ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 6, 1996 TAG: 9612060056
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-19 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEREMY BALDWIN
FOR THE most part, politics in the trenches is lousy. Well, maybe not, but that was my final impression.
It actually didn't start off too badly: A friend and I went to William Fleming's homecoming game on Oct. 25 and handed out Bob Goodlatte fliers. I had a fairly good time. The fliers looked like they had something to do with football, so people took them. I actually had a few returned to me, but most people were good enough to wait until I couldn't see them anymore to drop the sheets. I was told to move about 10 feet away from the ticket booths by some guy who worked there - guess he didn't want us scaring off the paying customers. The legality of this was dubious, in my mind, but hey, why antagonize him?
On Saturday, Nov. 2, feeling some sort of weird party loyalty or something, I put in about 31/2 years of work for Jeff Grey, Republican Goodlatte's Democratic opponent. I got to drive around with some guy from the Democratic headquarters and cram stuff into people's newspaper boxes. Given the amount of time I was there, I felt I definitely should have been a paid employee.
OK, so it probably took only 31/2 hours, but it felt like years. Part of the problem was that I got a headache about halfway through and was slowly starving to death the whole time. I almost cracked at noon when he said that most people quit around 1. And I'm sure people have gotten cancer from more inert substances than the ink on those fliers; if I start sprouting unnecessary body parts, the local Democratic committee will be hearing from me.
(Heck, they'll probably run me for some office: "Vote for the mutant wonder! Two heads are better than one!")
I got pretty good at the moving paper drop, though. Sometimes the car stopped, but it was less of a challenge that way. We only had to back up and pick up fliers once, a record of which I am proud. We took extra care to stick fliers in the boxes of anyone who had Bob Dole, John Warner or Goodlatte signs in their front yards. We certainly wouldn't want them to feel left out; how could we go back home, knowing that we hadn't done our jobs?
So what did I learn? Volunteering is something to do with friends. You can commiserate that way. And don't do it on an empty stomach. You can die that way. If you decide to help out a candidate you don't really believe in, you will inevitably wind up in the one place where everyone recognizes you. Still, people will like you if they think you're giving them free football stuff.
The most important thing about volunteer campaign work? (Pay attention here, Generation Xers!) Don't do it unless you actually care about the campaign and the candidates.
(Hey - would somebody with two heads have to have a running mate? Just curious.)
Jeremy Baldwin of Roanoke volunteered to do political campaigning this fall as part of his course work at CITY School.
LENGTH: Medium: 57 linesby CNB