hope. And they will be ready again when Barack Obama becomes the 44th president of the United States on January 20, 2009.
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