Riding on the Southwest Voter Express...

Our flight went fairly smoothly (though we were forced to check our suitcase — how do you get into Group A on Southwest Airlines anyway?!?!) We arrived in Phoenix, picked up our car, and headed to Dean campaign headquarters downtown.

When we walked in, a bunch of people in the room applauded — they kept doing that for each arriving volunteer, too. There was a whole lot of smiling going on. The Phoenix office seems quite organized — unlike here, where meetings are apparently still mostly held in homes and restaurants. Anyway, we stayed and chatted for a few minutes before heading to our friends' house. Most of the other volunteers were from Southern California and had driven over. Michael and I were among the most far-flung volunteers, along with someone from Santa Rosa, I think, and somebody else from San Francisco.

We were told to come back to the office at 9 am, which we didn't quite manage to do, but luckily, at 9:20, there was still a little coffee left, which we badly needed. More chatting, and then we had our canvassing training. I wasn't sure I was following it all, and I silently hoped Michael was getting more of it than I was. I was also terrified of talking to people I didn't know and who probably didn't want to be bothered by random Californians ringing their doorbells — particularly since I am horrible to random people who ring my doorbell. (The last ones to incur my wrath were a cluster of Jehovah's Witnesses who made the error of dropping by on Yom Kippur. I'm not a nice person with low blood sugar.) I was relieved to find out, however, that we were getting lists of names, all Democrats, and that we weren't expected to spend a lot of time trying to convince people of anything. We weren't even supposed to spend more than five minutes at a single house. The drill was: introduce yourself and explain that you're talking to Democratic voters about Howard Dean. Ask if the voter has chosen a candidate. Make a note of it. Ask them if they're registered at their current address. Encourage them to reregister if necessary and give them the option of filling out a Vote By Mail form. Fill out the form with them and bring it back to headquarters. Don't argue, especially if you get a Bush supporter by mistake!

So we were sent off to our various parts of Phoenix, armed with maps, lists, posters, flyers. Michael and I were assigned the West Apollo neighborhood in Glendale.

What followed was quite an experience. First of all, Phoenix is NOT set up for walking and few people do it. This neighborhood was all cul de sacs and streets that stopped and then continued a couple of blocks down, with confusing names (50th Street? 50th Way? 50th Avenue? HUH?) One chunk of the territory we were supposed to cover was actually covered with "Private! Do not trespass!" signs all over the place, meaning we had to park a few blocks away and walk in.

I was fascinated by how different houses look there. Lots of creative work with colored gravel, rocks, and cacti — my favorite garden included a couple of wagon wheels and a steer skull (I'm not kidding!) Half the households appeared to have big, barking dogs just raring to get outside. Lots and lots of Christmas decorations. We're talking not just a few string lights, but reindeer in the yard, Santas on the roof, ribbons and wreaths, etc. etc. It contrasted with the utter lack of wintery/Christmassy weather — it was easily 80 degrees out. Plentiful, too, were the American flags everywhere. This was explained by the fact that Apollo is a neighborhood with a lot of people in the armed services. In fact, when we passed the local high school, there was some kind of military event involving lots of people in uniform.

The canvassing itself: well, I wish I could tell you that we changed a lot of minds and touched a lot of people's hearts, but, nah. Since the weather was so great, lots of people weren't even home (in which case we'd leave a flyer with a handwritten note in my shaky handwriting), and the ones that were were often home sick or taking care of someone else who was ailing. It made me nervous that a lot of our Democrats were apparently quite elderly. Our list might have been a little elderly too — we got a few Republicans by accident. ("We'll check you off the list. Sorry to bother you.") Michael observed that the handful of green lawns we noticed seemed to belong to the Republican households. Coincidence?

A few exchanges stand out in my mind. One was the couple in their late 60s who flagged us down from their van, and weren't sure that they supported Dean per se, but were Democrats and wanted pins. "What the hell — we'll wear 'em and tweak our Republican neighbors!" they laughed. "Anything to get this guy out of office. Of course, we don't have to live with the consequences; it's young people like you that are getting the short end of the stick."

Then there was the Asian woman (I think she was Chinese) who also wasn't sure about Dean but had a thoughtful conversation with us that lasted way longer than it was supposed to. She had heard that "Dean has a temper" and she wondered if it was true. (I told her the story about the old woman who cussed him out and how he responded to her obscenities with a wisecrack.)

There was the man who taught at a university, who wanted Bush out of there but wasn't convinced Dean was the one to boot him. He liked him, but was somewhat torn and more than a little cynical.

The most heartening one was the guy who LOVED Dean, and wanted a poster, a pin, whatever we had, and was happy to sign up for voting by mail. When he put down his birth date, I was shocked to see that he was 70 years old — he looked like he was a youthful 50.

Alas, these were the exceptions. Many people weren't particularly interested. The Bush voters were firm with a hint of smugness. One couple had just switched from the Dems to the Republicans, causing me to mutter as we walked away, "They've gone over to the dark side." One woman pointedly told us that her son was in Iraq with the army and coming home for Christmas, which would probably significantly influence her vote in the primary.

Discouraging, yet I noticed as the day went on that I was feeling much less nervous, and in fact, was actually enjoying myself. Michael and I made a good, if strange team, and I'd like to think that people were tickled by the fact that we cared so much about the election that we were willing to go wander around their neighborhood with armloads of flyers. (Or maybe they were just thinking "There goes the neighborhood. Now where'd I hide my shotgun?")

At 4:30, we realized that we still had a big chunk of names we hadn't gotten to yet, including an apartment building that was flanked with the dreaded "No Trespassing" notices. Michael called the office and they told us to come on back. Just in time too. My right heel had developed a blister bigger than some of the smaller swing states.

So back to the office we headed. More chatting, praise from the office staff, who reassured us that we'd done just fine and that they didn't expect us to get through the whole list, and a very nice potluck dinner, which we didn't stay for because we had a dinner to get back to at our friends'...

Which took place significantly later than planned, because there was a parade in downtown Phoenix and all the freeway ramps were closed. It took an hour to get out of there, I'm not kidding!

On the drive back, I noted a bumper sticker on one SUV that said "How would Jesus drive?" I don't think it was ironically intended.

So Sunday, we took a vacation from our Dean vacation, went out to breakfast, and played in the pool with our friends, who listened good-humoredly to our adventures and who allowed that, well, they weren't so crazy about Dubya either.

So that was our trip! I am not sure how much we really accomplished... but I'm really glad we went. If nothing else, it got me over some of my fears about talking to people I don't know about politics...