One of the attractive and unique aspects of my job was this termination point, inevitable, the climax of my work. Few jobs have such a place. Or a work plan that has such a definite threshold, continue or terminate? This was certainly one of my longest campaigns and it had tested my skills/techniques in many ways.
The polls at the main Burnside store were in the afternoon and would concluded at five pm. Several people who would be voting at Burnside would be challenged ballots, arguably managers, who we knew would vote no. My best election observers both respected and smart were at Burnside for this reason. (Observers had to “challenge” the voter when they entered the polling place). The debrief and message from one of my observers was short, “everyone was voting”. The tension only increased. The sure success of the campaign was predicated on a good voter turn out not an enormous turnout. On our voter id and charts leading to the election we counted one hundred and thirty two yes votes. The more people who voted the slimmer the margin of victory.
The phone rang and it was a call from a supporter. Jamie wasn’t going to be able to vote because there was no babysitter. The story was heard as one side of a phone conversation to the office. For me and my boss Peter it was a painful conversation for what we heard, what we didn’t hear from the person who answered the telephone. He was a solid supporter but he had not pushed for an arrangement, we can be the babysitter and the transportation to the voting place. He didn’t say it. We wanted a commitment from the person who called to get to the polling place. Would the election be lost because too many conversations like this one had occurred today? Both Peter and I had run a lot of elections and the telephone conversation banged around in our heads like the metal ball bouncing in a pin ball machine. Without a lot to do for the day until the last polling place closed we had time to play the bounces.
Early that morning one of my assistants had driven to Salem to pick up a supporter who was staying with her grandmother and who after voting at the airport store, the earliest voting site, after which she would be dropped at the clinic in Portland for day surgery on her wrist. She had gone the fartherest to vote that day as far as we knew.
Later, in the days following the election I heard of people who had postponed their vacation or driven from the beach that day in order to vote. These were no votes. I remembered a person who had voted in a different union election on the way to the beach on Valentine’s day after her wedding ceremony. She wore her red wedding dress to the voting place. Even the old Labor Board official had said that the woman in the wedding dress was a first.
On election day at Powells it was a long afternoon for me. What would my boss think, the people back in San Francisco at the headquarters of the Longshoremen’s union? The dream was a recurring one, first of winning and then losing, celebration and deflation, the summation of a year and a half of work all on a warm mid-April afternoon. We had started on my birthday in early October a year and a half earlier. Today I felt the helplessness of nothing else to do all the while wondering if there was something else I should have done. Other times I felt a pride in how far we had come. Why was it so close?
