Tantrums, tears and turkey

Political wonks are, my friends (McCainism), an increasingly bizarre bunch and I'm rapidly changing (Obamaism) into one.

More than a fortnight has passed since my last post and during that time I've been thrown into the deep end of the Houston election climate.
Post Ike the city is now getting back into gear and with less than a month to go till decision day there isn't a moment to spare. Put simply everyone is flat out working crazy hours, surviving on a few hours sleep and when you do pass out into the land of nod you find yourself dreaming about the election. Or maybe that's just me.

Barack Obama's campaign is unique in that they really have adopted a fifty state strategy. For the first time in years Texas has some paid Democratic staffers, 13 to be precise, with four deployed in my temporary home of Houston. That's one Obamano for every one million people in this city. Bear in mind that there were 30 Obama paid staff in Houston for the primary and there are over 300 currently in Florida.

With the numbers stacked against us the staff have to improvise to cope with the demands of such a huge state. Stress has certainly taken its toll on them and I've witnessed tears and tantrums which even Sir Elton would find hard to compete with.

A fine example is my friend and colleague Ken Flippin who works for the Democratic National Committee and like Obama he started off as a community organiser. Ken has enjoyed about as much luck this year as most of us have on the lotto. Without revealing too much he's had two laptops stolen and his car blew up. That's just the stuff he's allowed me to reveal (I think).

Despite the personal misfortune Ken's relentless enthusiasm continues to amaze me. A couple of hours after his latest laptop was pinched he was working on voter registration strategies and speaking passionately about how we're going to win this thing.

"If I was a Republican," he recalled, "then maybe I'd be rich but I doubt I'd be happy. What Obama is doing and what he is going to do in office makes me think so what if things aren't perfect for me now. What we are doing is far more important than my own personal stuff."

Amen to that.

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Assuming things don't go pear shaped in the next 26 days Barack Obama will become the next President of the United States. A major factor in that will be the millions of people who have registered to vote for the first time in this election.

Last Monday was the final day of 'voter reg' as we have deemed it and there were over 50 separate drives in Houston. I was dispatched outside a Half Price bookstore in Rice Village for my afternoon shift and went through several books.

Although this was a non partisan registration drive it was pretty obvious to me, minus my Obama shirt, who people were signing up for. When the turnout is high it favours the Democrats and 70% of new voters go for the boys in blue. Over 1.5m people have signed up in Pennsylvania contributing to his advantage there while he is leading the way in North Carolina, a state the Democrats haven't won since 1976. That's the last time Texas went blue so maybe it's an omen.

Back to my stint at the bookstore where I was pleasantly surprised that most of the people I spoke to were already registered. And of course I ran into a fellow Irishman who hails from Mayo who later joined me for our pubcrawl voter reg drive. See below.

Whilst I was signing up new voters I was approached by a bunch of folks from California who were in town for a few days. One of their crew asked me to recommend a good place to eat so I pointed out my favourite Turkish restaurant just round the corner.

His reply said with a totally straight face was, "I love turkey. That sounds really good. Thanks man." He continued to tell his friends about how much he loves turkey at Christmas all said with a beaming west coast grin. I simply didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise.

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After tucking into my kebab (minus the turkey) our voter reg team hit the pubs to sign up some punters. Along with my new Irish friend Seamus we signed up hundreds of people before the clock struck twelve.

Our original plan was to have a drink for every voter we registered but it became pretty obvious that we'd be broke and likely in a hospital within an hour. Some people simply refused like a young barman with Irish American roots but when I told him I was a Paddy and that people were killing each other for the right to vote in Zimbabwe he promptly got onboard.

Telling people you HAVE to vote in Australia also worked as did 'you get the government deserve' line. By the time the cards were counted the next day all of us combined had signed up almost 1,300 voters.

The cards had to be turned in by 5pm at the latest although there were rumours circling that the deadline was noon. Not true but it served to put the fear of God into us.

Ken and I organised all of the cards by deputy registrar number, no easy feat, and then checked through em all for errors. Cards can be rejected for the smallest of reasons like the box for US citizen not being ticked or a poorly legible drivers licence number. We got on the phone to the voters to fix any mistakes.

Anyway we turned in our cards bang on 4pm and could relax. Or at least we thought we could. Some other registrars came in with a stack of over 2,000 cards at 4.45 and these all had to be sorted. Fortunately the staff working at the Tax Assessors office complied and helped out sorting through the cards.

Later on as we dotted the i's and crossed the t's a man who is a senior staff member walked in and remarked, "Oh you're fixing the cards then." Bear in mind the Tax Assessors office is currently Republican controlled. Go figure.

We worked well past the deadline on the cards and this gentleman later returned to the room and suggested that rejection letters should be sent to the remaining people whose cards we were still working on. His staff declined the request and continued to process the cards. Maybe they see the writing on the wall and want to hang onto their jobs when, as expected, the Democratic candidate is the new tax assessor after the election.

My friend Ken said in a rather sarcastic voice to the Republican guy, "Isn't it great that so many people want to vote in this election?" Even for an American I think the Republican spotted the irony.
Pic: Ken Flippin and I holding hundreds of voter reg cards