Yes, We Did! Barack Obama was elected in an overwhelming victory Tuesday night. I worked on the campaign for almost a year.
The Obama campaign greatly narrowed the registration advantage of the Republican party in Lebanon County. Democrats are now the majority party in the City of Lebanon. Annville is also now Democratic. While Obama did not win the county he handily won the city.
The Republicans put up a half-hearted effort. I was the Democratic Poll Watcher all day at the Fourth Ward in the city. The Republicans had no poll watcher there. It turned out they had appointed as poll watcher an 82 year old woman who is legally blind and losing her hearing. She required assistance to vote. She said she had not been capable of doing poll watching for many years. They had a greeter who was so poorly trained the Election Judge threatened to throw him out of the polling place. He was handing out flyers for the state-wide candidates but not McCain.
The challenge now is to get all the minority and first-time voters to show up at the polls again. We had large numbers of first time voters and minorities who had no idea where their polling place was. The Election Judge and I developed a system to get everyone to the correct place. If the person was not in the book the judge would call the Election Office and find out where they should be. If the right polling place was any distance away she would send the person to me and I would call for a ride. We had a cardiologist as a driver. He did a yeoman job driving people where they needed to go.
They key to the victory in Lebanon County was having a full-time professional Field Organizer assigned to the county. Andrew Claster is an economist who had worked on presidential elections in three countries. It was such a change to have someone who actually knew how to conduct a campaign. This campaign is the first time Lebanon County had ever had a full-time organizer assigned to just this county.
I want to thank all the many people who worked so hard on this campaign. We can all shout “Yes, We Did!” This is a great victory for the American people.
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Tags: democrats, Lebanon, Obama, republicans, victory