The Davis Square Community

:-) Man, my answering machine has 15 messages...

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Yup. We will now stop. Pinky promise, as a friend of mine would say.

(Although I bet at least *some* of those are Brown calls)

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How did you reconcile your day job with working on the campaign. Or did the campaign BECOME your day job?

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Long story-short version: my day job consumes 1/3 FTE. As a doctor, I get paid fairly well, and can live fairly well on 1/3 an ER docs salary. I buy health insurance through the state exchange (hence my interest in health reform, aside from my interest as a health care provider and health policy analyst), I live with a housemate in Ward 5, have no kids, and try to be frugal most of the time (didn't so much manage that during the campaign, but I'll get back on the bandwagon now it's over). The campaign never paid me penny one, although they bought me some pizza and coffee and donuts in the past week. I got a nice badge, now worthless, and a t-shirt.

Edited Date: 2010-01-20 04:04 am (UTC)

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Thanks. Technically, I could also live on 1/3 of my salary, but the problem is that I cannot just take 1/3 of my job (perhaps, for a short time).

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craigindaville.livejournal.com

Not to necessarily single out docorion, but I was disgusted by the number of GOTV calls in this campaign. I'm sorry, but as much as I love civic involvement, coming home today to 17 (YES, 17) "missed" calls from campaigns today alone is ridiculous. I have received up to four calls within 10 minutes, with a total of close to 40 calls over this past weekend. You would think that SOME of this was coordinated in some way. If I weren't so committed a voter and Democrat, I would actually be turned OFF from voting by the overwhelming, constant ring of my telephone by the same people calling over and over again!!!

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Say, from a potential employer or something. Then, you may have to pick up each time, just to get frustrated.

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Is that it takes 13 voter contacts to generate one vote. At least one person during this campaign pointed out "You Massachusetts people are not usually a battle ground state; people in battleground states (NH, PA) expect this, and take it in stride." If we plan to be one of the new battle ground states, we should probably be ready for this. He didn't say this, but I did: "So basically you're calling Massachusetts voters a bunch of weenies"? He did not deny me.

If we want to split the delegation (which I cannot recommend), we need to be smart about it, and make sure each Senator plays to his strengths. And be aware that every six years there will be a very annoying lessons in how to say no on the phone politely, but firmly.

Edited Date: 2010-01-20 04:46 am (UTC)

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craigindaville.livejournal.com

13 voter contacts over the course of a campaign makes sense. 17 calls in one day, 12 calls the day before, 10 calls the day before that, etc are overkill. Absolutely overkill. And all I can presume is that it is related to the lack of coordination between the Coakley campaign, the DNC, the DSCC, and other groups. But if you had a sick wife who needed her sleep this weekend, you may be more sensitive to the sheer number of times our phone rang in just a few days, and the need to constantly pick up the phone and hang up again. Yes, I literally hung up on people I would normally have chatted with (if only to give them a "break"-- I've done phone banking before and know it can be brutal).

40 calls. One weekend, Something wasn't right in the coordination. There is no reason for that high a number, even if we were in a "traditional battleground state."

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perspicuity.livejournal.com

many people in traditional battleground states just unplug the phone, or use other technology to block the calls.

calls before 9am and calls after 8pm? no, not cool. enthusiasm is one thing, but the do-not-call laws should be augmented if these trends continue.

#

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*My* phone bank did not call you (or anyone) before 10a or after 830p (those being my conception of civilized hours). I am sorry other people did, though.

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chenoameg.livejournal.com

I have a three month old baby, no good sleep in a week, and five registered voters on my landline. Yeah, it was horrible

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daviscubed.livejournal.com

13 voter contacts to generate one vote, 30 to lose one?

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lyonesse.livejournal.com

thanks for trying.

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Have ward and precinct totals been posted online anywhere yet? (Ron?)

I was impressed that about 80% of my page in the book had voted by 7:45 last night, but surprised to see 54% turnout for the city as a whole. Need to find out where the laggards are, and hopefully call for a shakeup of several of the ward Democratic committees.

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You mean these results? (http://www.somervillema.gov/alert.cfm?alert_id=265)

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daviscubed.livejournal.com

Wow: Ward 3= 87% turnout.

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There's a missing number for one of the precincts in Ward Three. You can get an approximation of registered voters by using the numbers from the primary election, then recalculate (too busy to do so myself, right now)

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wonkywheels.livejournal.com

Capuano should have been the candidate.

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Capuano wins by ten points yesterday. I would assume he runs in 2012.

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wonkywheels.livejournal.com

The primary was the real problem in this election.

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Coakley won because she was first to the bar while everyone else dithered waiting to see if a Kennedy was going to run, because Capuano and Khazei split the anti-establishment, anti-hack (or anti-whatever you want to call it) vote, and less so but still a factor, because she was a woman running against a field of three men.

Maybe you need to consider how a candidate would fare in the general election, but I don't think anyone could have foreseen how badly this combination of hubristic candidate and awful campaign was going to fare, it's shocking. I mean, this beats Bob Trane and his campaign running against Carl Sciortino by several degrees of FAIL.

Do we want to reform the primary system before 2012? You want to vote in the Dem primary, you need to register as a Dem. Unless Brown is facing a challenge from a teabagger, he's running unopposed, freeing up all sorts of voters to possibly cause mischief.

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chenoameg.livejournal.com

You want to vote in the Dem primary, you need to register as a Dem.

Um, no you don't. Unenrolled voters (which is what Masachussetts called voters who don't pick a party) can vote in any primary election.

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I'm suggesting that change going ahead.

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daviscubed.livejournal.com

30% of registered MA voters are democrats. Would you rather have that 30% choose your candidate in an election, or include the other 70% who may want one of your candidates but not necessarily the most left-leaning one?
Either way, it doesn't seem like it would have mattered in this primary.

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josephineave.livejournal.com

I've never liked unenrolled voters being able to vote in a primary. If you want to vote in the primary, register for that party. It prevents any major monkey business and just seems to be the only fair way to do it. The Democrats pick their candidate; the Republicans pick theirs. Everyone gets to vote in the general election. Yes, it leaves a bunch of folks out, but they get their say in the general election. (I grew up in another state where the only way to vote for a candidate with the chance to win is to register as a Democrat...those days are gone as the state has slid mostly into the red column).

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plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com

Somehow, I must of gotten on some do-not-call list, because I didn't get even one call for this election (I didn't get any during the presidential, either). Maybe its because I don't have a landline. Um, go me? :-)

Thank you for all your hard work, though.

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We tend to call cell phones less, although my cell phone is on the list (and I got a bunch of calls :-) You tend not to get calls if you're unenrolled, also.

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ckd

You tend not to get calls if you're unenrolled, also.

I guess that's why I "only" got half a dozen calls over the weekend instead of 20.

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dougo.livejournal.com

I also have no landline and am unenrolled, and I got zero calls, and in fact I was thinking this election was going to fly under the radar because I wasn't hearing much about it. I wonder how many people were in my position. If some people get 20 calls a day and others get zero, something's really broken.

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bombardiette.livejournal.com

This. I'm unenrolled, no land line. Not a single campaign call from anyone. Sorry to those who took the brunt of it for those of us who didn't - especially since (I believe) many of us "unenrolled" are the ones who could be talked to, convinced otherwise and do, in fact, turn out to vote for most things.

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fefie.livejournal.com

I don't understand why I got so many Coakley campaign calls, as I'm a registered Democrat. Kind of like preaching to the converted. I am really puzzled why the Coakley outreach did not focus more on the unenrolled voters.

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(Sorry-prior post was under the wrong username, and I wanted to fix that)

GOTV stands for Get Out The Vote; the idea is to get *your* voters out to vote, so you call Democrats way more than unenrolled folks because you ~~assume~~ hope they will vote for you (where 'you' here means the campaign doing the calling).

Admittedly that's a problem in a state where about 50% or more of the voters are unenrolled. But it is how it's done. Whether it ought to be done that way is a question which was well above my pay grade :-)

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readsalot.livejournal.com

Thank you for all of your hard work. That said, I would have liked to have been able to say to someone, "Yes, both of the registered voters at this phone number are going to vote. Really and truly. Please stop calling us."

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teko.livejournal.com

Your street team did a fantastic job. Major props to you guys for your energy and enthusiasm.

I've rarely seen a campaign flubbed as badly as this one -- if it was all done with as much verve as the Somerville grassroots effort, well, things might've been different.

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adrian-turtle.livejournal.com

I have both a landline and a cellphone, and I am registered as unenrolled. My cellphone got only a few campaign calls before the primary, and none in the past week. The landline, on the other hand, has been deluged with calls. They started at 8:30 most mornings, there were at least 3/day and sometimes as many as 15, and many of the robot callers left voice mail. If I didn't care so very much about this election, those [obscenities] would have driven me away from the polls.

Before the next election, I intend to purchase different leave-a-message technology that will allow me to block their calls, or at least to block their messages. Currently, I use voicemail from the phone company, so it's no help to unplug the phone--the messages just pile up on voicemail, interspersed with a handful of messages I very much want to get. I like being able to retrieve messages when I'm not home. Is there a way to do, such that I can disconnect the phone and disconnect the messaging? (I mean, without paying Verizon to turn the whole service off [which would probably mean losing net connectivity] and trusting them to turn it back on when I wanted them to.)

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frederic.livejournal.com

We stopped answering our phones on Thursday and the phone would ring every 2 or maybe 3 hours.

It angered me enough almost not to vote at all.

Horrible tactic. If you want to support a candidate, don't do it like a college kid the night before the paper is due.

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I agree. Do recall that those decisions were markedly above my pay grade (especially marked given I wasn't being paid at all). And also that I didn't agree with them, having told my volunteers after the primary "Remember, we haven't won yet; the important election is still ahead". My guys listened; the campaign, not so much.

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teele-sq.livejournal.com

"It was a good campaign,"

really? i don't see many people in the press or otherwise calling it a "good" campaign. by one really important measure that I can think of, it was certainly not a good campaign.

The 19:66 ratio of campaign events. The week long vacation. The refusal to debate flap. Obama not getting involved until the last minute. Does the campaign acknowledge any mistakes?

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