A Damned NIce Thing

It has been a damned serious business... Blucher and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life. … By God! I don't think it would have been done if I had not been there. {Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, spoken to Arthur Creavey in an interview after the Battle of Waterloo.}

Three years ago, I was just getting started on my transition with a few months on estradiol when a woman knocked on my door. She introduced herself as Abby Foster and explained that she was running for my city council seat and trying to unseat the incumbent. We struck up a conversation and talked about the problems getting the local city government, the state government and the Federal government to work in concert to actually make progress on fixing some of the problems like poor education, lack of housing, and high crime that people continually face these days. I also explained that I was transgender and talked about how those affect the LGBTQ community. She asked if I would help with her campaign and I volunteered to help going door-to-door to ask voters to come out and vote for her.

And so it began.

I went out one day for a couple hours on most weeks, met some new people, and we were very hopeful going into election day. We watched the incoming results with anticipation, but were disappointed when Abby lost by about 150 votes. That was quite good because most of these races are decided by 1000 votes or more. But still she lost. However, I did get my picture in the paper!

But that got me started. I volunteered to help another lady who had a runoff in her district and she won election to the City Council in December.

The next year, Abby recruited me to help a man campaign for the State House seat in our legislature against the incumbent, Marian Matthews, who was missing many votes and not supporting progressive policies like paid family and medical leave for ordinary workers. I thought that campaign went reasonably well although we learned from some mistakes and Marian won reelection.

Last year I got involved in the School Board elections in conjunction with more City Council elections and the mayor's race. And the candidate I was working for won election to the School Board!

And this year, Abby decided to take on Marian Matthews herself. So, I of course agreed to help. I signed the petition to get her on the ballot, went out door-to-door with her a couple times and joined a big final push last Sunday where 20 people went out door knocking. And Abby had picked up support from another transgender girl who is very involved in local politics. When we did a group photo, Grace was on one side of Abby and I was on the other!

Early voting was over and the actual primary election day was yesterday, June 4. I volunteered to wave a sign at the polling place near my house during lunch time. Abby and her campaign manager and another lady joined us. The four of us had fun chatting, waving to incoming drivers and posing for a few pictures. I then went back to a different site in the evening to sign wave until the wind was almost blowing me away and my hand was starting to cramp. So I adjourned to the election watch party at her parents' house. I had a nice chat with her mother while we set out various snacks and waited for other people to join us. We blew up some helium balloons and I told about my transition.

The polls closed at 7pm and we opened the state election website to follow the results. Also some of our team members were visiting the main election sites to get result printouts for each voting machine when those were finally tabulated.

The initial results were tight. Marian was ahead by about 20 votes out of over 2000 cast. But we had to wait until the precinct results started coming in. Abby started to close the gap and then took a slight lead of about 20 votes about 8:30. Danny the campaign manager had added up the tape results and calculated Abby was ahead by about 80 or so votes. But there were other polling places where anyone could vote as well.

Eventually, I yielded to fatigue, gave hugs and good night wishes to people I had met on previous campaigns and new friends I had just met and drove home.

When I checked the results in the middle of the night, Abby was leading by 142 votes (!) And she announced the victory on Facebook this morning. There still remains the general election in November with a lot of work to prepare for that. But our district has about twice as many Democratic (or independents who can now vote Democratic in the Primary) as Republicans. So she is highly likely to get elected come November.

So, it was indeed a Damned Nice Thing!

..........

Footnote: The Wellington quote popped into my head during the night as I reflected on how close the campaign had been. So I looked it up and included it.