The 33 canvassers from Seattle who arrived by bus in
Bellingham
Saturday, September 29, were met by a couple of
photographers—including one from the Ken Mann campaign (who the
volunteers were in town to help) and one who had been privately hired.
Progressive Whatcom County Council candidate Mann suspects that his
opponent, longtime incumbent Sam Crawford, hired the
photographer—maybe to use as evidence of Mann’s lack of local
support.
Crawford denies hiring the photographer, although he did bring up
the issue of the out-of-towners a week before in the Bellingham
Herald, saying, “My concern is, does [Mann] really understand and
reflect the values of the people that live here in Whatcom County?”
We rode up on the newly acquired 1989 MCI Coach bus owned by the
Washington Bus Project. The Bus Project is a new nonprofit whose
mission is to get young people involved in politics with energetic
actions and outreach. It’s based off of a similar organization in
Oregon called, predictably, the Oregon Bus Project. This was the Bus’s
maiden voyage—take a load of urban twentysomethings up to
Bellingham to knock on doors for Mann, who’s running on a platform of
smart, controlled growth for Whatcom County.
The executive director of the Bus, Thomas Goldstein, is in his late
30s and dressed in a blue windbreaker and khakis. He has high
aspirations for the mission. “We drive new leaders by creating
opportunities for the young and young at heart to do politically
powerful things.” They aren’t actually endorsing Mann, which would be
against their 501(c)(4) status, but they are supporting the issues he
stands for, so the Bus and its $300,000 yearly budget has prioritized
his campaign.
Bringing urban liberals to the suburbs and beyond to help
progressive candidates isn’t a new idea—Howard Dean famously
tried it in the 2004 primary in Iowa. His young canvassers with their
orange knit caps didn’t go over well with the Iowans who voted in the
caucuses, helping him to lose magnificently.
But the Oregon Bus Project has been succeeding since 2001 with its
similar strategy. In 2002, four out of the five districts where the Bus
had focused its energy elected the progressive candidates they
supported, tying up the Oregon senate where the Republicans once
dominated.
In Bellingham on this cloudy but thankfully dry day, each Bus
passenger was paired with a local and given a list of homes to doorbell
with a printed script of what to say when they knocked. My partner,
Zach (who was from Seattle, actually), and I were sent to Lynden, a
white conservative suburb that is considered Crawford country.
Four hours later, after we’d canvassed through a mix of small
50s-style homes and well-groomed dot-com manors with views of the
mountains, Goldstein and Mann—who’d also been in Lynden as a
team—came back to the group with wide grins. Goldstein
proclaimed, “We really made the difference for the Mann campaign
today.” The 62 local and out-of-town canvassers knocked on 2,000 doors,
he said. It’s very possible the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Washington
Bus Project volunteers could tip the scales in a tight race for Mann.
Crawford only won with 52 percent of the vote in 2003. But judging by
my day, I’m actually hoping Zach and I didn’t lose Mann any votes.
The residents of Lynden didn’t seem enamored with us. The mostly
elderly voters took one look at me, in a lime-green hoodie sweatshirt
and tight jeans, and seemed to go into “Say whatever it takes to get
her to go away” mode. Zach didn’t fare much better in baggy camo pants
and a snowboarding jacket. Some residents of a large housing
development pretended not to be home when we knocked. Out of the 50
homes I went to, only one person seemed interested in learning more
about Mann. I seemed to be experiencing the same disconnect that was
prevalent in the Dean campaign—I was an obvious carpetbagger.
This is the issue that the Bus has to deal with in its mission to
elect progressives in the exurbs: How can organizers tap the numbers
and energy of urban liberals to impact races in more conservative turf
without Dean syndrome? Goldstein’s not worried. “If you’re a fan of
democracy, being in Whatcom County on Saturday was a special day. We
helped out the good guys, and that’s what matters.”
The Washington Bus Project’s next event, called “Trick or Vote,”
involves people canvassing their own King County neighborhoods in
costume on Halloween to remind people to turn in their ballots.
