Things are heating up here in Iowa. You can't turn around without running into a candidate, or a tour bus full of supporters here to campaign for their favorite candidate. I had breakfast with my Hillary Clinton precinct organizer. Her name is Amanda and she's from the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. Her family lost a lot in Hurricane Katrina, so she has personal reasons for wanting to work on the campaign.
Here's how the process goes for the uninitiated. Each precinct is a geographic area roughly containing 3,000 people. All the registered voters in the precinct fall on one of three lists: democrat, republican or other. "Other" includes all independents, socialists, green party, libertarians... etc. Once you end up on one of these lists, you are fair game for phone calls, knocks at the door, and more mail than you can imagine. Even though I have declared myself as a Hillary supporter and signed up to caucus for her, I still get calls and mail from all of the campaigns. Except Kucinich and Gravel, I'm assuming they can't afford it.
So, when I met with Amanda, she gave me part of the list for precinct 68, where I live, and my job as a volunteer is to help her contact all the democrats and independents, ask them who they are supporting, and ask them to support Hillary Clinton. Yes, it's a bit uncomfortable, yes it's a bit awkward. But this is the messy work of politics. Iowans are used to it.
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