Standout for Political Candidate - Trip Report

[KilgoreTrout]

tl;dr: An old friend is running for Mayor of my city. I've mentioned to him that I wanted to help out, and I finally did today, by standing on a street corner, holding a banner, and waving to bleary-eyed commuters. I was surprised how good it felt to do this.

I ran into my buddy over the weekend at a sandwich shop and after the pleasantries I again offered to help him out on his mayoral campaign. The preliminary election is on the 11th, so the next couple of weeks are crucial. I was thinking that I'd write him a check and that would be fine and dandy.

He surprised me by saying that though he appreciated the offer of financial support, he really needs boots on the ground. He mentioned that he was planning a "standout" (standing out on a corner, holding signs, waving, and basically looking for name recognition) on Tuesday the 28th from 6:30 - 9:00.

I hadn't done a standout since I was in college, and the one thing I did remember is this: try not to be the first one at the location because the first ones there have to haul materials, build signs, and tie down banners - basically do all the setup - while the late comers get free coffee and an assembled sign to hold. So I showed up at 6:45 and was the first one there. Fine. Hand me the staple gun.

My buddy's father - my 8th grade history teacher, now retired - arrived and we built signs on the tailgate of my truck. A couple more volunteers filtered in and my buddy's mom - also a retired teacher (she taught me 10th grade English) - arrived with coffee and pastries. Then his sister showed up with some older people from the old neighborhood. By 7:00 we had a dozen people crowding the corners.

When we were positioned and caffeinated, the candidate arrived and shouted "Okay everyone, thanks for being here this morning. I know it's early but let's put on our game faces..." at this point he traced a cheshire cat grin over his face with his fingers, "and let's let these commuters know how happy we are to be morning people!"

So I waved and I smiled, and I turned my banner to face traffic. Cars honked, people waved, I pointed at them like, "hey, I know you, thanks a lot!" And you know what? People smiled back. I guess a happy fat guy in a tie (me) is a pleasant sight on a Tuesday.

The location was close to an Engineering school (WPI, for those in the know). A Chinese student walked past - probably a grad student - and commented that she had seen different people waving to the traffic every day and thought how nice it is (I'm not making this up).

By 8:00 I was getting close to being late for work, so I handed off my banner to another volunteer, said my goodbyes, and headed to the office. When I got here I was jacked! There must be something to the saying that smiles - even forced ones - lift your mood. Not only did I volunteer a couple of hours to help out a friend, I got to see how proud his parents and siblings are of him, and I even got a mood-lift of my own. It was a good morning indeed.

[MrWookie]

I did this once many years ago when I was a middle school student when we were campaigning to get a levy passed to remodel our decrepit middle school. It was a pretty neat experience. How do you like your buddies chances of winning the election?

[KilgoreTrout]

the way it works here is that a candidate for mayor must run for an at-large seat on the city council. The top at-large vote-getter is the mayor. My buddy has been a district city councillor for three terms. This is his first at-large bid.

He has his work cut out for him. In this city of roughly 180,000 we're only expecting betweem 8% and 15% of registered voters to turn out for the preliminary election (in which the field is thinned from 18 to 12 candidates).

So the pressure is on to get his name out there beyond his home district. A few of us are planning to hit other locations over the next few days.

A side note: the candidate's father got a little choked up this morning when he saw me there. His three boys are my age and we grew up playing whiffle ball in his back yard. He thanked me again for inviting them to our wedding - nearly 6 years ago. Good people.