I went canvassing this afternoon for Mary Jo Kilroy, Ted Strickland, and the other Democrats who are on the ticket here in OH-15. I had been in contact with Matt Winner, who is with Democracy for America with a focus on getting out the vote for Mary Jo this November. I agreed to do canvassing today out of their office on the west side of Columbus.
UPDATE: Thanks folks for putting me into the rec list! I appreciate the supportive comments and I hope you will get involved with a campaign you believe in.
After an orientation on the dos and don'ts of canvassing ( which parelleled a lot of what I read in noweasel's and Laughing Planet's informative diaries), we were given our assignment: to canvass a neighborhood not in the Hilltop area near the office, but in Northwest Columbus. This area is actually a "finger" of Columbus that is between Hilliard and Dublin. Not necessarily the most Democratic of areas, but then again, we are out to talk to undecided voters as well as shore up the base. I think all but one of the voters on my walk sheet was marked as Undecided.
I was paired up with a man named Calvin, who was a little older than me, and said he was in school studying organizational communications. After we got to the neighborhood, we had to figure out how we were going to approach the canvass effort. The neighborhood was divided up by a large pond with a road circling around one end. We decided to focus on the road on the north end of the neighborhood which had a lot of people on our walk sheet, and try to work our way down to the south end of the neighborhood.
We found a lot of people who weren't home today, or maybe they weren't answering a knock on their door. Two houses in a row had pickup trucks parked in the driveway in such a position as not to be able to get to their front door without walking over the lawn and through flower beds. So I didn't try to get to those houses. I believe I covered about 35 houses, and I was able to talk to about seven people. Five of the people, when I inquired about their support of Kilroy or Ted Strickland, said they were still "undecided" and they kindly took my campaign flyers for the Democratic candidates. One of these people said they were looking at voting "if they were still here" at that time because they might be moving out of the area. At one house, I saw the voter I wanted to reach, and she said she didn't vote, so I talked to her about whether she would be voting and if she would be voting for Congresswoman Kilroy. I gave her a flyer for Kilroy and also one for Strickland, when her husband up on the landing of their house overheard us and said "We're voting for Kasich". I asked him why, and he said simply, "We're conservative". So I thanked them for their time and moved on. That was one of the first houses I visited. Another negative response was from a lady that seemed to revolve around disgust with politicians in general rather than with anything that Kilroy or Strickland did-- I put her down as undecided and she still took my flyers!
My partner Calvin had the odd house numbers on the walk lists and I had the evens. He didn't get quite as many people to answer the door as I did, and I think his proportion of responses was similar to mine. This neighborhood is one of small lots and small single-family houses built in the past few years by one or two tract house developers.
Overall, my experience with canvassing left me feeling more enthusiastic than demoralized. I discovered I rather liked "retail" politics. The bottom line is that out here, a lot of undecideds still seem to be undecided. This on the heels of a new poll from Ohio newspapers that shows Kasich and Strickland in a tight race for governor, with Kasich's support still under 50 percent. There's still hope even in a state like Ohio that has been racked by double-digit unemployment that our Democratic office holders might hang on.