Campaign Reflections (i)

My mom got me started. After some half-hearted efforts on my part that included submitting my name to the johnkerry.com Web site, I still hadn't received a reply from anyone. Mom finally just told me to look up the local Democrats in the phone book--something that honestly just hadn't occurred to me in this age of the Internet.

So, I called. And miraculously, in retrospect, the phone was answered! My first contact with the Democrats was with a woman named Bobbie Sandler, who urged me to come down to the office to talk with her, and also suggested that I attend one of the monthly meetings of the HCDEC. That HCDEC bit was confusing to me at first, since I checked the Web site and found that HCDEC stood for Hillsborough County Democratic Executive Committee. How exactly could I just show up at a meeting of the county Democrats' "Executive Committee?"

Well, as it turned out, there is nothing particularly Executive about the HCDEC. My first impressions of the group were pretty good, though. I attended my first HCDEC meeting at the Valencia Gardens restaurant on May 17, 2004. There were around 75 people in attendance, including Bobbie Sandler, who was the group's Outreach Coordinator, and I settled down at a table with a couple of other newbies to see what the meeting would entail.

This particular meeting turned out to be the most interesting of any that I would attend through the Election itself, as the big guest speaker of the evening was Alex Penelas, long-time mayor of Miami and Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat from Florida that would be up for grabs in November. I was pretty impressed by Alex. And after his speech was over, Janee Murphy, the chairperson of the HCDEC, briefly gave the floor to the youthful Spencer Hutchins, who was the regional representative for the John Kerry campaign. It was an interesting evening, despite my general sense that I would never be able to familiarize myself with or give a damn about the local Democratic candidates.

A few weeks later I finally showed up at the HCDEC office on Busch Boulevard for my meeting with Bobbie. It was a tiny little office, but that was OK because there was hardly anyone on the scene at that point. Nobody greeted me at the front desk, and I tentatively crept toward the back of the office until I got to the point where I was inadvertently eavesdropping on some young woman who was on the phone. So, I stepped back out of the office and decided to wait for Bobbie to show up. After a while, it became clear that she wasn't going to do so, and when I walked into the back of the office again, the woman who had been on the phone had hung up.

- posted by John @ 10:08 PM