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The mayoral candidate I worked for this summer won the Primary in July, but we still faced the General Election in November.
I took a few weeks off from working with my brain in the political world during August and September, and worked with my hands instead. But late September rolled around, and I wound up my repair work and went back into the campaign.
The big challenge for the July Primary had been to get people to the polls. There were three forms of so-called “conventional wisdom” among the voters in the Primary campaign. The first was that we didn’t have a chance, so there was no point in voting. The second was that we would walk away with it, so there was no point in voting. The third was the most frightening: “What’s the big hurry? The election isn’t until 2008!”
All three forms of thinking were deadly to our hopes. All our efforts were directed to getting out the vote on July 17. The efforts paid off, and we won with 64 percent of the vote.
Several City Council candidates faced a run-off election four weeks later, and a special County Commission race was scheduled four weeks after that. So we decided to lay low during that period of time, get some rest, and give the voters a chance to pay attention to those races at hand.
But then late September rolled around, and we went back to work. Our opposition was perceived to be weak. We were perceived to be strong after the Primary win. Our race was to be the only contested race on the General Election ballot.
Conventional wisdom began circulating again. “There’s no way you’ll see more than 2,000 votes in the General Election. History shows that nobody turns out to vote in one-race elections.”
The second piece of conventional wisdom was disconcerting: “There’s no point in campaigning this time. There’s no way you can lose.”
The third piece of wisdom said very plainly that our Primary win was a fluke.
Meanwhile I was hearing that our opponent was busy shaking hands all over. At the same time, our supporters kept saying he didn’t have a chance.
The meeting with volunteers was short and to the point. “We’ve got to turn out the vote, and ask people to make a statement that they believe in this city being what it can be.”
We were lucky to have a good group of volunteers who saw the dangers of apathy. Their reports began filtering back to Headquarters, and those reports were encouraging. “People are ready to vote. They want to make the point that the Primary win was no fluke.”
We continued to stress the point that the Board of Elections doesn’t count supporters. The Board of Elections only counts votes.
Advance voting totaled nearly 2,000 votes. November 6th arrived. At the end of day, we ended up with 96% of the vote, on a total of around 12,000 votes cast.
Now the work begins.
(Editor’s Note: Reach David Clark at P.O. Box 148, Cochran, GA 31014, or dclark@outofthesky.com.)
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