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Saturday, March 1, 2008
On the Ground in Galveston Texas
The below update was sent in by Wendi, one of the students I sponsored to go down and volunteer in Texas:
I'm based out of Galveston, TX, actually a small island linked to mainland Texas by bridge, and I'm staying in a house with some other students. Galveston is a staunch Democratic stronghold in the state, but most of the TX volunteers are up in Houston, Austin, San Antonio, etc., and our office is desperate for more bodies so the local campaign is already talking about getting us to work organizing the main groups of local volunteers.
We got into Galveston late tonight and the office was really packed for a precinct captain training session. We also met quite a few out-of-state volunteers, including a woman who had been working with us up at the Palo Alto office a month ago! It's really amazing that we've got some out-of-state people here, because Galveston is quite unknown and small, even though it seems lots of the state recognizes we need to get more people here.
The local office was really happy to have us and surprised that we'd heard about their office--it was really just by chance that one of the Stanford students we're with happens to be from the town of Galveston. Just judging from the total number of people in the office and the Clinton office as we drove by, our office seemed to have many more people. Also, the local campaign is pretty organized, with impressive-looking T-shirts, bumper stickers, rally signs, etc. that say GALVESTON for Obama.
Tomorrow we have a canvassing effort in the morning, lunch with VA governor Tim Kaine (some think he may be a potential VP candidate), afternoon canvassing, then calls throughout the night to get local volunteers to work the polls and instruct voters on what to do for the primary and caucus on Tuesday.
The really interesting thing about the Texas "two-step" election is that it includes both primary voting (election day or early voting) and an election day caucus. Most Texans have never participated in the caucuses before because normally the primary election has been long decided by the time Texas has its election, so organizing people to work on election day and tell people about the caucuses is huge.
You can also track Wendi and her fellow students from Standford in Texas at their new blog at: Stanford in Texas for Obama
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