When last we left our hero, he had checked in to a La Quinta in Fort Worth, Texas to assist the campaign of Jana Lynne Sanchez, the top Democrat running for the TX06 Congressional seat.
Canvassing is physically exhausting, especially in clammy humid Texas weather. Here’s what you do: open an app called MiniVAN on your phone. Type in the 9 digit number for your list of houses to contact. Dots show up on a map of the neighborhood you are in. You tap on a dot and it tells you something like: “Kathy Williamson, 76” and then you can see a list of which elections they have voted in and by what method. You’re only visiting Democrats. The idea is to get them to vote, not to change anyone’s mind.
You knock on the door. 75% of people are either not home or you can see them watching Judge Judy and they definitely don’t want to speak to you. For those, you drop a pamphlet for the candidate and check “Lit Drop”. For the house where the fence was padlocked, you mark “Inaccessible”. For the last quarter where you do talk to them, the vast majority of encounters are pleasant. Many of them have already voted, and some for your candidate. You mark them as “Strong Support”. You walk to the next house.
Out of the 75 or so houses that I contacted (with support from my friend Leslie Collins!), I only had one “Hostile” encounter, a man who forcefully waved me away from his yard saying “NO! NO!”
The volunteer shifts were small, only 3-4 people would show up for them, and apparently Sanchez had the most volunteers out of the candidates running. We did this on two different days and then spent the rest of Saturday May 1st “poll greeting”. That means you stand a set distance away from the entrance to the polling venue and try to get in a last plug for your candidate. I was perfectly prepared for this… I’ve handed out flyers at the Edinburgh Fringe for 8 years in a row, it was just like being on the Royal Mile but instead of promoting longform improv we were promoting democracy (not sure which is more helpful at this point).
Pollgreeting was very fun, and heartening. There were about 15 volunteers stumping for various candidates, and I would estimate 85% of them were people of color, primarily African-American. They were engaged. I thought to myself, “Well, the more marginalized you are in American the last luxury you have to check out of elections.” They also seemed to know each other. They were convivial and collegial even when their candidates were diametrically opposed. A friendly Vietnamese man handed us a flyer for his mayoral candidate, and then mentioned he would be running for Arlington City Council next year.
“I’m not a Republican or a Democrat,” he said. “There are only two groups in America… conservatives and communists. If you like Biden you’re a communist.”
Despite that, he was a pleasant fellow.
Another man was running for Arlington Mayor and an older white-haired man with a leather vest buttonholed him. “What’s your stance on the second amendment?” he asked.
“Well, I think a lot of fear has been drummed up that guns are going to be taken away because it helps gun manufacturers sell guns. Let me ask you when’s the last time you tried to buy a gun? Or buy bullets?”
The white-haired man grimaced. “I don’t buy bullets. I make my own.”
Texas, home of artisanal ammo!
At some point, Jana Lynne Sanchez showed up. She’s smart and savvy and very comfortable advocating for herself in a way that feels friendly, intent, and not invasive. She did a quick interview with a local news station. She bantered with other volunteers, a lot of whom she recognized.
We did a few hours of poll greeting and then bid the team goodbye. I felt good. I learned about democracy, and campaigning. I had done my part.
So why so disappointed?
Welp. In the previously-mentioned jungle primary, there were 23 candidates. 7 of them were Democrats. Remember that Sanchez needed to finish in the top two to make the runoff (and had been polling second in all three polls that had been run).
The Sanchez campaign had asked the Texas Democrats to do what’s called “clearing the field”. To go to some of the less-popular Dem candidates and ask them to step down to consolidate blue votes for Sanchez. There were two other candidates that had some momentum, one with a strong digital presence (but no field) and one that had a little recognition from losing a state senate race (who also ran a negative ad against Sanchez in the week before the special election). The Texas Democrats refused to interfere, preferring to take a hands-off approach.
Sanchez missed the runoff by 357 votes. The 7th Democrat in the primary received 1,100 (with less than 1% of the final). If any of the other Democrats had been encouraged to step down, most likely Sanchez would have been in. Instead, the run-off in July will be two Republicans against each other, and most likely the Trump-endorsed widow will hold the seat.
In the next 18 months we are going to hear a lot of “The Democrats have to hold on to the house in 2022”. Well, this was an opportunity to either flip a seat, or maybe add some name recognition to someone to contend for the seat in 2022. And as far as I could see, there was precisely zero resources dedicated to this election. No Democrat of any prominence made an appearance in the district. The campaigns had very little presence in the field. The vote total was astoundingly low (Susan Wright won with about 15,000 votes… her husband had won re-election in November with 140,000). This was the only Federal election in Texas on May 1st, and it’s not like there was a whole lot else going on nationally that the Democratic Party was distracted by at any level.
And as mentioned before, when I discussed this with two DC veterans, their instant reactions were “it wasn’t winnable so they didn’t bother” or “the Texas districts are about to be re-gerrymandered so maybe it was pointless to try” or “the candidates weren’t good enough”.
Maybe I’m the naive newcomer to this. But I didn’t hear a single good reason in there not to try harder, especially consider how small an investment of resources it might have actually taken. I mean, I brought one friend and doubled the volunteers at a few of the shifts we went to. The vast majority of people that I spoke with in Fort Worth had no idea the seat was even open. Overwhelmingly, it really felt like no one gave a shit.
And that’s why our hero is disappointed.
On some brighter notes… I got to eat a lot of good Tex-Mex, and I had a wonderful lunch at Loro in Austin on my way south to see family. And as a complete coincidence, the senior care facility where my mother stays allowed residents to leave the site for the first time since lockdown so I got to see her in person (and she got to eat Chinese food for the first time in 14 months).
In all, it was a good trip, and I feel refreshed and ready to take on the world. I won’t let this Texas disappointment dampen my enthusiasm. There’s a primary in Ohio I could help with in August, and I’ll look around to see what efforts are being made for the Newsom recall. There’s just a part of me that wished that I didn’t feel like I cared more about local Texas politics than the people actually living there.
Also, I made my family watch Ted Lasso and they loved it.
So proud of you for all your efforts for our Country ❤️
Sooo loved Ted Lasso that I’m now telling others about it. I think you should submit this to the personal story section of HuffPo because the Dems need to be shown why they made the wrong call. There was no reason for them not to make the effort. If indeed they didn’t think the seat was winnable, then there is a gross miscalculation at the heart of their strategy.