You learn a lot about yourself when you're out of work.
A lot of it is mental. How you respond to the uncertainty of a brand new situation. How you respond when a good job opportunity never gets back to you. How you respond when you receive notice that you didn't get a job you applied for. How you mentally prepare yourself to be on a reduced food budget. How you think positive thoughts to keep yourself from getting sick during times when you don't have health insurance.
But in addition to the things associated with this new lifestyle, you also begin to learn about what you're passionate about. What makes you tick as a person. My no means is it an extended vacation. Your top priority is finding employment. But there's only no many hours in a day where you can check job sites, update your resume, alter a cover letter, and organize all your reference materials. You'll inevitably have free time and how you use that free time goes a long way in determining what makes you feel fulfilled in an otherwise uncertain time.
For myself over the past few months, I have become passionate about politics. I find the topic fascinating. The art of politics, the alliances, the policies, the support, the criticism, you name it. There's just something unique about the entire field of study. I check the news first thing every morning, I follow hundreds of politicians on Twitter, I've been recently watching The West Wing and House of Cards on Netflix, and I make sure to always catch the highlights from Last Week Tonight, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and The Daily Show. I've also caught most of the debates and, as I mentioned in my last post, I saw both Donald Trump and Bill Clinton speak while I was home for the holidays.
In addition, I've become a fairly serious blogger in the online world. I blog for four sites, three of which I contribute weekly political articles to help nurture discussion. I enjoy the ability to share my thoughts and also to hear feedback from other members of the community. I enjoy reading the comments and learning about others' experiences as many of the commenters are older and thus can provide me with a window into history that I wouldn't have access to otherwise. I've been doing the political blogging for a couple years now and have amassed a hearty portfolio of work on various topics. My work has occasionally been picked up by other progressive sites and every once in a while I'll write something that will be fairly popular for one reason or another. Unfortunately there is no formula to hitting a homerun every time so as of now I'm not quite famous enough to have my own weekly New York Times article quite yet.
And so as this passion became real, I started looking into ways to potentially parlay it into a career. As I said, I haven't had my big break yet but I'm also keenly aware that big breaks are often the result of making connections. For someone like myself that is considering a career in politics, what better way to break into the field than to go straight to the top and work for the president himself? Unfortunately, President Obama has had his team in place for the past seven years but there is an election this year so why not start off by hopping in with a future president? With that idea in mind, I signed up to volunteer for the Hillary Clinton campaign as I believe her to be not only my own personal choice but also the most likely to win the White House come November.
I ended up being on a listserv for Sacramento residents and ended up attending an organizing meeting on January 10th. At the meeting, they announced they were looking for volunteers to help canvass ahead of the Nevada caucus on February 20th. I filled out a form with my information and indicated that I was waiting to hear back from a couple jobs but that I was interested in potentially helping out. I got a call the next week from an organizer and I told her that I was still waiting to hear on jobs and that I couldn't make that next weekend. She told me to call her if I was able to go. Toward the end of January, I received an email again asking me about my Nevada availability and this time I put down the days leading up to the Nevada caucus to be safe. They also asked if I could stay with anyone in Nevada and I indicated that I had family in the Las Vegas area. They said it would be great if I could stay with them as they needed people at the campaign office in Henderson, just south of Vegas. They gave me the address of the canvass office there and told me to check in as soon as I got into town.
I woke up at 6:00 A.M. on Wednesday and made the 550 mile trek to Henderson, Nevada. I stopped for gas about 2 hours into the drive, and had lunch just east of Bakersfield at around noon. I kept driving and got to the campaign office at 4:30. Once there, I introduced myself to the office staff and was given a clipboard with a list of names to go canvass. My goal was simple: To touch base with these people and confirm their support for Hillary Clinton. I was told that these were people that had been identified as being likely to support her and so the conversations I was to have would be fairly simple and straightforward. If I encountered Bernie Sanders supporter, I was simply to thank them for their time and move on. I was not try to dissuade them as time was of the essence.
This was my first time canvassing for a political candidate but I had experience thanks to my four-days with the solar company. The big thing you want to do is be efficient with your time. Each time I went out, I was given a list of roughly 50 names and the expectation was to complete the list within about 3 hours. That meant that you wanted to plan out your walking route so that you didn't backtrack and you hit all needed houses/apartments. If someone wasn't home, you simply left a door hanger which included information on how and when to caucus on Saturday. If someone was home and they were a Hillary supporter you gave them the caucus information and confirmed the time and location and made sure they had transportation. And, of course, you thanked them for their support.
I did a total of six canvassing runs over the course of four days. The "turf" varied as some times I was in a neighborhood while other times I was at an apartment complex. I did most of my canvassing in Henderson but had one run where I went to South Las Vegas and scouted 4 separate gated communities to see if we could gain access to them. I was able to get into one and left literature at the front desk of another so I consider that a moral victory. In addition, I was also stopped once by a neighborhood security patrol making sure I wasn't harassing neighbors and once by apartment security who informed me it was private property. I smiled and played nice both times, assuring both officers that I was simply dropping off literature and that I was being respectful to any folks who were not interested. That seemed to be good enough for them and they left me on my way.
The highlight of the canvassing actually occurred at the office. Friday morning we were visited by a large contingency from California of The Human Rights Campaign, an organization that works on behalf of equality for all citizens. We also had Illinois congressman Luis Gutierrez come and stump for Hillary Clinton. Gutierrez is one of my favorite congressmen and he was a strong advocate for Planned Parenthood in the fall when Republicans were insistent on shutting down federal funding to the organization after the doctored videos were released. Gutierrez then shook some hands and went out into the field to help canvass himself. Despite being political, this was the first candidate I got to meet in person and I snapped off some pictures to help commemorate the moment.
On Saturday morning, it was go time. Many of us got to the office at 7:30 A.M., ahead of the caucuses which were scheduled to start at 11. We went on one last canvassing run where we left door hangers to remind folks of the time and location to vote and then reconvened at the office at 10:00 A.M. I asked about observing the caucus and was actually told they needed someone to be a caucus chair at a local high school. I volunteered my services with the caveat that I did not have any experience in the roll and that I also was an out-of-state volunteer meaning that my participation would be limited. Fortunately, neither of these were deal breakers and I was then told about the role.
The Clinton team had caucus chairs for the precincts at a local high school. For those unaware, precincts vary in size. Nevada has 1,835 precincts with some being fairly large geographic areas and others being extremely tiny. The largest precincts were filled by veteran staff who had previously served in leadership roles but there were several small precincts where our presence could still be valuable. The role of the caucus chair is simply to organize people into sides and then to potentially engage any undecideds to join our cause. We were also able to download an app which allowed us to relay the results immediately back to Clinton HQ. Since I was an out of state volunteer, I could mingle from the hours of 11 to 12 but at 12 when the voting started I could not speak on behalf of my chosen candidate. That responsibility would have to be delegated to a Nevada resident. After the voting, was complete and the delegate(s) were awarded it was my job to get the contact information for this delegate (Ex. if Hillary won 4 delegates we would need to pick 4 Hillary supporters that would represent her at the county level later on)
At 10:30, I got to my caucus site and met with the site coordinator. She gave me a box with all the needed information. We then headed to the front of the school where they let in the caucus chairs right at 11 while people were still lining up. At my caucus site there were probably 600 people or so in a line where three people were doing the check-ins. It was definitely a clusterf*ck. People brought their children with them and there were constant questions as to where their caucus location or bathroom was. For the larger caucus sites (50+ people) the site ended up being one of the bigger classrooms or auditoriums, for the smaller caucus sites the site ended up being a classroom. I did not witness it, but I was told that some people were actually turned away who weren't in line by 12. Since the line was moving ever so slowly, the actual caucusing did not start until after 1. I was stationed in a small caucus and ended up not having any people in my precinct. I checked the precinct on my phone and learned it was a small area of about 3 separate side streets. If just one person had shown up then that person would have been able to choose the delegate from their precinct. I intend on telling this story to anyone who insists their voice doesn't count.
As disappointing as it was that I didn't get to participate in my own precinct, I still wanted to get something out of the experience so I headed to a precinct that had 85 people so I got a chance to witness what a caucus looked like. Here's the procedure: People come in, mingle, and eventually organize themselves into sections based on their candidate, including a section for those who are uncommitted. They then fill out a ballot with that candidate's name and those ballots are connected and counted. After that, there is a chance to woo those that are uncommitted. One representative from each side has 2 minutes to state his or her case. Then, there is a 15 minute window where each candidate can be wooed by people from either side. Essentially, it's like when a new, good-looking kid starts his first day of middle school and everybody wants to be their friend. After 15 minutes, the uncommitteds chose their new home and everybody enjoys their Snack Pack.
In the precinct I observed, the 2 uncommitteds ended up siding with Bernie Sanders. However, in the end this was not enough. There is a mathematical formula to determine who gets the allotted delegates. In our precinct, the math ended up breaking down so that Hillary Clinton ended up earning 6 delegates (47 votes) to Bernie Sanders earning 4 delegates (38 votes). At the end, one gentleman was particularly angry and expressed how he believed Hillary Clinton was a "sell out" and "beholden to Wall Street." This is what we in the biz call a BernieBro, someone who is needlessly angry and has no respect for his opponent. Eventually this gentleman calmed down but he made quite an impression on the rest of the room. The only other incident occurred as a Bernie supporter insisted on filming the results because he didn't believe that the precinct officials would properly count the delegates. This statement drew some sharp criticism from the Hillary Clinton supporters. After the tally was official people were free to go home. We thanked folks for participating and headed back to the campaign office, which happened to be locked. I decided to use the time to go and grab lunch instead and returned to drop off my materials and bid adieu to the office that had been my home for 4 days.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how amazing my first cousin once removed Becky and her husband Mike were for hosting me for four nights. I affectionately call them Aunt Becky and Uncle Mike and they went above and beyond in bedding, feeding, and hydrating me over the course of my time in Boulder City where I stayed with them and their two dogs, Callie and Boomer. Not only did they cook dinner for me and let me steal their cereal but they also took me out to breakfast twice as well. They also invited over Becky's cousin Dana and his wife, Shagupta, for a delicious family meal of what we call "cheesy noodles" on Friday. We got a chance to catch up on the latest family news and it was great experiencing everything Boulder City had to offer. On Saturday after the caucus I had a couple of hours to kill so I drove down to nearby Hoover Dam to take some pictures and then ended the day by grabbing a quick walk from Mike and Becky's house to a nearby hill when I took some pictures of Lake Mead at sunset. Becky told me that February was one of the nicest months of the year and I could totally see why.
So that was my first campaign experience in a nutshell. I got up at 6:30 on Sunday and after a delicious breakfast was on the road for an eight-hour trek back to Sacramento. I managed to make one contact at the campaign office, a local director named Amanda who I exchanged emails with and with whom I shared some of my writings. I don't know if anything will come of it but it was good to at least try. I figure at the very least, I can update my resume and add "caucus chair" to my volunteer experience working for Hillary for America with the hope that nobody actually presses me for details and I am forced to concede that nobody actually showed up to my caucus. All joking aside, it was a great experience and I'm fortunate to have great family who were able to take me in with open arms. The whole experience was a whirlwind and gave me a sense for how hard people work on a national campaign. As I continue to search for jobs, I will also continue to do the political writing as I believe that my future lies in that field.
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