A city for a canvas

From a good friend and fellow campaign manager. So funny and so true…

• “Indy” is not a form of music
• No one looks at you funny when you sleep at the office
• A perfect boyfriend/girlfriend is someone who can actually put up with your work hours
• You know that perfect person doesn’t exist
• You work insane hours for little money
• And you love it
• Your friends visit your office to make sure you’re still alive
• Therapy is something you wish you could get for free after the election
• Your track record, has nothing to do with sports
• You have thrown your best friend once or twice
• You have played some kind of sport in your office at least once (i.e. baseball, kickball, football, basketball, etc.)
• A reporter or your candidate has walked in on it at least once
• You have come to work when you look like you’re about to keel over and die
• And you did it by choice
• Your car doubles as a closet during campaign season because frankly, you’re not quite sure when you’ll get home
• You have gone 48 hours plus without sleep
• Your closest friends names’ are Jack, Jim, Jose, and Captain Morgan
• You live off of coffee and cigarettes
• Your desk kind of reminds you of the movie Twister, well after the tornado hit
• You watch either 24 or the West Wing compulsively
• When your power goes out or your telephone is disconnected you immediately blame it on the Democrats
• You have encountered at least 3 volunteers whom you are sure escaped from a mental institution
• All your friends say how “professional and cute” you look while you’re running around on your blackberry trying to prevent Armageddon
• Time is measured in cycles instead of years.
• You know your opponet’s family better than your own
• When you work in an office where a mental patient can wander in and you have to pretend like what they are saying is being considered to be reviewed by your boss
• You’ve made it onto some politico’s blacklist.
• You’ve ever gotten dressed/done your make-up/ in a gas station bathroom on your way to an event
• You hear “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” on the radio and laugh.
• You’ve made at least one campaign stop that involves a country store, a county fair, a pie eating contest, or a prize ham. Possibly all of the above.
• It’s not odd to have someone from senior staff call you at weird times of the day for random projects that must be finished in less than a half hour
• When everyone at work knows about your personal life.. Privacy? Whats that?
• You cringe at the words “phone bank”
• When you do quasi-legal stuff like OPERATION MIDNIGHT SIGN DROP LITTER ALFA WOLF SQUADRON.
• You get a BB message between 1-6 am asking for the number of “that one person i met that that meeting i had two weeks ago”
• You know your boss’s choice of food better than you know what you enjoy eating.
• Your non-political friends throw a “going away” party for you on Labor Day Weekend because you won’t see any of them until after November.
• You can pull an event out of your ass in less than 24 hours and make it work no matter how big or small it is.
• You have canvassed someone’s house and they answer the door naked, which shocks you but is not the weirdest thing that’s happened.
• When your personal cell phone rings and you answer “Hello _____for Congress!”
• You send out a young volunteer to put literature on people’s windshields, after describing what differences there might be between GOP and DEM cars and he returns telling you he “hit the jackpot and one parking lot” at the same time the secretary tells you that the local Mercedes dealership is on line 2.
• When you start using budget and legislative terms OUTSIDE of the office: “Wow, I’m running low on cash, I have to earmark some money for my morning coffee…”
• After months of 80 hour weeks and no days off, you vow to NEVER work Field again…and after a week in the ‘normal’ world, you send your resume out and start it all over again
• Every time some one on CNN says “This just in” you hope its a scandal for the other Party, and already know how to make it work for your Candidate…
• You have ever posted your home number on a press release to the AP
• You are so used to saying ‘No Comment” you used it to order lunch
• Just thinking about one or more of your candidates can drive you to drink, smoke, or twitch
• When leaving work at 8pm is considered a short work day
• When your pay period fluctuates depending on when the next filing date is
• You know exactly which friends of yours have American cars and which ones will loan you the cars to drive your candidate around in.
• You know that GOTV is not a new cable channel.
• When you redefine celebrity to political pundits, Capitol gang members, heads of the party and congressional leadership…but go home for the holidays and its Miley who? And do not even ask me who is on MTV or VHI?
• You have gotten a speeding ticket in every county in your home state
• You know exactly how much money your opponent took from every PAC on the planet but you don’t have time to balance your own checkbook.
• When 20 people come up to you claiming to know you and you have no idea who they are.
• You drive around political officials and the only thing you can think about is stay awake, don’t fall asleep at the wheel
• You get pissed at your sister for having a baby during Convention week—why didn’t she plan better?
• You know how to put a coat hanger behind an American Flag just so to create the perfect draping effect.
• At 3AM You can explain in good conscience, “No officer, those 10 rolls of masking tape on the passenger seat and that staple gun are for work”
• You fall in puppy love with someone because they can quote statistics from NCEC that you know by heart.
• You make up new occupations and employers for yourself each time you talk to someone on a plane first because you’re so darn tired of talking to strangers about politics
• Your dog forgets who you are.
• You invent fictitious PAC meetings just so you can go to the bar.
• You have names for other political staffers/volunteers/union members/ party leaders based on something memorable that they did or said (9 out of 10 times itss mean)
• You meet someone new and reserve final judgment until AFTER you look them up in the voter file.
• You spend most of your evenings at bars/restaurants/partys/gatherings/happy hours not because you choose to, but because your candidate/organization is meeting and greeting or raising funds.
• All of your suits/blazers/blouses/shirts have a permanent sticker-glue residue stain OR two holes that gradually increase in size because of all the campaign stickers and buttons that you wear.
• You have borrowed the car of or lent your car to someone you’ve known less than three days, and you don’t think twice about it.
• You look forward to the day campaign finance reports come out because you can’t wait to see which dirty double crossers contributed to your opponent.
• There’s a seemingly endless supply of pretzels, soda and cookies in your office, and you never question where the half eaten pizza came from.
• When you call the girl who gave you her number last night, not in hopes of scoring a date, but in hopes she’ll volunteer.
• You can recite your candidate’s stump speech word for word for the amusement of your friends.
• None of your friends understand why there is some random middle-aged or senior citizen in your facebook profile who may be the next President/US Senator/US Congressman/Governor/Secretary of State and instead ask questions like “so is that your uncle or something?”
• Your friends somehow think you can get them out of DWI’s.
• You’ve ever been so tired while scanning VAN sheets that you turn your scanner to the wall and make your own lazer light show.
• Out of 500 phone book entries on your cell, 495 are politicians, media, activists, and campaign staff. 5 are your friends and family
• You spent at least 3 hours a day going through blogs and media websites finding out the latest dirt on your opponent (or your candidate).
• More than once your opponent has approached you and said: “What’s it going to take to get you on MY team?”
• VoterVault is the most outdated thing in the world. But you still use it every election cycle for phone banking (which is a four letter word)
• Your facebook, myspace, and AIM pages post updates of the campaign
• When working only 83 hours in a week feels like a holiday.
• You own more than fifty T-shirts with a candidate’s name on them
• You’ve ever had an anxiety attack about policy positions.
• You’ve ever threatened an elected official with bodily harm and/or gaffer tape - and had them thank you later.
• When on a first date with a girl/guy you really like, they ask you what the most important thing in life is and you say “Plausible deniability”
• You’ve ever not broken up with someone during the campaign because you need their vote in an upcoming primary/general election
• Your family thinks they understand your job because they watch “The West Wing”.
• You see a politcal segment coming up on the news and start praying your candidate hasn’t opened his mouth AGAIN.
• Other staffers don’t think anything of it when you randomly scream curse words out in your office.
• You find yourself telling everyone that yard signs don’t vote, so it doesn’t matter how many your oponent has. Then get excited when you outnumber the opponent.
• You’re beyond sick and tired of explaining to disgruntled voters that the Do Not Call List doesn’t apply to political campaigns.
• You’ve spent 20 minutes on the phone with a suicidal shut-in, but it’s not the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to you.
• If you’ve ever found yourself passing out your name and number on napkins to a bunch of guys in a bar… because they’re potential volunteers and/or voters.
• When geography seizes to be towns, cities, and states, but becomes precincts, townships, and counties, some of which you refer to as yours as if you personally own them.
• All of your friends and family call you on election day asking you who they’re supposed to vote for.
• You carry voter registration forms with you at all times
• You have memorized the menus, prices, and store hours of every restaurant that delivers at obscenely late hours
• Office hours are an abstract idea.
• You’ve set off the office alarm at least once when you come back in at midnight to do press releases.
• You play “I touch myself” by Divinyls in order to calm the nerves of fellow stressed out staffers.
• When you remember pivotal times in your life by election cycles.
• i.e. When did I leave grad school? That was after the mayoral but before the presidential! When did we meet? Oh yes, I remember on the District race.
• When you are kicking yourself for not having gone to the local Staples for paper before they close and have to drive to a 24 hour drug store to buy paper, only to find a hidden box of paper under a coat by your desk where you hid it in the first place.
• When you call up a good and valued volunteer to schedule her, and she tells you her Grandmother is dying. And while you are comforting her, you try to figure out how to tactfully ask if she got Grandma got her absentee ballot and voted yet.
• When you watch political ads like they’re exciting new trailers for movies
• When doing laundry means buying socks at a convenience store
• You g-chat/IM/Facebook message with your coworkers 10 feet away from you so you can talk about the crazy volunteers while they’re in the room.
• You tell volunteers that polls do not matter, and then post ones with your candidate ahead all over the office.
• The daily mantra becomes “# of days until Election Day”
• Your folks ask “well how are things going besides work?” and you want to laugh and cry at the same time
• When the candidate, the spouse, the children, the donors, and anyone else involved calls you on Election Day morning at 830 am asking the inevitable question, “What are hearing about turnout?”…and you make up the answer without any real idea.
• When you’ve seriously considered a full-scale, all-night stakeout of a “big sign” because the opponent’s people keep stealing it.
• I tried to explain to my Dad why I didn’t care about the Presidential debate (with the exception of the Dial testing which is my Crack) The best I could come up with is this…
• Porn Stars don’t go home at the end of the day and watch people have sex.
• Pizza for breakfast, doughnuts for dinner.
• When you eat food brought in by total strangers and left on a communal table.
• You hit “refresh” on the browser on election night every 1-2 seconds on the off chance that some new numbers are online.
• You yell at the TV as if Satan were in the room with you when the opposition’s ads appear.
• When getting home before 12 is an unattainable dream hanging in the near distant future.
• Reading press clips on your blackberry seems like a perfectly legitimate reason to have not realized you were driving 90 mph in a 55 mph zone (the state trooper disagrees)
• You can watch 3 news channels, read half a dozen newspapers and scan blogs simultaneously on a Sunday morning and think there is nothing odd about that at all. You’d watch more channels if you had more televisions.
• The majority of your friends’ facebook statuses are countdowns to E-Day.
• You have ever connected a bell to the front door of the office so you could take a nap in the back room, and when it rings you pretend you were just getting supplies.
• You have ever attempted to let a friend know you were angry at them by giving them the silent treatment, and it was completely ineffective, because they are pretty used to you dropping off the face of the planet for weeks at a time.