2018: millions of heroes cared

In the Guardian, 2018 was the "year of the autocrat." Time's Persons of the Year were "The Guardians" amid the war on truth, journalists who were killed for the offense of trying to inform us.

For me, 2018 was the year I sojourned among heroes of democracy. For two months I had the privilege of organizing a short term volunteer program for the union UniteHERE on an independent expenditure campaign to ensure Nevada elected a new Democratic Senator and Governor. Two hundred twenty-five people joined us in Reno for two days, three days, or even a week at a time. We enabled them to spent quality shifts knocking on the doors of people who might not vote unless encouraged. Meanwhile 35 or more "volunteer organizers" (VOs), mostly union members, cooks, housekeepers, and catering workers, spent two long months living in an extended stay motel and walking those neighborhoods six days a week.

Volunteers and VOs struggled to use the data collection software; they discovered the sad truth of canvassing which is that hardly anyone is ever home; they got lost and warded off dogs and property managers who expelled them as threatening invaders. (Some even became proficient at sneaking into gated communities.) And their work paid off: Jacky Rosen was elected Nevada's new Senator and Steve Sisolak is the new Governor. Jon Ralston, the dean of Silver State pundits, concludes that Nevada is a "Democratic state for the foreseeable future."

Many of the short term volunteers were older, retired, and majority white. Who else has the time and freedom to travel to work on an election?

The VOs were mostly like the majority of workers you may have encountered in service jobs: younger, of color, and tough.

Scratch the surface in conversation with any of these people and the same theme emerged: "This year, in this time, I had to feel I had done something." For the older ones, they often wanted to be able to tell grandchildren that, in what they saw as a national emergency, they had tried. A reporter from the Washington Post found the same sentiments on another campaign:

“There’s a feeling out there of people saying, ‘I can’t sit out.’ Some people join the military to serve their country. Some people knock on doors to serve their country.”

A hard reality about episodes of heroism is that they aren't usually much fun in the moment. Oh, I've read accounts of election canvassing that make it sound fun. This canvasser enjoyed himself:

You learn a little bit about people when you politick them at their door. Mostly, you learn that they’re busy. They know the tax bill was wrong. They just don’t have time to yak about it. They have Little League games to get to. ...

The Trumpers, they were all right. They were perfectly polite in telling me to get lost. Maybe it’s only when people get on TV that they act nutty.

Democracy, it turns out, is fun. ...

I think my friend Dawn Oberg's experience in Reno, where she worked as a VO, was much more representative of the canvassing experience:

I won't sugar-coat it, I f**king HATE canvassing. I knew this going in. I'm doing it because studies show that's how you win elections, and Unite Here! (union I'm working with) pretty much won Nevada for Hillary in 2016. If I had known how stuff would turn out I would have canvassed then too.

People are mean to me every day. 100% of the shit I take is from white people, and 99% of that shit is from white women, middle-aged and older. Every bitchy, mean thing I've done in my life I am now paying for. Every. Damn. Day.

People, please never be mean to a canvasser. Even a Republican one. No one does it for money or fun. They don't enjoy bothering you. You don't have to answer the damned door. We go away after two knocks, and we'd really rather talk to your dog or cat.

We're doing this because we care about the world.... [This] is literally the most important thing I can do with my time until election day.

Thousands, millions, of us cared enough to work in the election in 2018. Not all of us could enjoy a win, not by a long shot. Georgia and Florida come to mind. But we did something -- because we cared.

The thing about democracy is that it is never done.

Canvasser training in progress.

Saturday scenery: Reno is beautiful

Amidst the intensity and anxiety of a political campaign, it was easy to forget this truth about our surroundings.

Until the last three hectic weeks, E.P. and I ran laps around this lovely human-made pond, saying good morning to the resident egrets.

The pond is a hidden gem.

On 90+F degree days in September, it was hard to credit the posted warnings to "stay off the ice." But by the end of campaign season, mornings were in the 20s. And the pond was still lovely.

The impact of our campaign in Reno came as a surprise ...

Washoe County Registrar of Voters, Deanna Spikula, said the midterm turnout in the Reno area far exceeded the 55 percent to 65 percent rate her department expected based on previous elections. Washoe County logged a 70.1 percent turnout rate.

“Over 70 percent turnout is just an incredible midterm for us,” she said.

Nevada Independent

Shows what can happen if campaigns devote resources to talking with people who are eligible to vote but who have not formed the voting habit. Most of those people are low income, of color, and/or young. Our folks count too.

Thoughts for Election Day

Thoughts for a long election day.

"... I think the closest thing to defining 'American' is a false sense of safety."

Poet Javier Zamora

From an always irritating commentator who occasionally offers wisdom:

"The Italian leftist, Antonio Gramsci, famously wrote, 'The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.' We live in such a time, and we have in front of us one of those morbid symptoms: the current Republican Party. You know what to do."

Andrew Sullivan

There are historical parallels:

“In South Africa, they used to say, ‘Only a dying mule kicks the hardest.’ So that’s what you are seeing.”

the Rev. William Barber

Lest we forget:

"We should vote as if our lives depend on it. Maybe they do."

Christine Emba

What it is really like to work on a election: campaigns are ecological disaster areas

In order to stay organized, you must throw out materials that have become obsolete -- rap sheets, no-longer usable early voting door hangers, boxes the literature came in, turf notes. Out! Every day.

In order to keep going, everyone must be fed and watered (and soda-ed). We create 4 and 5 and 6 monster trash bags of food-associated garbage, everyday.

In order to stay healthy, we clean the bathrooms of paper towels and other effluvia -- more than once a day.

No wonder landlords aren't thrilled to rent to campaigns. We do what we have to do.

Crunch time

Volunteers pour into Reno today to do their bit to get out the vote for Jacky Rosen for US Senate. Early voting has ended and, if people voted their party tendencies, she is ahead. But there is a lot of pavement pounding yet to go in preparation for Election Day.

Who's afraid of who?

My new friend Roy Eidelson who has come to work on the UniteHERE Reno campaign to help flip a Senate seat shares a psychologist's perspective on a A Tale of Two Caravans.

It makes sense that Donald Trump is worried about an approaching caravan. But it’s not the one you’re probably thinking of: the few thousand desperate Central Americans who’ve banded together and are slowly making their way through Mexico toward the U.S. border. These migrants have broken no laws in undertaking their difficult and dangerous journey, and seeking asylum here is their legal right.

No, the caravan that’s actually giving Trump and the GOP panicky night fevers is comprised of tens of millions of U.S. citizens. Committed to countering the horrors of the past two years—and the past week—they’re heading to polling places across the country with a single goal in mind: to vote some of the president’s fondest enablers out of office. ...

Read it all here.

What can we do when our country seems engulfed by atrocities ....

We can remember to remind those around us that we love them -- and keep struggling for justice, generosity, and decency.

Yesterday several hundred people organized by the labor union UniteHERE knocked on thousands of doors in Reno and Sparks, Nevada, working for US Senate candidate Jacky Rosen. They were reaching out to people who don't habitually vote in Nevada's most hotly contested county; and voters are responding!

It seemed fitting. The Democratic candidate -- a supporter of raising the minimum wage, improving education so the state's young people can find good jobs, and ensuring that health care is available to all -- is one of Nevada's more prominent Jewish leaders.

According to Politico:

Rosen popped up on Democrats' radar after being elected president of her local synagogue — the largest Jewish temple in the state — in 2013... “The minute I found out she was a synagogue president, I knew she could do anything,” said Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), who recruited Rosen for the House seat [that Rosen won in 2016.]. ....

Administering a large voluntary organization whose members feel passionate about its mission probably is good practice for returning some civilizing integrity to our political hellscape.

One way Nevada lowers "the cost of voting"

A couple of days ago, the Washington Post's Wonkblog published a map of which states make it hardest and which make it easiest to vote, generating what they called the "cost of voting index." They found that in states that make voting more difficult "Low voter turnout is no accident." Accumulated barriers to participation -- registration hurdles, finicky identification requirements, small numbers of polling places or lack of provisions for absentees or no early voting opportunities -- measurably reduce turnout.

Working here in Reno on a campaign to elect Jacky Rosen to the U.S. Senate and Steve Sisolak as Nevada's Governor, I was surprised to see Nevada treated as a worse than average state for access to voting. Now on reflection, I get it: registration is not simple; absentee ballots are not automatic; and persons convicted of felonies face a complex process to recover their rights.

But here in Nevada's second urban area, Washoe County, I'm seeing a system that acts as if it really wants all the people to be able to vote. We're working to encourage supporters to go to 23 neighborhood Early Voting sites. These aren't forbidding places like police stations or county buildings; they are in the local supermarkets!

And once voters get there, they encounter helpful poll workers, Spanish language ballots if needed, and a generally welcoming environment. Most amazingly to me, "first time voters" are offered a certificate celebrating their participation!

What a way to make voters for life!

What it is really like to work on an election campaign: whipsaw time

Once GOTV starts, you are banking votes! You are no longer counting door knocks, or conversations, or even IDs. Real VOTES!

And, as secretaries of state post the party breakdown of votes cast, you become subject to the speculations of pundits who riff off the tea leaves they see in the numbers of Republicans and Democrats who have already voted.

Here in Nevada, we have a truly experienced pundit in John Ralston who all sides consider a sound observer. He thinks Dems kicked butt on the first day of early voting here in our turf in Washoe County

Been watching early voting a long time and I don’t think I have ever seen Dems win Washoe by 15 points — 49-34. It’s NV’s swing county, GOP has 2 percent edge. It’s only one day, we still need to see Clark [County = Las Vegas]. But that is a bad omen for Repubs.

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) October 21, 2018

Good for Rosen and Sisolak! Dems also exceeded expectations in Clark County, that is Las Vegas, where most Nevadans live. But he also issues a warning:

Big show for first day and it peters out? Or a sign of what’s to come?

If you are working on a campaign, whatever seems to be happening and whatever pundits may say, GOTV is when you must execute your plan and work harder. If it is a good plan, and the voters are responding, all the better. You constructed your campaign around the best plan you could make and now is not the time for rethinking -- all your work is about turning out votes NOW.

Pundits will pundit, but you have to focus on what you can control, put away distracting emotions, and do what you can do. Trust the plan.

What it is really like to work on a campaign: from persuasion, to IDs, to GOTV

Early, in-person, voting begins today in Nevada. We're ready.

In the first phase of any campaign, the job is to persuade potential supporters to take an interest in the candidate. Much of that happens in media, through public events, and announced issue positions. But in a campaign like this one in Reno which canvasses potential voters who don't always get around to voting, persuasion can take place in doorway encounters. The job of the canvasser is to help the voter feel why this candidate's election might be personally important to her. It requires imagination, talking, and listening. Successful canvassers learn a lot about what ordinary citizens really care about.

After persuasion comes voter identification (IDs), compiling the most extensive list possible of voters who promise to vote for your candidate. That's what we've been doing here in Reno while knocking on over 65,000 doors since Labor Day in support of Jacky Rosen for US Senate and Steve Sisolak for Governor.

Any campaign swings into a much higher gear when voters begin to be able to cast ballots. This phase is called GOTV -- "Get Out the Vote." Now you have to go back to all those identified supporters and push them to the polls. You offer rides. You leave doorhangers at their entrances to tell them where the balloting is happening. You go back, again and again, until the Nevada Secretary of State indicates they have voted. The work is intense, but also more obviously fruitful than the long search for IDs. Finally -- voting is happening.

It used to be that voting was something that took place only on one Election Day. There were good features this; it encouraged us to think of ourselves as citizens engaging together in the ultimate enactment of civic unity. But it was also inconvenient and tended to exclude some who wanted to participate. Nowadays, in different forms in different states, elections take place over several weeks. This creates multiplying opportunities for campaigns to complete the work of turning out supporters; it also creates manic intensity among campaigners. That's where we are here in Reno, entering GOTV season, amped-up yet another notch in the always high energy business of sparking democratic energy.

It all comes down to WHO votes

The New York Times recently featured the Senate contest in Nevada where Congresswoman Jacky Rosen (D) is running to unseat sitting Senator Dean Heller (R), in one of their live action Sienna College/Upshot polls. They called over 25,000 Nevadans, talked with 642 (a normal response rate), and concluded that the incumbent is up 2 percent over the challenger during three days in the first full week of October, 25 days out from the election. This outcome is in line with many other polls, though many show Rosen up by a similar slim margin. Most of the professional political prognosticators rate the contest a "tossup."

Until the Times polled this race I'm working on, I thought their live polls were kind of a tacky gimmick. Sure -- it was fun to watch little lights twinkle across a map of the state, representing each call as it happened. But this was also meaning-free. However, along with the visual sparkle, the Times published an interesting dissection of how pollsters might interpret the responses which I've captured here and seems worth picking apart.

Pollsters can never be sure what the characteristics of people moved to vote in a particular election will prove to be. When they guess wrong about the composition of the electorate, their assessments will be wrong. As as general rule, especially in low profile races, the same people --older, whiter, better off -- vote every time. But when an election is higher profile, the electorate can be different.

Reading down the snippet above, this poll estimates that if only the people who voted in 2014 come out, Heller wins running away. But as more people are moved to vote, the result changes. If the people who voted in 2016 were to vote -- when Hillary Clinton and the Senate's only Latina member Catherine Cortez-Masto were on the ballot -- Jacky Rosen runs away with the election.

Nevada is blue when more citizens vote. Our job in Reno is to make sure that people who only vote some years cast their ballots this year. If we do our job -- if we can convey the necessity of voting this year -- Jacky Rosen becomes a Democratic Senator. It is that simple. Join us.

Cooks and casino workers take on Trump in Nevada

Erudite Partner has chronicled our work on UniteHERE's campaign in Reno to elect a new Senator and Governor. She's impressed with what the labor union is doing here.

It’s fair to say that UNITE HERE has at least two goals in this campaign. The first, of course, is to elect Jacky Rosen and Steve Sisolak, which, as these campaigners see it, will further both the interests of working people in general and the union’s goals in particular. These include guaranteeing the rights of immigrants, who make up much of the workforce in the hospitality sector of the economy; advancing the concept that “one job should be enough” for economic survival; and keeping the government from taxing the hard-won health benefits of union members while ensuring that all working people have access to adequate health care.

... But that’s only for starters. The campaign also has a second purpose, as important to the union in its own way as winning this election: the development of future organizers and leaders from its rank and file. UNITE HERE emphasizes leadership among those who are the majority of its members -- immigrants, people of color, and women. I often overhear the leads discussing how to help specific canvassers practice leadership skills. Most mornings, Cesar, Nate, and Christina -- each of whom came from that same rank and file -- ask a few of the canvassers to demonstrate one of three crucial organizing skills: getting in the door, asking an “agitational” question, or telling a personal story. All three will help any canvasser make a genuine connection, however brief it may be, with the stranger who opens the door when they knock. ...

Read the story here.

EP explains that she's working as a "data nerd" -- making sure that our folks have target voters to chase down every day. I'm working on organizing volunteers to join the fray. Follow this link, sign up, and join us for a few days. Sooner is better. Early voting in the neighborhoods starts October 20. Though we've knocked on over 45,000 doors already, we have thousands more citizens to reach in order to win in Nevada.

What is it really like to work on a campaign: Door knocking

The first thing to know about looking for voters by knocking on their doors is that, regardless of day of the week or time of day, no one answers at most doors. The conventional response rate is something like contact with a live human being at 15 percent of knocks. (Most are actual knocks -- you'd be astonished how few doorbells actually ring.) We're exceeding that rate, getting an answer at close to 25 percent of doors; this may mean we are unusually determined, or perhaps that the targets we're seeking -- infrequent voters -- work a lot of strange shifts.

Unfortunately, a good number of those people who do answer turn out not to be the voter the canvasser was looking for. Consequently, a strong canvasser who approaches 11 doors an hour and walks for 3.5 hours may talk with less than 10 targeted voters during her shift.

It takes a massive effort to reach a significant mass of voters. Door knocking is a volume game. With a 35 person crew, we're doing this in Reno, where in a month we've exceeded 40,000 doors knocked.

Then there is what happens when the canvasser actually finds her voter. Canvassers, both paid and volunteer, get over any shyness quite quickly. This work isn't about some polite little push to remember to vote. Nor do our canvassers give up easily. They are trained to be committed, a little intrusive, honest about what they know, very persuasive, and determined to get to a truthful "yes" to Jacky Rosen and Steve Sisolak. And they are damn good at it. (I've been door knocking off and on for decades and I learn from our UniteHERE worker team every day.)

Early in campaign season, many voters proclaim themselves "undecided." That can mean a range of things from "go away; you're bothering me" to "I really don't know enough" to "I'm afraid I'll look stupid if I talk about the election." The canvasser's job is to cut through to a conversation about what the voter cares about and to bring that back to the importance of the election and our candidates. It's not hard for our team to believe this election is vital to their own lives. They are working people from the bottom of the economic totem pole and mostly women and/or people of color. They get to "yes" more frequently by the day.

Nate Cohn in the Upshot recently shared some data collected by the pollster Siena about "undecideds."

In the aggregate, undecided voters don’t look very different from decided voters, either in terms of their attitudes or their demographic characteristics. They just aren’t as politically engaged.

... undecided voters just don’t know much about the candidates: 56 percent of the undecided voters don’t know either candidate, while only 17 percent of decided voters don’t know either candidate. ... A narrow category of undecided voters seems not to like either candidate: 11 percent of undecided voters don’t like either candidate, something true of only 4 percent of decided voters.

This probably isn’t unusual for these voters. Their lack of knowledge probably reflects a generally lower level of political engagement. A majority of the undecided voters in our polling have never voted in a primary .... Just 50 percent say they’re almost certain to vote in November, compared with 67 percent of decided voters.

This description fits the people we are targeting in Reno perfectly -- folks who are registered, but unlikely to vote without a strong push to engage with the election.

If we can find, identify, and turn out these citizens, our candidates win. The work is that simple.

Reno is a Tesla town

Elon Musk's cars are as much a presence here as in the San Francisco Bay Area. This charging station sits behind a modern suburban motel.

Reno made itself a Tesla town by welcoming the Gigafactory, Tesla's giant battery manufacturing facility 20 miles east of town. With the sprawling, secretive plant are supposed to come 6500 good jobs. Tesla enthusiasts write as if the car maker were the Second Coming.

Reno, a city just four hours away from Silicon Valley, has been home of Tesla’s Gigafactory – a city whose economy once chiefly relied on the low-wage casino industry, where bankruptcy and crime were frequent and unpredictable. Hit hard with the housing crash and recession, Reno fell into hard times in 2010 with a 14 percent unemployment rate. Once home to mostly thrifters and passersby, Reno’s outlook started to change with talks of Tesla’s plans for technological revitalization. Startups and incubators have been popping up to attract more millennials, new murals are being painted onto derelict walls, all are response to the hope that Tesla will be able to inject into the local economy sustainable, higher-paying jobs.

There are plenty of skeptics. The Verge examined soberly whether the state's offerings to Musk could pay off for anyone except the capitalist:

Over the next 20 years, Tesla could take in nearly $1.3 billion in tax benefits for building its Gigafactory in Nevada, according to projections from the state, as hires are made for the factory locally and from around the country. Assuming Tesla meets its obligations under the deal, it will spend 20 years free from sales tax, and 10 years free from property tax, while it receives millions of dollars more in tax credits.

... The potential windfall for a state is alluring. A manufacturer requires suppliers. Entice the company to come to you instead of someplace else, and maybe an entire industry will crop up to work near the first business. Suddenly, you have many more jobs than what you first paid for, and a revitalized service industry may grow to attend to the larger population. Those people pay their taxes, and in the end, the benefits could outweigh the bargain given out. This idea has guided the thinking behind tax incentives, and helped build the deals into the behemoth they are today. The Tesla deal is just the latest example: Nevada estimates that the factory will bring 6,500 "direct" jobs but 22,700 "total" jobs to the state.

... A deal may bring more jobs, but it might also create other financial consequences, like a need for stronger infrastructure to service a town increasingly populated by factory workers. Ultimately, the deals "aren’t a huge money-maker" for a state, [Upjohn Institute for Employment Research economist Timothy] Bartik says, even if jobs are created. It’s not yet clear what those secondary changes will look like for the Gigafactory, but the state’s report mentions that more jobs will be needed to support "significant construction related to transportation and utility infrastructure as well as employee housing." The people filling those jobs, the report points out, "would generate sales and property taxes at the full unabated rate."

So maybe Tesla's arrival is a glorious boon to Reno -- and maybe not. Residents will see.

Meanwhile, campaigning in Reno, knocking on doors, we learn that residents feel their city is changing. There are more cars, more people, more traffic, higher rents, more homelessness -- but yes, the economy is booming for many. Reno's experiment with trying to become the site of a new industrial economy is a work in progress. Disruption is keenly felt, though without yet a conclusive verdict on its benefits and costs and on who pays those costs.

What it is really like to work on a campaign: you start making jokes out of your messages

After being part of a tight knit community of committed labor union canvassers who knock on voters' doors six days a week for a long month, a little humor keeps the spirits up. We've been doing alright in conversations with voters delivered more soberly ... but hey, how about a punchier version.

Erudite Partner took a shot at putting the messages we share with voters every day into livelier language. Here's her pitch:

Nevada senate Republican candidate
DEAN is HELLER bad news for working people!

Heller doesn’t care about health care. First he said he would protect the millions of working people who got health coverage through Obamacare. But as soon as Donald Trump put on the pressure, he changed his mind. Heller bad news!

Heller’s support comes from billionaires and bosses. His biggest funders include the right-wing Las Vegas casino boss and billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who has given to Heller both directly and through his $25 million donation to the Republican Senate Leadership Fund. Heller bad news!

Heller doesn’t care about women’s issues. When women came forward accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, he said it was just a “hiccup” in the confirmation process. Sexual assault is a hiccup? Heller bad news!

JACKY ROSEN, Heller’s opponent in the senate race, is the only choice for working people in Nevada. She wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, save health coverage for all of us, and make sure everyone has access to a good education.
...Take Adam Laxalt, Republican candidate for Nevada governor,
with a GRAIN OF LAXALT!

Laxalt wants to take hundreds of millions of dollars away from Nevada’s public schools, by getting rid of the Commerce Tax, a bipartisan education funding initiative championed by Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval. Yet Laxalt says he supports education. Take that with a grain of LAXALT!

Laxalt changed his name to take advantage of his family connection to former Nevada Senator and Governor Paul Laxalt. But he’s actually spent most of his life in suburban Virginia, outside Washington, DC. As Nevada’s attorney general, he imported his staff of lawyers from Washington. Even his cousins, attorney and author Monique Laxalt and Dr. Kristin Laxalt, who are daughters of Paul Laxalt’s brother, are supporting Laxalt’s opponent, Democrat Steve Sisolak. Take Laxalt’s Nevada roots with a grain of LAXALT!

Laxalt would deprive 200,000 Nevadans of the health coverage they’ve received through Gov. Brian Sandoval’s expansion of Medicaid. While ignoring the needs of working people Laxalt serves the interests of his ultra-rich donors. Take his concerns about health care with a grain of LAXALT!

STEVE SISOLAK, Laxalt’s opponent in the governor’s race, is the only choice for working families. He wants to expand, not reduce, education spending. He wants to keep the federal funds Nevada receives for Medicaid expansion. And he’s committed to training young people for well-paying jobs in a variety of industries. ...Not bad, but we'll probably go on trying to have sober, empathetic conversations with Washoe County voters, learning of their struggles and their hopes while explaining the hopes and plans of our candidates. 35,000 doors so far... Rosen and Sisolak have tiny leads in the polls at present, but they are going to need every voter we can turn out.

What it is really like to work on a campaign: organized chaos prevails

Almost three weeks ago I posted a picture of "the calm before the surge" as we readied the campaign office here in Reno for the arrival of 35 canvassers and a revolving cast of volunteers.

Since then, the crew has settled into a rhythm, knocking on doors six days a week to identify supporters of US Senate candidate Jacky Rosen and of Steve Sisolak for Governor of Nevada. We've hit over 25,000 doors so far! And we won't rest until we get these voters to the ballot box. A little history reveals the scale of the problem we're working on: in 2016, seventy-seven percent of Nevadans voted, but in 2014 (the last midterm cycle) only 46 percent turned out. Republicans are more reliable voters than Democrats who are often poorer and more transient. Our candidates will only win if we can nudge more of our voters out their doors. To do that, we have to find them. And so we door knock.

Here's what that once quiet office looks like every morning as we go over the previous days' work, learn how voters are responding to issues, and get fired up to go out there again:

The true wonder to me is what the office looks like after this determined, boisterous crew takes off for the day:

We can only accomplish a huge, laborious project like finding and turning out our voters if we maintain discipline and order in our home base.

Volunteers are most welcome to join. Changing which party runs the US Senate depends in large part on what happens right here in Washoe County. Come work for a few days and we'll put you up. Read details and respond here.

Saturday scenery: an affectionately remembered past in Reno

Reno, Nevada has seen explosive growth in the last couple of decades. Once the "Biggest Little City in the World" famous mostly for its casinos, in the last two decades wholesale distribution centers, the University of Nevada at Reno (Go Wolfpack!), tech startups and bitcoin mining operations, and regional malls have sprawled out from the old center. But when, was we are doing on this campaign, you walk about in the neighborhoods where people actually live, you find carefully tended reminders of simpler times.

This replica Shell gas station (circa 1959 perhaps?) took up all of a front yard in an area where I doorknocked on Thursday.

Up the hill, a voter had parked his pioneer style covered wagon alongside his recreational vehicle.

Not far further along, an old tractor rusted into oblivion.

It's heart-lifting to observe others' keepsakes while working to get them to vote for a different US Senator.

What it is really like to work on a campaign: you encounter the passions of your fellow citizens

When Christine Blasey Ford revealed her memory of sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the Republican US Senator from Nevada Dean Heller referred to her intervention as a "little hiccup."

One of our canvassers observed what one Reno resident thought of that:

The guy's entire truck was covered with similar messages, including "Republcians are the swamp!"

Volunteer with the UniteHERE campaign to replace Heller with Democrat Jacky Rosen at this link. There are thousands of supporters to be turned out here in the Silver State.

Donald Trump is coming to Nevada tomorrow

... to prop up his pet Senator.

Challenger Jacky Rosen's campaign has a response ad which I think is rather good at documenting how the Republican, Dean Heller, sold out his constituents for Trump's support. Trump owns Heller, on camera. It is worth watching [2:22].
Sadly, the Trump show is in Las Vegas, so we don't get to go protest with the workers who labor in the casinos to make profits for Trump's billionaire friends. We'll be talking with voters while the plutocrats huddle.