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Feb. 9th, 2004 12:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elizillaBusy weekend.
Spent much of Saturday at the Democratic caucus.
Larry Kestenbaum is running for county clerk and I had agreed to hand out leaflets and collect signatures on a nominating petition.
There were people collecting signatures for two other candidates there. One was a woman named Monica whose friend Derek Jackson was running for township trustee, and the other was this wild man who was supporting someone whose name I can't recall, who was running for state legislature. He was ranting about incinerators and wouldn't come inside, and seemed kind of crazy. I liked Monica a lot better.
A caucus is different from an election; you're allowed to stand much closer to the voting, so Monica and I went inside and staked out a table in next to Leslie, who was there campaigning for Dean. Leslie was up on all the issues, very well informed and pleasant, and along with a whole table full of literature, she had brought donuts for everyone. A guy named Chad showed up a few minutes later and took up station on the other side of us. He was campaigning for Clark. He too was well informed and pleasant, but kind of shy; this was obviously hard on him. He and Leslie were perfectly friendly to each other.
A half hour or so later, a Kerry supporter set up shop on the other side of Chad. I don't recall her name but she was a pep rally cheerleader type, and spent the day over there shouting about all the groups that had endorsed Kerry. Once in a while she calmed down enough to speak normally about real facts. But she was obviously disturbed by the people supporting the other candidates. When another Dean supporter arrived later, an older lady, she and the Kerry cheerleader didn't get along. The Dean lady kept trying to debate with the Kerry cheerleader, and the Kerry cheerleader hated this, and eventually screamed at her to stay the hell away. For a minute I thought they were going to come to blows.
One of the things that happens when you do this campaign thing is that older people come by and try to test your knowledge. They will ask sharp questions, usually about something fairly obscure, and if you don't know they love to catch you out. I've come to recognize the raking look they give, and to politely play the game. It's usually only one or two questions, and if you win they will smile and sign the petition or take the campaign literature. If you lose, they will tell you you're too ignorant and you need to get educated or grow up a bit, before you run around campaigning for someone. Then they stalk off. You always lose a few of these encounters, and you have to learn not to take it personally. I think this is what was going on with the Kerry supporter, this older Dean supporter was trying to play this game on her, and the Kerry supporter hadn't learned to just let it go, so she blew up.
I collected enough signatures to fill all three petition pages Larry had given me, and I handed out a lot of leaflets. I hope he wins, and if getting started early is any use, he's got a good chance. He was the only local candidate who had leaflets ready to hand out at the caucus.
After the caucus, Jennifer and I went out for Chinese food. Then she went with me to buy more outlets to install in my garage. On the way back we stopped at the Half Price Bookstore near my house, which is going out of business and discounting the books even farther, and we each bought an armload of books. Then we went to the Save Puppy party at Anne Murphy's house. We played Apples to Apples, which is always a hoot, and a weird video game called Dance Dance Revolution, where you step on the squares on this floor mat, according to the directions on screen, in time with music. I'm horribly clumsy but it was still fun.
Sunday, Erik called just as I was getting up, and offered to come over and help me finish the wiring. And we did it, we finished it! I have lots of outlets in the garage, and they all work! The overburdened cicuit that fed the only outlet in the garage, no longer feeds the garage at all. I can run as many power tools as I like, finally.
Now I just need to hang the last little bits of drywall and insulation, and then I can start mudding and painting, and put up my shelving. It's finally coming together.
Spent much of Saturday at the Democratic caucus.
Larry Kestenbaum is running for county clerk and I had agreed to hand out leaflets and collect signatures on a nominating petition.
There were people collecting signatures for two other candidates there. One was a woman named Monica whose friend Derek Jackson was running for township trustee, and the other was this wild man who was supporting someone whose name I can't recall, who was running for state legislature. He was ranting about incinerators and wouldn't come inside, and seemed kind of crazy. I liked Monica a lot better.
A caucus is different from an election; you're allowed to stand much closer to the voting, so Monica and I went inside and staked out a table in next to Leslie, who was there campaigning for Dean. Leslie was up on all the issues, very well informed and pleasant, and along with a whole table full of literature, she had brought donuts for everyone. A guy named Chad showed up a few minutes later and took up station on the other side of us. He was campaigning for Clark. He too was well informed and pleasant, but kind of shy; this was obviously hard on him. He and Leslie were perfectly friendly to each other.
A half hour or so later, a Kerry supporter set up shop on the other side of Chad. I don't recall her name but she was a pep rally cheerleader type, and spent the day over there shouting about all the groups that had endorsed Kerry. Once in a while she calmed down enough to speak normally about real facts. But she was obviously disturbed by the people supporting the other candidates. When another Dean supporter arrived later, an older lady, she and the Kerry cheerleader didn't get along. The Dean lady kept trying to debate with the Kerry cheerleader, and the Kerry cheerleader hated this, and eventually screamed at her to stay the hell away. For a minute I thought they were going to come to blows.
One of the things that happens when you do this campaign thing is that older people come by and try to test your knowledge. They will ask sharp questions, usually about something fairly obscure, and if you don't know they love to catch you out. I've come to recognize the raking look they give, and to politely play the game. It's usually only one or two questions, and if you win they will smile and sign the petition or take the campaign literature. If you lose, they will tell you you're too ignorant and you need to get educated or grow up a bit, before you run around campaigning for someone. Then they stalk off. You always lose a few of these encounters, and you have to learn not to take it personally. I think this is what was going on with the Kerry supporter, this older Dean supporter was trying to play this game on her, and the Kerry supporter hadn't learned to just let it go, so she blew up.
I collected enough signatures to fill all three petition pages Larry had given me, and I handed out a lot of leaflets. I hope he wins, and if getting started early is any use, he's got a good chance. He was the only local candidate who had leaflets ready to hand out at the caucus.
After the caucus, Jennifer and I went out for Chinese food. Then she went with me to buy more outlets to install in my garage. On the way back we stopped at the Half Price Bookstore near my house, which is going out of business and discounting the books even farther, and we each bought an armload of books. Then we went to the Save Puppy party at Anne Murphy's house. We played Apples to Apples, which is always a hoot, and a weird video game called Dance Dance Revolution, where you step on the squares on this floor mat, according to the directions on screen, in time with music. I'm horribly clumsy but it was still fun.
Sunday, Erik called just as I was getting up, and offered to come over and help me finish the wiring. And we did it, we finished it! I have lots of outlets in the garage, and they all work! The overburdened cicuit that fed the only outlet in the garage, no longer feeds the garage at all. I can run as many power tools as I like, finally.
Now I just need to hang the last little bits of drywall and insulation, and then I can start mudding and painting, and put up my shelving. It's finally coming together.
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Has Michigan always had a caucus?
Date: 2004-02-10 01:06 am (UTC)I just find it difficult to believe that I lived in Michigan during two primary seasons (1992 and 1996), I *know* I never went to a caucus, and yet I'm enough of a regular voter that it seems unlikely I would've just skipped the primary process altogether. I vaguely recall voting for Tsongas in 1992; not sure about 1996.
(Disclaimer: Right now, work has eaten my brain, so there are a *lot* of things I'm not remembering correctly.)
Re: Has Michigan always had a caucus?
Date: 2004-02-10 04:40 am (UTC)I think whoever decides these things for Michigan felt we weren't getting enough luv in the presidential race, because the early primaries grab an unfair share of the spotlight. If it didn't come so early in the season, who would care who won in New Hampshire, right? NH has a miniscule number of delegates. But NH was getting a ton of attention and exercising undue influence by being first. Now a bunch of other states are trying to move in on that.
So we had this caucus thing. It was for presidential candidates only, no other races were on the ballot.
There were a whole lot fewer polling places, and a lot of confusion about who was supposed to vote where. I talked to dozens of people who had gone to the usual place they vote, found it closed, and done last minute searches to find out where to go. And there were three or four people who went to one caucus site and got redirected to others. The site I was sitting at was for all of Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township, which together have maybe 50,000 people. I don't think we got more than two or three hundred voters all day. Jennifer didn't know she was eligible to vote in it. Michael drove up and down Clark Road, couldn't find the site, and gave up (it was the other Clark Road). I saw only one voter I knew all day, yet I know a lot of people who live in Ypsi and have opinions about this race.