Ohio, Day 2

Hello from Buckeye Country! This is my second full day in Columbus, OH, and I'm working downtown about 10 minutes from the OSU campus. Columbus is a beautiful city for the most part, especially since they cracked down on the weapons trade that existed here to supply the gangs of NY and Chicago. There are still some neighborhoods that are made up dollar stores, pawn shops, and check cashing locations, but these areas have been shrunk and/or revitalized with development. All in all, it's a very manageable city to get around in provided you have a car. Oh, and I have to believe this is the fast food capital of America. The streets are lined with every chain you've ever heard of, and every chain you've never heard of. Sometimes those are the only businesses in the neighborhood. It's incredible and it stretches as far as the eye can see. I have seen the future, and it's loaded with trans fat.

I just activated the GPS in my Verizon Blackberry to help me get around. It's not like I haven't used GPS before, but when it's right there on my Blackberry, I wonder how you ever lived without it. Like the Internet and The Daily Show. I know, it's 2008 and I'm still getting excited about GPS, but whatever, I haven't really driven while living in NYC, so it still has a newness for me. Moving on...

I'm going to try to update my blog with some of my experiences, but since the campaign has a no-blogging policy, I can't talk about my work on it, so I'll only be writing about being in Ohio and posting an occasional photo.

This is Day 2, and so far, everyone has been great and I've been able to help out on a few projects, mainly involving lawyers. I'm working a lot with the voter protection group, helping to ensure we'll have lawyers at the polls on E-Day to monitor things and guarantee things are on the up-and-up. The Ohio Secretary of State is being sued constantly by the GOP to prevent swaths of people from voting here (hooray voter suppression), so I'm supporting the efforts against that, along with recruiting non-swing state lawyers to come here to be at the polling sites.

As time gets close to E-Day, we'll have handled most of that, so the last few days will be devoted to GOTV (Get Out The Vote), a combined effort of calls, door-to-door canvasing, etc to encourage people to go vote, and hopefully vote Obama. This might also include driving people to their polling locations. Apparently my big added value thus far is a combination of my computer/data/Excel skillz and the fact that I have a car. Having a car probably is tops right now :)

I'm staying about 15 minutes away at a volunteer's house in the neighboring town of Bexley. Our host is a lovely middle aged Jewish woman with a PhD in psychology whose daughter is in college and has a few extra bedrooms. She's hosting three people including myself. I'm the only amateur of the three (though I've been given a STAFF lanyard to wear), as one works for the DNC and the other is an official campaign member traveling all around the northeast. The latter of the two is leaving today for Cleveland, so it'll just be me and DNC-guy going forward for a while. I mean that literally. Our host is going away this weekend for a funereal, so the two of us literally have the house to ourselves! I'm kind of shocked by this, but I guess I have a trusting face. A trusting face who's inviting you all to a kegger this Saturday night in Ohio - WOOOOO!!!!! Remember, what happens in Bexley stays in Bexley.

Okay, I need to go convince my group to let me out to see Michelle Obama, who's speaking 10 minutes away. I apparently missed Joe Biden last week, who walked around the whole HQ here and met every single person. For those who know how much I like Biden, this is a huge bummer. Before that, Bill Clinton came by, and Obama himself crashed a training session of 650 volunteers about a month ago. Needless to say, I carry my camera and laptop everywhere in case anyone visits.

That's all for now!