IN A RAINBOW of rain gear, hundreds of Barack Obama
supporters crammed into a vacant Wild Oats grocery store on SE Division
Saturday morning, March 29, to get ready to pound the pavement for
their favored presidential candidate.
US Representative Earl Blumenauer—in a T-shirt instead of his
trademark bowtie—riled up the crowd, there for the official
campaign headquarters opening, and the kickoff of this urgent campaign.
There are just over seven weeks to go before Oregon’s primary on May
20.
“Oregon can put us over the top!” Blumenauer said. Obliquely
referencing the protracted battle for the Democratic presidential
nomination, Blumenauer called on the volunteers to work hard so Obama
wins big in Oregon, which he says will “stop the sort of back and
forth, and move [Obama] forward to winning the election in the fall,
which is what this is all about.”
The sort of door-to-door canvassing volunteers were poised to do
that day—hail be damned—”is not just about getting the
margin we need in this state,” he said. Getting as many individual
votes for Obama will “make a punctuation point that gets the maximum
number of delegates possible. That’s what’s going to make the
difference with the superdelegates. You can bring them into the column
with your efforts.”
Blumenauer stepped aside to make way for Jan Schakowsky, a
Democratic congresswoman from Obama’s home state of Illinois, where
she’s worked alongside the senator for years. “I saw him work his
magic,” she said. “He would bring Republicans to the table.” If Obama
is elected, she said, the moment he replaces George W. Bush and takes
the oath of office, “the narrative instantly changes, around the world
and here at home.
“Oregon really matters,” an energetic Schakowsky told the crowd. “We
can win big,” she said, by utilizing the “Cadillac” of voter contact,
“face to face and door to door.”
Then the hundreds of volunteers—at least 500 at this location,
and another 500 around the state that day—broke into groups
organized by Portland’s quadrants to learn the basics about canvassing,
before heading out the door to tell their neighbors why they love the
senator from Illinois. At the end of the day, they were slated to
return for a potluck party celebrating their efforts.