Ted, Ted, Ted

Laura and I took a day off school and work to do election-day campaigning for Eric Quezada, an old friend who was running for Supervisor (kind of like city council member) for the district that includes both the neighborhood where our home is and the neighborhood where Laura’s school is. It was a lot of fun. We were assigned a precinct way up at the top of Bernal Heights, one of the steeper neighborhoods around. I forgot to pack our belaying gear before we left the house — it might have come in handy.

For some parts of the day we stood around the statutory 100 feet from the polling place, handing out slate cards and waving our signs. Every couple of hours we checked the list of people who had voted, and then called and reminded the people who hadn’t. Late in the afternoon we knocked on the doors of some of the last holdouts. We didn’t have to physically drag anyone to the polling place, but it would be fair to say our phone calls and door-knocking may have accounted for up to ten votes that might not have been cast if we hadn’t been on the case. That felt pretty good.

Our candidate didn’t win — not a big surprise, for an underdog effort against two other candidates with better funding and name recognition. But I got everything else out of it that I wanted. Mainly a chance for Laura and Lilly to see what it’s like when a diverse bunch of progressive, big-hearted people get together to do something good against the odds. Lots of young people from the neighborhood got mobilized. The campaign office was crammed every evening with latino and African-American kids using their own cell phones to call voter lists. We went on a couple of noisy bike parades to get attention, and just for fun. We met some great people, like Sasha, David, Huli, and of course Eric, and we got to know some out-of-way corners of our city by walking campaign literature door to door. I’d say we’re ready to do it again.