Survivor: The London Edition

Hey! Well I just got back from London. I have officially been on the road for 27 days! 27 days!!!!

This has been one of the most intense periods of my life. Several years worth of new experiences.

Basically, I did 2 weeks of campaigning in Northampton as a favor to my boss and then 1 week of campaigning in London as a favor to a friend. I guess you could say campaigning is my hobby- yeah, weird hobby. I did it several times when I was at Patrick Henry College-though that was usually for pay.

Yesterday was election day and a very appropriate climax to this journey. I drank a total of 3 redbulls over the course of the looooong day and could have stood to drink 3 more.

The night before the election I was having so much fun hanging out with the other campaign workers at the local pub ("the Fox and Hounds") that I did not get to bed till very late. grrrrr... we got up at 5:30 for a "dawn raid." Next we were assigned to work the polls between 8 and 10. Then we went home for a nap time, but I couldnt really sleep. At 12:30 it was time to hit the War Room (or "Committee Room" as those civilized Britons call it. )

BTW, I was staying at the Battersea Park home of a candidate with an uncontested seat. He and his girlfriend were great. They have immaculate manners.

At the War Room they had a list of our supporters. Volunteers like me would be given some addresses and sent out to knock on their doors and asked them "What time today do you plan on voting ?" You can't ask them if they have voted already because then they are likely to lie and say they have already gone.

If they have voted already, we check them off and they get deleted from the list, otherwise we go back to them later and knock on their door again.

The Comittee/War Room was awful. They didn't allow any coffee or places to sit in there because they want people to work rather than chat which I guess is efficient but also very depressing. (and might well lead to suicides if election days came around too often.)

Then we would go back and hand in your list at the War Room and get a new updated list of addreses and go knock on those doors. We basically kept doing this until the polls closed. I did about 8 rounds.

My last round I worked together with a very nice lady named Lois, a former elected official from the area. I guess she thought I looked very tired so when we got back from our round she invited me to catch a quick breather at her house around the corner. It was a wonderful and very unusual little interlude. I was only at her house for 15 minutes but she managed to ply me with a stiff gin and tonic (just what the doctor ordered!) chips and hummus and coffee.

Her house is gorgeous. She has a very lovely painting that was made of her when she was 8 in a very ornate gold frame. You can still see very clearly it is her. She also had this breathtaking Pre-Raphaelite-ish painting depicting the story of Fra Lippio Lippi a monk who fell in love with the nun he was painting as Mariah. They ran off together and their child was Fra Filippino Lippi.

I got her contact information and have every intention of paying a longer visit at some point in the future.

At 10 in the evening when the voting was done we went to town hall where the ballots were being counted. I got to be what is called a "checker challenger." (you look over the shoulder of the person who is counting the votes to make sure they don't make any mistakes)

The officials did not check who came in to the town hall which I am told was very bad of them. I was techinicaly not allowed to be a "checker challenger" but we devised a scheme whereby I would pose as the girlfriend of one of the candidates. (Under the logic that they can't really keep his girlfiend out.)

Fortunately, it never came to that.

Getting to see the counting of the ballots was very exciting for me. I have never gotten to do that on any of my previous campaigns. I caught a few errors! It was so cool!

We knew the election would be very tight. The area we canvassed has traditionally been very Labour but we hoped that with Tony Blair and his government's current unpopularity we could take it for the Conservatives.

We didn't.We lost. by 16 votes.

16 votes!!!

aaarrrgghh!!! yeah and the worst part (I thought) was that though it was already 1 in the morning and we knew we had lost we STILL had to have a full recount. right then and there.

ug. ok, when the recount was finished some of the others went for a drink. I went home. I am a nerd, I know. but I have been to post-defeat election day parties and...while I have never been to a wake, I assume they are pretty similar.

The next day I woke up at 10 and then slowly made my way to Waterloo Station and caught my Eurostar train back to Brussels.

With a certain wry irony, the cab ride to Waterloo took me through the area I had been canvassing this week. I felt like randomly picking 16 houses and egging them!!! Not really.

I talked with my dad about the election this evening and he pointed out that it is possible that maybe our efforts to get people voting worked a little TOO well and that we inadvertantly got some Labour voters to the polls.

London was easily the most sophisticated campaign I have worked on. It was very interesting to observe. I have also never worked as closely with the actual candidates before. I had several very good conversations about why they ran for office and what their jobs entail.

This has never happened on any campaign I worked on in the US, but over the past 3 weeks in the UK I have increasingly begun to think that I have done this for OTHER people so many times now....I really should try being the candidate myself at some point. It would only be something small like city council. I would never go national. But I have decided that I am going to start slowly working my way towards elected office.

Well, first I need to settle down somewhere and cease my wandering ways. Then I need to find a poltical party I like and get involved etc etc etc.

One thing is sure though: you will all be volunteering on my campaign. There is no getting out of it. But don't worry, I promise there will be coffee in my War Room!