Workin' the phones

I spent a few hours working the phones at John McCain's Fredericksburg area "Victory HQ" today. The office is run by a full-time RNC field man, who also coordinates the local efforts of the Jim Gilmore campaign for Senate as well as Rob Wittman's campaign for Virginia's 1st Congressional District.

They've got a pretty good system for contacting voters in which the phone system and computer system for recording responses is integrated into a single, easy-to-use desktop phone.

Although there were only about half a dozen of us there this morning, Kevin - the RNC field man - was happy with the number of volunteers who came out in the midst of Tropical Storm Hanna to pitch in.

Needless to say, in this day and age with caller ID, I left a whole lot of voice mail messages.  But the vast majority of people who answered were McCain supporters.  One sweet but misguided old lady had me on the phone for 20 minutes explaining in her best labor union terms why she was supporting Obama instead of McCain, and didn't have much nice to say about Sarah Palin, about whom most of what she thinks she knows seemed to come straight from MSNBC.  Oh well.