DOORKNOCKERS NEEDED IN MANKATO
GOTV phone banking continues here at DFL headquarters, while the 6 p.m. shift of door knockers is being directed to the staging area at Union Center, 201 North Broad.
More doorknockers are needed in Mankato--if you can make it, please show up.
TURNOUT HIGH ALL OVER DISTRICT
Donna, the Walz subcommander at the DFL headquarters, says that word is in the voter turn out in high all over the First. Some volunteers coming in headquarters spoke of low lines in their precincts.
An organizer just came in from the southeastern corner of the state. Exhausted from five state days of field work, he related first hand accounts of impressive DFL organizing in that traditionally Republican part of the state.
In the front of the office, a woman is relating the story of her conversion from Republicanism to being a Tim Walz supporter. She keeps repeating the mantra, "He's a man of integrity...We've got Mayo docs."
We're about to shift to the staging area--not sure if there's wireless there--then on the Mankato's Holiday Inn.
This night may be a long one.
It's nearly 2:30 p.m. in Mankato. Reports from precinct captains all over the Fighting First indicate that many key areas are over-performing, with lines in DFL areas. A doorknocking volunteer related anecdotal information about her district; early morning voting was heavy, and many young people were at the polls.
Meredith Salsbery, the campaign's communications manager said that 15% of Walz's precinct had already voted by the time the candidate voted at 8 a.m.
Other areas seem about on track to match their 2002 turnout.
The volunteer effort continues without let up. Especially impressive are the high school students who take a shift doorknocking neighborhoods, then come to the DFL office to phonebank. But it's not just students; union members, wearing their locals' sweatshirts and retirees staff the phones.
Contact rate is 75% and many of those contacted have already voted for Tim Walz. They get crossed off from the list and volunteers move on.
And the DFL office is only one volunteer center. Elsewhere in downtown Mankato, there's a staging center for training and launching door-knocking teams. We walked over to the launch area and ran into Gwen Walz (right) as she sat with a group of volunteers, waiting for their training.
The assembled volunteers ranged in age from students to retirees, but everybody had the same question: How is little baby Gus Walz? Is he still a good baby?
Gwen beamed: he's still a good baby, with a healthy appetite.
We came back to the DFL office to find new faces of volunteers mixed with the morning shift, and a new post from David in Rochester at the U-DFL blog:
1:39 PM: I just checked out three crucial polling places in HD30A. Two of those precincts are on pace for very high turnout, while one is surprisingly low. These numbers won't mean anything for most, I'm sure, but anybody familiar with Rochester might find these useful. We are well on pace to far exceed 2002 turnout but I haven't compared these numbers to 2004 turnout.
2002:
Edison 2-2: 1271
Shorewood 2-3: 763
History Center 2-4: 1751
2006:
Edison 2-2 (1:13 P.M.): 582 (704 including absentee)
Shorewood 2-3 (1:05 P.M.): 376 (No absentee numbers)
Autumn Ridge 2-4 (12:57 P.M.): 940 (No absentee numbers)
I've just come back from working in a "pull team," my sister and myself driving around knocking on the doors of late-identified or ticket-splitting Liebling supporters. Those who are home have voted, and many of the people I've seen just walking around are wearing the "I Voted" stickers. My house is currently hosting three volunteers making hundreds of GOTV phone calls to the people whose doors we will not be able to reach. I am now leaving to check on three or four precincts and I will give you all an idea of the turnout as soon as I'm back.
Meredith Salsbery, who is travelling with Walz in southeastern Minnesota, said that volunteers were enthusiastic everywhere they stopped.
And indeed, the phone call was punctuated time and again by the cheers of carloads of doorknocking teams cheering and yelling as they moved out to canvas neighborhoods for Tim Walz.
OLLIE OX UPDATE: AND THANK GOODNESS FOR THAT
Our conservative blogging brethren at Fraters Libertas share additional information about the Rochester egging:
It was also reported that Gutknecht's toupee was not harmed in the attack.
Local DFL sources here in Mankato insist it's Gil's real hair, and voters should concentrate on issues. Killjoys.
I'm sitting in the Mankato DFL office, surrounded by a swarm of volunteers calling voters to make sure they're planning to vote or have voted. The room sounds with an uneven chorus of people saying hello, then launching into the spiel. The first report on voter contact and voter turnout will come in around noon, and we'll post them then.
U-DFL LIVE BLOGGING FROM ROCHESTER
David Liebow is live blogging from Rochester at the U-DFL blog. We meet him on Saturday and snapped a picture of him and his mother, State Rep. Tina Liebling. David writes:
I've been down here since Thursday night, phone-calling and doorknocking for our DFL slate of candidates, one of the best in decades. Rochester's an area that has usually been solid red territory, but in 2004 we scored two big wins for the state house locally. This year, we have a chance to sweep all four state house races, win one of the two state senate races, and biggest of all beat six-term incumbent Congressman Gil Gutknecht, who is violating his 1994 Contract with America pledge to only serve six terms. While you guys up at the U are playing the turnout game, we've got close races to win at every level.
I just went and voted, and at about 7:45 A.M. there had been 139 votes in my precinct. I'm hearing reports of very high turnout this morning, both in Rochester and across the state. This could be a very good day for us.
Late yesterday afternoon, the Mankato DFL office was jumping with volunteers and staff. Some were phoning voters, others were recounting impressive tales of the day's doorknocking, and still others worked on laptops scattered around the long and open office on Riverfront Drive.
Phones rang constantly, with volunteers patiently answering voters' questions, mainly about Tim Walz's position on issues. A cluster of young women and men stuffed lit for a doorknock of MSU-M dorms.
While the Rochester office fielded volunteers of all ages, the Mankato office swung more toward young volunteers. Two reasons for this, really: Mankato is a college town and Tim Walz is a high school teacher. Many of Walz's former students, now in college, have gathered to help put Walz in the win column come Wednesday morning.
Nick Burkhart and Matt Klaber were among those returning. While Matt only had to travel from the Cities, Nick returned home from Mesa, Arizona, where he is a first-term freshman.
No accident these young men have come home to Mankato. In a very real way, they are the genesis of the Walz campaign, for Nick and Matt are the students who were kicked out of a 2004 rally in Mankato for President Bush. The story as told in The Atlantic Monthly:
. . .The president's visit struck Walz as a teachable moment, and he and two students boarded a Bush campaign bus that took them to a quarry where the president was to speak. But after they had passed through a metal detector and their tickets and IDs were checked, they were denied admittance and ordered back onto the bus. One of the boys had a John Kerry sticker on his wallet.
Indignant, Walz refused. "As a soldier, I told them I had a right to see my commander-in-chief," the normally jovial forty-one-year-old recently explained to a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party dinner in the small town of Albert Lea, Minnesota.
His challenge prompted a KGB-style interrogation that was sadly characteristic of Bush campaign events. Do you support the president? Walz refused to answer. Do you oppose the president? Walz replied that it was no one's business but his own. (He later learned that his wife was informed that the Secret Service might arrest him.) . . .
. . .Walz was told to behave himself and permitted to attend the speech, albeit under heavy scrutiny. His students were not: they were sent home. Shortly after this Walz retired from the Guard. Then he did something that until recently was highly unusual for a military man. He announced he was running for Congress—as a Democrat.
This was the beginning of what the Wall Street Journal has called the Republican nightmare.
At the Mankato DFL headquarters on Saturday, there were no nightmares, just the buzz of contagious youthful high energy as the afternoon flowed into evening.
Pizzas were ordered and delivered just in time for Tim Walz's return to Mankato after a long day of campaigning and greeting volunteers all over the district. Word filtered in of the number of doors knocked, of the press walking along as Walz met with citizens, of yet another notice of the campaign in the Wall Street Journal.
Bright and ripe in its perigee and nearly full, the November moon rose over the eastern bank of the Minnesota River Valley, and still the volunteers and staff soldiered on, high on expectations for Tuesday and yet . . .and yet--not certain of victory on that day or even what Sunday would bring.
It was Saturday night in Mankato, southern Minnesota's Key City, and Tim Walz's staff and volunteers were working, working, working.
While the Twin Cities media may concentrate its coverage on the "star power" of political celebrities like John McCain and Barack Obama, a genuine grassroots campaign draws its power from everyday people who show up.
An afternoon wave of volunteers has come to headquarters.
Some of the volunteers are old hands. Others have been drawn by a desire to change our country's direction.Sue Benson (pictured in this post) signed up at a rally and showed up to doorknock a neighborhood in Rochester.
Other people are phoning undecided voters in an attempt to persuade them to vote for Tim Walz and other DFL candidates.
The volunteers are optimistic, yet working as if Tim Walz is down by 10 points, rather than running neck-to-neck in a tight race. If you are able to join them, sign up to volunteer here.
We're off to Mankato, for more observation and reporting. More later.
We thought we were early for the launch of a door knock and phone bank for DFL candidates in Rochester, for we didn't see any cars when we pulled into the front parking lot in the rain.
It's that way sometimes--bad weather can trump good intentions.
However, as soon as we got out of the car, three more vehicles pulled up--and we soon learned that the entrance to the Rochester DFL office was around the corner.
The back parking lot was full and the main room at party headquarters was already half full when we walked in the door. More volunteers streamed in as we set up our laptop: young, old, middle aged, single, parents and grandparents with toddlers in tow.
So many people have volunteered that the Rochester office had to secure more space in the building where it rents; as I type, staffers and volunteers are setting up more workstations.
The DFL is charged up in Rochester--it's no accident that the city is trending blue. Organizing and mobilizing are essential. Voter contact is the name of the game, and the volunteers are the heart of the game now, and Walz supporters are out in force now.
They came out in the rain, and the rain stopped. It's just that kind of campaign.
Want to help make history in the Fighting First? Sign up to help Tim Walz.
