January 16

The day ahead

Tomorrow will bring a breakfast with a bunch of friends of my uncle’s – goal - get the hardcore McCain supporter to think twice. At the end of the day, I am to sit down with him and his wife again for dinner. I think I won’t even mention politics, but will wait and see if he raises any issues again.

It’s 10:30 pm and I just got back from headquarters. For the second night in a row, I’ve been able to sneak past the sleeping watchdog who barks at me and wakes up the whole house.

Early start tomorrow, and hopefully, I will be able to canvass one and a half precincts. That would then bring my total canvassed to three in three days. The first day, I got off to a bit of a slow start.

I miss the group energy of New Hampshire, and really do wish that I had a partner in crime to feed off of and to share energy with as I canvassed these soulless streets.

Tonight, a guy who was in New Hampshire with me and I called together for 30 minutes. Even there, I could feel that synergy. It was good stuff. The more he smooth talked, the more I smooth talked. I took his lines, he took mine, and we ended up with two pretty good improve scripts by the third or fourth call.

As I was leaving, I was told by one of the organizers of the campaign – “Every delegate you bring us is worth at least $1,000 in advertising and mailing that it would take to get that delegate to show up, at least a thousand dollars.”

“It’s estimated that the cost of a volunteer on a presidential campaign per day is $500.” is what one of the phone bankers in NH would say several times/day on the phone to people who would doubt the success of Ron Paul’s campaign.

If I can pull off one and a half precincts tomorrow, I will go into headquarters on Friday from early morning until late in the night, giving that extra push to get folks out to their precincts on Saturday to caucus.

Allan
(in Las Vegas)