Saturday, October 5: My first canvassing experience here in Tucson was very different than my experience in 2017 during Ralph Northam's successful bid to be Governor of Virginia.  This time around, canvassing utilizes an app instead of a stack of papers, and our knocking was not restricted to just Democrats.  This effort was coordinated by a local Democrat group, so the main focus were the candidates running for State House and State Senate in this district.  Volunteers met at the home of a very active local Democrat. Most people signed in, received their territory on the app, and drove away alone in their own cars.  There was no way I was going to drive around by myself and knock on doors alone. I jumped into the car with a gentleman named Phil who moved here from Utah a while back. 

We knocked on about 30 doors.  Most people were not home or chose to not answer the door. Of the people who answered the door, more than half of them didn’t really want to talk.  One guy shouted at us through his screen door while his dog growled like an attack hound.  He yelled, "can't you read?" as he held back his dog.  Although his house had a "no soliciting" sign, we knocked anyway.  An Arizona law allows political parties to knock on such doors because we are simply having a conversation about voting--we are not seeking donations or selling goods.  Rather than explain Arizona statutes to him and his killer canine, we backed away and decided not to knock on another door bearing a similar sign.

A few who answered our knocks were very friendly. A young gentleman who most likely identifies as a person of color told us he was not planning on voting. I asked him if he paid taxes, and he said "yes" as he politely closed the door on the conversation. A friendly, young, Hispanic gentleman shared that he plans to vote in person early on Wednesday (the first day of voting), and he pointed to my Kamala shirt and gave me a big smile with a thumbs-up. One middle-aged Caucasian lady just moved here from Illinois, and she was somewhat argumentative. Another Caucasian lady just moved here from North Carolina and was very friendly and seemed to enjoy the conversation— she actually came outside and stood on her porch with us for a few minutes.

I only lasted about two hours because of the temperature. As we began it was about 88° and as we finished the temperature was nearing 100°.  I didn't feel bad about stopping short of our two hour time slot.  I had already written letters at an event sponsored by an LGBTQ and Jewish advocacy group last weekend--in all we wrote about 400 letters to be sent to registered voters who didn’t participate in the last election.  There were more opportunities to campaign in the coming days: I will be knocking on doors in a different part of town tomorrow morning and signed up for a few more events later in the week.  There’s no way to tell if any of this is making a difference, but I hope it is.

It’s very interesting chatting with people involved with the campaign as well as random people I meet.  I decided that informal canvassing can happen anywhere with individuals open to a friendly conversation.  I met a guy last night at the gym (probably one of the membership managers), and he told me he wasn’t registered to vote.  I gently chewed on his ear for a little bit and told him about my main issue in the election: January 6.  When I mentioned the infamous date, he didn’t know what I was talking about…but when I talked about "Trump‘s people invading the Capitol," then he knew what I was referencing.  He leaned in when I told him (as I have shared often with folks here in AZ) about the war zone that popped up in my DC neighborhood in the weeks following the attack. 

I met a lady at an auto shop this week who told me men are better leaders that women because it’s easy for a man who has children to be a leader first before he’s a father, but she wasn’t sure a woman with children could be a leader before she needs to be a mother.  I tried to keep a poker face and gently leaned into this misogynistic assumption. I encouraged her to think about changing her mind by asking if her mother was a good multitasker and sharing about the women in my family who are able to successfully do many things at once and hold full-time careers.  She chuckled and told me I was good at this and said I "should be on social media."  I told her no one would listen, and then we both laughed. 

Her supervisor at the auto shop happens to be a graduate of West Genesee where my mother taught for many years in Syracuse--talk about a small world!