by Christian Freymeyer
A Beautiful Time in the Campaign for Change
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"THEY JUST CALLED OHIO FOR BARACK!" Sam says as he looks down at his computer. Eric cracks a smile and in almost perfect unison the rest of us let out shouts of excitement over the news. However, the returns are still not in for Virginia, and, while the notion of Ohio going blue probably means Barack will be moving to Washington, losing Virginia would make it undeniably bittersweet. So we continue to wait. “It’s all going to come down to whether or not we got all those new registrants out to vote,” says Eric as he searches Politico.com, MSNBC.com and other sites for the latest vote counts. There have been more than 400,000 newly registered voters in Virginia over the past year, which is being cited as one of the biggest steps of turning the state blue as many of these voters are young people or minorities, both base voting blocks for Barack Obama. However these new registrants didn’t come easily, in fact they came from hours of organizing and volunteer efforts from the community. It’s the grass-roots aspect of this campaign that attracts so many newcomers, so many people that have never had a thing to do with politics before.
Cold. That is the only way this morning can be described. It’s 4:30 a.m. and the sun isn’t up yet. It’s Monday Oct. 6, the last day to register new voters. Sam tells me this is the only way we are going to win: if we register enough new voters and get them out to the polls on election day. “The steelworkers here at the shipyard are largely unregistered,” Sam tells me excitedly. An untapped reservoir. “Union workers primarily vote Democratic, so every registration is basically a free vote for Barack,” he continues as we make our way to the shipyard’s entrance. Sam has coordinated with the United Steelworkers Union, who officially endorsed Senator Obama, to help make one final push. It’s a quarter to five and they begin to trudge in to the gate in herds. The workers must go through security and a rotating gate before making a long journey to their work stations inside the fortress that is Northrop Grumman. Most are supportive, but every once in a while a volunteer is approached with a growl.
Inside the gates the yellow-tinged light creates an eerie scene. It looks like a different city, with its own roads and buildings; there are even bikes down below for workers to get from one end of the site to another. The smell of engine fuel makes its way to the entrance along with faint bursts of coffee as workers pass by. The intertwining of the two makes for a very strange scent in the air. In the distance, the tops of aircraft carriers and destroyers can be seen which remind an onlooker of the seriousness of these workers’ jobs.
“Last day to register to vote, vote for a change” can be heard all over the entrance that has been flooded by Obama volunteers. Marylin Brown, the head of the political branch of the union, seems to be the loudest. Every time a worker passes she starts a new pitch as if their vote alone will truly determine the outcome of the election. As the sun rises, the volunteers don’t quit. In fact, they pick up the pace. Now 10...30…50…and 170 registrations by lunchtime. Sam and Eric are on a high and are trying to orchestrate the rest of the afternoon by calling every volunteer they can to come down in shifts for the afternoon rush. Today has been a rising crescendo, starting off slow and eerie, only to pick up with excitement as the sun rises, no telling to what all these registrations will lead.
THE BOTTLE OF CROWN ROYAL is already getting lighter as we wait in the office, wait for the elections returns from Virginia. “If we got Newport News to sixty-five percent, that would be huge in terms of turning the Tidewater region blue,” Sam says speculatively with no real evidence to back up the claim. It seems everyone is making these sorts of statements as it gets later into the night, perhaps on account that everyone is worried about the outcome. While the presidency looks promising with Ohio and Pennsylvania called for Barack, Virginia would all but seal the nomination, putting the final dagger into the heart of John McCain’s campaign. Miraculously, we all haven't collapsed yet, drained. We have been powered solely on adrenaline for our second night in a row, roughly forty hours, without sleep. More importantly, knowing that this will be our last night of these insane hours helps keeps the blood moving. “This still seems surreal—the end that is,” says Andrea, as we continue to patiently wait. Not twenty-four hours before we were sitting in the same room but with a completely different mindset.
IT'S A CLICHE, I KNOW, but there really was a calm before the storm early that Tuesday morning. It was about 3 a.m. and everyone was in a zone. Not worrying about the opening of polls in about three hours, but rather the task at hand: organizing and double checking everything for E-day, election day. There was a soft rumble of thunder that sounded something like a loose, slow, bass beat. Rain started falling, not the kind that would get someone soaked, but rather light drops that are almost refreshing.
“This rain better not keep up, it could cause us some major problems,” Eric uttered without looking up from his computer. We had already purchased hundreds of ponchos and trash bags to hand out to people waiting in what could be the longest lines ever seen in Newport News.
Staff had to be back at the office at five, making it almost pointless to drive home to get a half an hour of sleep. Instead, we worked until the dull, grey morning started to appear. There is something surreal about watching the world transition from night to day, even more so when such an important task lies with the new dawn.
While there was still an infinite amount of work to be done, it was almost impossible to put aside the fact that this would be the last late night in the office. No more 1 a.m. coffee breaks and no more 20-hour days. This was the culmination of all of that hard work.
Now it was time to get that 30-minute power nap before E-day began.