Don't mess with Texas!

The two main things going on at the moment in terms of volunteering at Obama campaign offices are phone banking and door-to-door canvassing. I've been involved in both, canvassing during the day and phone banking at night. For canvassing, I mainly work out of the South Valley office which is located in the poorer part of Albuquerque and home to most of the city's Hispanic population. In the evening, I usually phone bank out of the North-East Heights office where I was working in August. It is located in the more upmarket end of town.

The South Valley office has faced many challenges in recruiting volunteers; low voter turnouts, a disconnect with politics in general not to mention that most of the South Valley's inhabitants have to work multiple minimum wage jobs to remain solvent and thus have no time to volunteer.

As a result of this, campaign bosses have targeted it for placement with out-of-state volunteers. The idea is that supporters located in strong Democratic states or strong Republican states travel to the key swing states to help turn them Democratic. A large percentage of the volunteers in New Mexico, especially the more ardent ones, are non-natives of the state.


Early this morning, a bus-load of Texans arrived "fired up and ready to go" canvassing for Barack in the South Valley over the next few days up to and including Tuesday. A heavily 'red state', Texas does not offer many volunteer opportunities for Obama supporters there. A Democratic presidential candidate hasn't carried in this state since Jimmy Carter in 1976. So Obama volunteers in Texas make calls to voters in other states like New Mexico and if they can, travel to them too. I interviewed a couple of people getting off the bus. Most were really excited to be here but lamented the fact that they were Democrats stuck in a conservative Republican state. One volunteer, poignantly stated, "When Obama is elected, though, he will be President for all of us."