Notes from the Campaign Trail: WA State’s 8th Congressional District
Washington is a very very blue state, especially the western-Pacific Ocean facing part of the state. This means Seattle but also Bellingham, Tacoma, and Olympia. For the most part, the state gets less blue and more purple to red the farther you get from Seattle. I live in Seattle proper and since my amazing representative, Pramila Jayapal, will easily win her race in the WA 7th Congressional District, my family has adopted Dr. Kim Schrier, the Democrat running against long-term Republican Party stalwart Dino Rossi in our state’s 8th Congressional District. Dr. Schrier is a pediatrician and if elected (which would flip this open seat from Red to Blue) she would be the only female doctor in Congress. She’s great on the issues, vowing to protect the ACA, women’s reproductive rights, control the cost of prescription drugs, and work hard to improve health care. She has really made health care and her role as a pediatrician a central plank of her campaign. My family (wife & kids, 11 and 14 years old) have spent pretty much every weekend for the last month+ canvassing for Kim, knocking on doors, and doing what we can to educate and persuade voters and now helping to get out the vote. We’ve attended fund raises and donated what we could…hard to do when I look at our kids and think about the money we should be putting away into their college funds. I’ve met and spoken with Dr. Schrier several times now and she is amazing in person…charismatic, able to work a room really well, very smart, funny and gracious. She reminds me…in a good way…of Hilary who may have been at her best in smaller, more personal settings where people always came away impressed.
The 8th Congressional District is kind of sprawling, stretching from suburban east-side Seattle bedroom communities and Microsoft employees down south toward Tacoma, and over the cascade mountains into Wenatchee. I’ve canvassed mostly in the south Seattle area (Kent, Maple Valley, Covington) and the eastside, which means Issaquah and Sammamish (generally more upscale). The 8th is being hailed as one of the key-flippable red-to-blue districts and tons of money is being poured into it from inside and outside the state.
These are my notes from the field, knocking on doors…make of them what you will.
1. Most people are “Not Home.” Rain or shine, during a Seahawks football game or not, most people either are note home or don’t want to come to the door. Leave ‘em a flyer and move on.
2. Most people don’t wanna talk to you. I get it. I wouldn’t want to spend my Saturday or Sunday chatting with a stranger at the door no matter what they were offering. I don’t pester or try and be persistent. If they seem eager to be rid of me, I’m eager to get going.
3. It’s good to bring your kids with you. I have an 11 year old boy and a 14 year old young woman. Mostly, they don’t want to be out canvassing with mom and dad. Especially my daughter, who is not exactly bored by it all but she is not quite as politically engaged as I would hope or as I was at her age. She rolls her eyes at me a lot! But when one of my kids is with me, by my side at the door, it’s disarming to the people at home. I’m always far more likely to get a door open, to have a pleasant exchange, or have an interesting conversation when my kids are with me. “I’m doing this for them,” I often say. That hits home most of the time. And it’s true.
4. There’s a clear gender bias. More women than men seem eager to talk, eager to express their political thoughts, and are far, far more receptive to Democratic candidates and politics. Today, one 50+ woman complained, “We have a dictator in the White House. We have to get rid of him!” I’ve heard a few versions of this, mostly from women. If we win here…and maybe across the country, it will be because of the women.
5. There is a lack of engagement in the 20+ to 30+ age group I’ve encountered. When I hit a home with a youngish family living there, and someone is willing to open the door and talk, often they seem unaware of what’s happening, why it’s important, and not particularly interested in finding out. I’ve had a lot of these folks say, “I haven’t really given much thought to the election” or “I don’t know much about politics.” And when I ask them if they want to discuss it or what issues matter the most to them I get a lot of blank stares and eagerness to extract from the conversation.
6. My impact has been small…very small. I’d say, every day out canvassing, I have maybe 1 or 2 to 2 or 3 meaningful exchanges. That’s out of knocking on 40 to 60 doors a pop. Last week I had a 30 something white guy who actually wanted to discuss issues and was open to a dialogue. I thought I made a good pitch (we need a Democratic congress to provide a meaningful check on this president). I thought that hit home with him. My wife disagreed and she thought I should have mentioned health care. Nevertheless, it was a real exchange. Gave him something to think about. Today I encouraged several Democratic voters to mail in their ballots.
7. Older white guys are the absolute worst! Unfailingly when an exchange goes badly or there is some meanness or rude behavior out on the campaign trail, it’s because some older (50+) white dude wants to have it out with me and my family. While anecdotal, a disturbing pattern has cropped up where I have come across older white guys who clearly have younger women of color as partners of spouses. And these white dudes, right in front of their female partners, begin to rail about Democrats or praise Trump or say other unfortunate things, often using the royal “We” – as in “We’re not going to vote for HER!” These guys also serve as gatekeepers to their partners…never letting them speak or letting me have any access to them on their own. What I never say is that the MiniVan canvassing ap I use has already identified a person at your home as a onetime Democratic voter…probably your wife. In a few of these tense exchanges, the female POC have just stood there, silently looking down at the ground, and seem crushed. I make a note in the ap and hope someone returned and was able to find the woman of the house home alone.
Oh yeah, every one of these asshat, older white dudes…they vote.
I don’t have any sense, based on my canvassing, how this race is going to turn out. There hasn’t been a lot of polling but the last one had it at 50-50. Rossi, the Republican, has lost a lot of close races to Democrats in WA state. I hope he loses another one on Tuesday. I’m cautiously optimistic. What drives me the most is threefold: 1) I don’t want to wake up on Weds morning and wish I had done more. Which was certainly the case in 2016. 2) I am afraid, deeply and powerfully, about the direction our country is taking. It’s no longer ok just to sit back and hope things work out…I’m going to do what I can to make it work out they way it should. 3) I have kids.
I want to be clear: I don’t want to be out canvassing. It’s not my ideal way to spend a weekend. We have soccer games and piano lessons for the kids to figure out. We have grocery shopping to do. The house needs winterizing. I have papers to grade. I’d rather be working on all those things. I’d rather be down at the pub watching the Seahawks or working on my own writing. But here I am…frig’n knocking on doors because what’s happening right now is not normal. The differences between Republicans and Democrats, between the Left and Trump is not small quibbling over what the best policy is to solve a well acknowledged problem...it’s over the fundamental idea of what constitutional democracy is...about who we are fundamentally as a people...you can’t support Trump or the other politicians who support Trump without fundamentally and immorally altering the very fabric of our democracy. So maybe being against abortion is your thing...or lower taxes...or whatever. Too bad. You’re going to have to put that aside for now until this particular menace passes, is staked through the heart, has its head chopped off, and is exposed finally to the sun!!!
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