The Night Everything Changed

It was 7:00 p.m. Tuesday Nov. 4 in the San Jose office of Obama for America and positive returns for Barack Obama were already coming in. But Karen Wark did not want us to ease up. The Obama volunteer worked with campaign headquarters in Chicago to retrieve lists of all the voters to call from our phone bank operation at 43 E. Gish Road.

Even though polls were beginning to close east to west, the campaign wanted to send us phone numbers to call in one more state to maintain the get-out-the-vote pressure: Alaska.

“Lemme at ‘em!” Karen (right in photo below) responded.

The crowd of about 50 volunteers cheered at the news that they’d get a chance to call “Palin Country.” And getting to call the state whose “maverick” governor was fairly characterized as unqualified for the VP office she sought was just one incentive. “Anybody who calls Wasilla gets all the Halloween candy we have in the office,” said Nancy Jennings (left, above), the phone bank manager.

Karen and Nancy are just two of the many volunteers in San Jose who spent countless hours working to help elect Barack Obama the 44^th president of the United States. For more than a month, but most intensely since Saturday, the San Jose office was buzzing with volunteers eager to work as much as needed to ensure victory. Job One was to call voters in swing states to identify Obama supporters and, closer to Election Day, make sure they voted. Job Two was to recruit local volunteers to come into the office to make more of those swing state calls.

Sonia Sangster, an African-American woman, brought her two young sons with her so she could make calls. She wanted them to remember that they were a part of making history in helping to elect the first African-American U.S. president. It struck me that when her boys grow up, the idea of a black president will seem normal to them, expected and unremarkable. Carolyn (in photo below), a substitute teacher, told of an election held in a third grade class she taught in which all but one of the students supported Obama. I thought about how brave that one John McCain supporter must have been. Other callers told stories of voters they’d talked to who, despite being well into adulthood, had registered to vote for the first time in order to support Obama.

At times we got pushback from voters we were calling. Even those who supported Obama complained of being called multiple times, even as many as five times in one day. One voter answered with “I’m voting for Obama” and hung up. Others threatened to vote for McCain if we kept calling and one told a volunteer “I’m gonna kick your ass” if called again. Yikes! But we pressed on, not wanting to take the chance that an Obama supporter we hadn’t reached would somehow not be motivated to go to the polls. Despite Obama’s growing lead in the race, complacency was not an option.

And it paid off. Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado were the focus of most of our phone bank calling – and of personal visits by California volunteers, including myself (below). On Tuesday, each of those states, which were red in 2004, turned blue. Also turning red to blue this year were Indiana and Ohio, which we also called in recent days.

Ours was a ramshackle but nonetheless ruthlessly efficient enterprise. We occupied the third floor of a three-story walkup office building off of North First Street. I say walkup because the elevator, which had been balky for weeks, was broken altogether for the last week and a half and, unconscionably, no one who apparently owned this building sent anyone to fix it. To quiet the noise in one linoleum-tiled room used as a phone bank, someone donated sections of carpet that were laid out in a haphazard pattern on the floor. Most volunteers used their own cell phones to make calls, but the campaign had about two dozen phones to loan to those without one. They were so abused by repeated use that they seldom held much of a charge and, for a few units, Scotch tape held together the two halves of the clamshell-style phones.

But even with Scotch-taped phones, a broken elevator and offices so crowded that volunteers sat cross-legged on the floor and made calls, we achieved something amazing. From just the San Jose office, more than 38,000 calls were placed on Election Day alone. California’s 55 electoral votes were expected to go to Obama, so the candidates rarely visited here. But while California supporters didn’t need to help Californians decide, they helped in states to the East. During one week in October, 55 percent of the 1.8 million calls from Obama phone banks nationwide were placed from banks in California.

Now things are winding down at Gish Road. We third floor tenants (see above) in the Obama office will start clearing out, as will the Santa Clara County office of the Democratic Party on the second floor. Career Closet will remain on the first.

Career Closet is a charity that collects donations of women’s business attire and gives the clothes to disadvantaged women to look more professional on a job interview. Every time I passed their door on my way up or down the stairs, I’d say to whomever I was with at the moment, “This is where Sarah Palin’s clothes are going after the campaign.” It occurs to me that the clothes, and the optimism that is rising nationwide from Obama’s victory, will give those women added confidence in that job interview.

Obama’s campaign slogan has long been, “Yes We Can!” Now those who worked on the campaign can say, “Yes We Did!”