Doorknocking for Hillary

A fat folder full of names and addresses, a map, an instruction sheet complete with "script" and "tips and tricks", a stack of postable Hillary support cards and a "Hillary for President" lapel sticker - and we were off on the canvassing trail.

It had been a strange gathering of the volunteers at Number 2 Clocktower Place. It's one of Nashua's former cotton mill buildings now transformed to apartments and when we eight or so volunteers had gathered in the foyer, we were told we had to leave since management did not approve of "political meetings". Having been given a brief rundown on the principles of cavassing, we adjourned outside to be handed these terrifying folders of names and addresses. Hardly a morning's work. A week or two, maybe, lay in my Ward 6 folder - and something of a navigational nightmare. Definitely not a walking job.

The up side was that we were not expected simply to walk door to door sounding out sympathy towards our candidate. The list contained only the names of people who already had expressed interest in supporting Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire presidential primary. Fear of terse rejections, door slams and abuse evaporated. Phew.

My doorknock partner was Aunt Libby from Virginia - a retired history professor and a staunch lifelong Democrat who offset my Australianness with elegant American cultural credibility. With husband map-reading and chauffeuring, I scanned the instruction sheet and decided to ignore it. It was too late to be learning a script. The brief was to ascertain interest and, if it was positive, to ask if people were interested in volunteering in some way or, perhaps displaying an election sign in their garden. If they were not interested, one bade them a polite farewell. As Libby pointed out, we were supposed to say "have a great day" to those who supported our candidate but only "have a good day", if they did not.

Our canvassing area was pretty much Nashua working class - small homes in quiet back streets.
Our first voter was in the garden tending her mass of spring flowers. She was keen on Hillary but not entirely decided. Then again, she was happy to have a Hillary sign in her front yard. She had a lot of issues she wanted to talk about - the exportation of jobs overseas and the health care system. Both things had affected her life. Several companies for which she'd worked had closed operations to outsource to China and, at the end of her working life, she'd found herself working at WalMart and coming down with asthma. She'd had a nightmare of doctors and pharmaceuticals and this had driven her to becoming an expert in all things that had ailed her - and her husband.
She was quite the talker, segueing into her childhood and the way in which people could live from the land and not depend so much on electricity, how you can get an education at night school...
These are some of the most salient issues of this election and here was a first-person example of the political casualties for whom the Democrats are fighting.
However, Libby and I were beginning to worry that if all our voters were so keen to talk at such length to strangers, we wouldn't be covering too many houses.

Fortunately, that did not turn out to be the case. In fact, we found ourselves not talking to anyone at most houses. Either people were not at home or, I often suspected, they were lying low because they just did not want to answer the door. I could relate to that. There is nothing I hate more than canvassers coming to the door.


Those who did come out to us were warm and enthusiastic. The definite Hillary supporters are emphatically positive. Not that they wanted to volunteer or display a sign. But at least we knew where their vote would go.


The Hillary team had told us that once we knew this, the campaign would leave these people alone until the end of the campaign. No need to pester them or waste resources on them. We love them just as they are.

And thus, for an hour or so, we drove to and fro around the sunny suburban streets, being confounded here and there by bizarre numbering arrangements, entrances that were hard to find and, most commonly, by doorbells that did not work. Indeed, it occurred to me that there was a good business opportunity for door-to-door doorbell salesmen.


We only had to bid "have a good day" to one person - a pleasant gay man who announced that he simply was not "into politics". We wondered how he got on the list.

We were in and out of the car, over and over and over, jotting results notes on the list beside each name. There was a coded system for this - but I had not found the key, so I wrote an approximation. We were moving so fast in and out of the car, up and down the streets, trying to get as much done as we could which, looking at the fat wad of names and addresses, barely dented the load.


We completed about five or six streets before running out of time and returning to Clocktower Place to return the folder to the campaign volunteer.

It had been an interesting, if somewhat hot and tiring, experience. It had also been a positive one, thanks to the careful selection process of the doorknockees.

This had been the first foray of its kind for the Hillary campaign but there are seven months to go...and it is all very well organised.