Amid the horror, there's no stopping ...

Almost two weeks ago while phone banking to turn out Harris voters in Charlotte, North Carolina, I was a little surprised that no one mentioned the late-September hurricane which had devastated the Appalachian west of the state.

I know something about campaigning in the wake of a natural disaster since I was leading a political canvassing campaign when the Loma Prieto earthquake shook San Francisco in 1989. That event, despite collapsed freeways and bridges, was not nearly as horrific as the depredations of Hurricane Helene. But the shake shook us all.

Electoral calendars stop for nothing and people enmeshed in them have to stay on track. Yet after such a disaster, the universe feels unstuck and normal life seems frozen -- perhaps because we have lived such violent emotions. People feel lost, in shock, as they do what they must in a changed world.

Being a political person, I have wondered what the hurricane, flooding, and destruction near Asheville might mean for getting out the vote in those hills. Though clearly the electoral contest is not the main emergency for people without light or heat, who have lost homes and livelihoods, the election does go on.

A friend of a friend -- one Fen Druidin -- from the Asheville area described going to the early voting polls:

Everywhere around here, people check in with each other. "Are you okay? Where are you located? How bad was it?"

We all know which parts were hit hardest. At the early voting site, I overheard the poll worker interacting with the woman who had been in line behind me. She'd been quiet and serious the whole time we were in line, not laughing when we did, though others interacted with us.

The poll worker asked her where she lived.

"Swannannoa," she said. [A particularly hard-hit location where many died.]

There was a hush. We all know what that means. It's hard to describe what I mean by a hush. Just. A held breath.

Then, "Are you okay?" The poll worker asked.

"Our house is gone," said the woman.

"Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry. Do you need anything?"

"We're just waiting on insurance and FEMA to finish their assessments," said the woman. "Then we can move forward. But we're okay for now."

Politico sent a reporter and a photographer to report on the election in the Asheville area. Some excerpts:

They lost their homes and possessions. They’re showing up to vote in NC.

When Hurricane Helene swept through Yancey County, the flood waters took Byrdene Byerly’s home and nearly all her possessions. She escaped from her house with only the muddy clothes on her back and her pocketbook.

But despite all the devastation, on the first day of early voting, Byerly was at the county Board of Elections to cast a ballot for Kamala Harris.

“I’m soon to be 82 years old, and I’ve voted since I was 21,” she said outside the polling place Thursday. “I always vote.”

... The situation, despite remaining dire in some areas, has improved in most places. In an interview two weeks before early voting started, Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, fought back tears as she processed how to balance the election with the immediate devastation many in her state were living through.

“Everyone keeps asking me about voting locations and everything,” Clayton said on Oct. 3, nearly a week after flood waters swept through western North Carolina. “There are still people who have not been found.”

... In the immediate aftermath, the state’s Democrats had paused campaigning in the region, including all texting operations besides checking in on people and suggesting where to find storm-related resources. But now, despite the Democrats’ continued work on local relief efforts in the region, they’re back to deploying volunteers to help mobilize voters, according to a Harris campaign official and activists on the ground.

... “Everything came to a halt that we’d been working on,” said Dalton Buchanan, chair of the Henderson County Young Democrats. “It became not a priority for a bit. It was just in the backside of our mind, that there was politics happening.”

But the reality of the election crept back in, Buchanan said, “when we had to deal with the right-wing extremist people making threats to FEMA, and bad misinformation spreading everywhere.” He said he had to urge some of his own family members, distrustful of the federal government due to some of the GOP’s propaganda, to apply for aid after losing their homes. 

This past weekend, the county party was finally back to canvassing and phone banking.

I recognize some elements of these descriptions. A field campaign apparatus, a mass of volunteers accustomed to going door to door, is well designed to spread good information to people isolated in a disaster and to collect help from those who can. We did that in 1989.

A natural disaster also serves as a breach of the normal which unleashes extremist nightmares into the daylight. Our campaign for legal recognition of LGBT partnerships was accused by right wing preachers of having caused the earthquake. I won't be surprised that some people think Democrats or Donald Trump caused the hurricane.

We in San Francisco persisted as do the people of western North Carolina. That's a good country at good work.