(Cross-Posted to DemNotes at www.DemNotes.com)
After leaving Gilpin County, I stopped by the Campaign for Change office in Golden, as well as the staging offices in Elizabeth and Castle Rock.
In Golden, the stream of people in and out of the office that I saw everywhere else wasn’t as pronounced. The reason? The Golden office had been transformed into the “boiler room,†serving several staging areas around Jefferson County. So the calmness in the office was a good sign; a Boiler Room is intended to handle any crises that occur at the different staging areas. Since things seemed to be going smoothly, the boiler room was a calm place to be.
When Pat and I were talking about spending today dropping by the various campaign offices, I asked where I should go. The answer from the campaign? Whatever you do, make sure you stop by the Elbert County office — they need to hear how much we appreciate their work.
I dropped by the Elizabeth office — the staging area for Elbert County — later in the afternoon. The sight was probably the nicest I’ve seen. A local restaurant had closed down for two days solely for the purpose of providing the campaign a large enough space to use as a staging area. Dozens of people were doing a variety of jobs — some making calls, some working on data entry, still others working on getting things ready for more canvassing. I arrived just minutes after several others had left to go on a shift of canvassing.
There were enough people in the Elizabeth office that they actually stopped everybody and I gave a short thank-you talk to folks on behalf of the State Party. But I kept it short (really, I did!) so folks wouldn’t be taken for too long from their important jobs of calling and canvassing. And, with the location being a restaurant, the food was top-notch. I had to demur several times the many offers for me to eat dinner there (we’d made plans to have dinner later this evening with my brother).
Finally, I headed over to Castle Rock for an unannounced visit to their main staging area. My last stop was also the busiest stop. The Castle Rock office was HUGE, with every space being taken by a volunteer working hard for the election tomorrow night. I had a great conversation with the Campaign for Change field director for the office and the Udall field director for the office.
We talked about how tough things are for Democrats in Douglas County, and the CFC director told me her goal was — point blank — to win Douglas County. If we were able to do that, there is really no way the Republicans could win the state. They talked about how happy they’d been with the volunteer response so far — they wanted to get to every contact twice in the past couple of days, but instead were able to contact everybody on their lists THREE times in the past couple of days!
Everybody in the offices I’ve visited in the past couple of days has seemed cautiously optimistic (or, as I just heard on the news, “cautiously nauseousâ€). But there’s also been a nervousness about over-confidence. The key is tomorrow.
The key is tomorrow. Election Day. D-Day. Where all of our work should pay off.
If you show up.