When I was a kid, and knocked on a neighborhood door, the people inside even if they didn’t know me, would most often be home on a weekend and would happily open the door to find out what I wanted. Doing political canvassing for local candidates in the suburbs today is a far different matter. Many people don’t want a stranger knocking on their door or calling them on the phone. And for those who will accept being disturbed, it is a complete guessing game to figure out when they will be home. I am not criticizing my neighbors. I’m only making some observations about trying to bring about a better chance for my grandsons to have a good life by volunteering in local politics on up to national level. Here’s what happened to me Saturday on my efforts to do my job as a precinct captain for the Democratic Party of Lisle Township.

First, a digression on making phone calls for a candidate. The majority of calls are answered by a recording, not answered because the receiver doesn’t recognize the number or curtly ended before they start. The only efficient way to make effective progress is to pay for a computer service that will screen all the recorders and refuse to answerers and provide only real people at the other end. The kind of people who will accept talking to a political caller through that computer processing end up being a certain portion of the population and not a cross-section. It is why use of the Internet and social networks can be so powerful. But again there are those who don’t participate that way so again you have selective groups not a cross section. It is also why Robo calling has become so popular.

I walked my precinct with two candidates who are vying for a position in our April 7 Consolidated election. Jim is a stay at home dad who lost his job in 2001 and mom a veterinarian easily found a job when the couple returned home to Illinois while Jim’s skills couldn’t find a home. He became energized to run for Naperville City Council after watching how hard it was to fight a developer who wanted a code change to build a shopping strip for an unnecessary Walgreen’s pharmacy when two other pharmacies already existed a half-mile away in long established strips. Yin, running for Township Trustee, is a Chinese American woman who is a senior research Chemist (cosmetics and hair) for Nalco- North America, headquartered in Naperville which is the world’s leading water treatment and process improvement company, delivering significant environmental, social and economic performance benefits to a variety of industrial and institutional customers. Couldn’t resist googling. Yin believes it is important for her fellow Chinese Americans to engage in local politics and make their voices heard.

We started out at 9:30am hoping to catch people before they left for shopping or other activities. We were at a rare calendar lull period where the kids don’t have youth sports. We also knew we would tick off those who needed to catch a rare chance to sleep late and answered the door, when they got up, in bathrobe and Pjs after peering through the side window or keyhole and deciding we looked harmless enough. Or a six-year-old reported on those three characters at the front door and having disturbed the occupants, we then had to decide how long to wait to see if an adult would come to the door or not.

That brings me to the question of what to wear. Of course the candidates dressed nice. I didn’t. I wore backwards a DuPage Dems for Obama T shirt over a long sleeved shirt because we were canvassing with only Dem voters who need to be encouraged to come out for a local election most usually avoided. So my theory was to boldly and instantly tell them what we represented. That way when a Republican spouse answered for a Dem voting spouse (usually the female was the Dem part of the split household) and my list told me the first name of the Dem spouse, I could answer is Mary home or please give this literature to Mary because I know she votes Democratic. It does backfire though. We found a Republican husband in front of his garage running his very loud snow blower on a nice spring, green day, I think to burn out the remaining gas, who kept it at full volume and only let it idle after we started walking away. I doubt the wife got the Lit.

Jim and I told Yin, who was scared of dogs since the time that she was bitten by one, that you could tell by the dogs bark whether the owners were home or not. We soon lost our credibility when we were wrong as often as right. Sometimes you have to wait for the eager dog to be put in the backyard before you can talk to the occupant. We also tried to guess whether someone was home by cars in driveway, newspapers not picked up, and even kids peeking through windows. The only sure sign seemed to be if the garage door was open and even that didn’t always work when occupants decided to ignore us.

I have tried all kinds of times to canvass. I found the best day ever was yesterday when we started at 9:30am. I had my best day of actually talking to people. We were very encouraged that the Dems we talked to really wanted to turn our county blue and were going to go vote on April 7.

That brings me to my passionate discussion with the nine-year-old. His mom is a strong Dem voter and his dad isn’t a US citizen yet so I don’t know if he is a conservative. Judging from his son’s views he probably is. The boy told me that he was already disappointed by Obama. I asked why and he responded, “Because all he wants to do is spend money on the stimulus, money that we don’t have.” We talked about Roosevelt, the depression, whether spending really made the New Deal work, how only eight percent of jobs in America are industry jobs and so many blue collar jobs have left forever which makes creating jobs so much more difficult, and then he made the mistake of citing Obama’s Leno politically incorrect Special Olympics joke. That’s when I probably was too passionate or dramatic. We ended on how the Internet was a far better source of information than falling for the M$M nonsense and my congratulating him on his desire to know and be interested in politics and government. I’m not sure what his parents thought about it. I loved it. It was the end of a very delightful day canvassing in the 21^st century.