Hoyas from both parties tried to tip the balance on Tuesday
For most Americans, Election Day meant nothing more than hitting the polls and waiting to see who would triumph. But for a small group of politically active students at Georgetown, Election Day was the climax of months spent phone banking, sign-blitzing and getting out the vote for campaigns from Virginia to Maryland and all the way out to Kentucky.
Several members of the College Democrats spent Election Day volunteering at Jim Webb’s campaign for the Senate in Virginia.
Adam Feiler (SFS ‘09), Membership Director for the College Democrats, worked for Webb’s campaign since the Democratic primary in June. Two days before the primary, Webb’s campaign had “one tenth the number of people and one tenth the amount of excitement,” Feiler said. “The energy yesterday [on Election Day] was phenomenal.”
Webb’s campaign actually had “an overload of volunteers” on election day, Feiler said. “They were a little disorganized because they didn’t expect so many volunteers and didn’t have enough work for them.”
Feiler and Chris Dodge (COL ’10), along with other members of the College Democrats, split their time on Election Day between leafleting at polling places and going door to door, reminding people to vote.
Members of the GU College Republicans campaigned for incumbent Senator George Allen, Webb’s opponent, as well as Michael Steele, the Republican candidate for senate in Maryland, in the days leading up to the election.
Each weekend, 15 or so members of the College Republicans volunteered for the two campaigns, distributing literature, sign-blitzing or knocking on doors to get out the vote for their candidates.
“We were planting signs on various highways and it felt like a real-life game of Frogger,” Tom Armstrong (MSB ‘07), Senior Advisor to the College Republicans, said.
“[Campaigning] seems like a strange thing to enjoy, talking about it before hand,” Brendan Lane (COL ‘09), Chairman of the College Republicans, said, “but it is.”
Republican campaigns across the country, including Allen’s and Steele’s, have been challenged by overall voter dissatisfaction this fall with the war in Iraq and the Foley scandal, among other issues.
“The general atmosphere is this defeatist ‘how bad is it going to be’ attitude,” Elizabeth Niles (COL ‘09), Internship Coordinator for the College Republicans, said on Tuesday evening. “People are not looking forward to tonight.”
Armstrong had a more positive view of the election. “It’s been cautiously optimistic, but we understand it’s not 2002, 2004, 2000,” he said on Tuesday night.
The quality of the two campaigns they worked on was vastly different, Armstrong and Lane said.
Steele had effectively sought out votes where Republicans usually hadn’t campaigned in the past and had “the best campaign in the nation,” Lane said.
Allen’s campaign was “possibly the worst campaign in the nation,” Armstrong said. The Senator received widespread attention earlier this fall when he called a Webb staffer who is Indian “macaca,” an obscure racial slur.
“That doesn’t mean that both sides aren’t incredibly important and not worth our time volunteering,” Lane added.
Students supporting Webb were also present on campus on Election Day, though not in their capacity as members of the College Democrats. Because of regulations stemming from Georgetown’s status as a non-profit organization, several students set up a “Dems Election Day Table,” which notably had no affiliation with either the College Democrats or the University.
Katie Huddleston (COL ‘08), Campaign Coordinator for the College Democrats helped man the table in a rainy Red Square on Tuesday afternoon, selling t-shirts and doing some last minute phone-banking for Webb.
“At this point, people just might be getting irritated because they’ve gotten 10 calls in the past week from campaigns,” Huddleston said during a break between calls.
