Friday, November 20, 2009

9th campaign completed

Now that I have a moment to breath (even though we are still in re-canvassing hell) I want to break my long silence and give an outline of my campaign activities here in the 39th New York City Council district that encompasses parts of 6 neighborhoods, none of them in their entirety!

NYC actually has a generous matching funds program for local campaigns that reach threshold, and even the threshold is not unreasonable: a total of $5,000 raised from donations within NYC with 75 contributions of $10 or more from within the Council district itself with the maximum matchable donation $175. Once that threshold is reached anything that qualifies is matched six to one! For once in my campaign career I was working with more than an shoe-string budget!

But what I found is that the money didn't really make a difference in improving our numbers! Counter-intuitive, I know, but undeniable with our outcome. Even after fighting through re-canvassing for every vote that was cast for my candidate (David Pechefsky), we only received 9% or just over 2,000 votes.

What was wonderful from the git-go was that David was included in almost everything. Because of his experience and knowlege of the Council (he was part of the Central Staff of the Council for 10 years) and because of strong runs by a Green candidate in the last two Council races in this district, David was invited to all debates and forums--even ones set up during the primary season specifically for the Democratic primary candidates. That was very different for me. I am used to systematically being EXcluded, not INcluded! And this was happening even though the Greens in New York State do not have major party status.

Additionally, David loved to talk to people and loved campaigning. He grew weary sometimes, but was never short-tempered or visibly irritable. And, as one of the other candidates put it, David seems to have a P.T. Barnum gene: he has a sense about events that will garner press. We had lots of fun events: croquet match, chess in the park, rickshaw rides to the polls, prirate ship in the Halloween Parade, puppet shows ourside of schools; he just kept coming up with the event ideas.

David was more knowledeable than any of the candidates on Council reform, on how the Council operates, on how to move things through the Council, and we didn't hesitate to emphasize this knowledge with each outing and press release. And the other candidates acknowledged that experitise and sometimes even deferred to him. WOW, I thought, we're really going to do well! And we have money for ads, for canvassers, for lit, for poll watchers, for everything in moderation. I was excited.

But then the numbers came in election night, and as our poll watchers either called in or brought in the numbers I just couldn't believe what I was seeing! All that positive stuff during the campaign itself and still only 2,000 votes. Only 9%. I was devastated. Even with a great candidate and actual budget I couldn't bring in a respectable showing (for me that would be 30%).

Evaluation. The hardest thing to do honestly in this situation. We can point to many institutional givens that made our task so much harder: the primary is the focus for 6 months and the actual election for only 6 weeks; that matching money is not release until October 1 no matter when you qualify; this year in NYC there was even a run-off AFTER the primary so the voters were distracted for another two weeks; and believe me, we could go on and on with the institutional impediments to third party candidates.

But the truth is the basic work in the community is not something that can be done in a 6 week campaign. It can't even be done in a 6 month campaign. The Park Slope Green Party, our base of operations, has a liaison to the War Resisters League, but not to Community Board 6; they have a liaison to the NYACLU, but not to the Park Slope Neighborhood Association; they have a liaison to Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (an anti mega-development organization) but not to the Windsor Terrace Alliance; get my drift? Greens tend to be activistis and so forge contacts with organizations that advance an activist/progressive agenda, not that air community concerns on a broad range of issues.

So forget the money. NO, I TAKE THAT BACK--it was REALLY nice having a budget! But it cannot take the place of constant, day-to-day work in the community, with your neighbors, developing relationships, so when you have a candidate you can present her or him proudly and with confidence to the people you've cultivated in these community groups. And your community group can hold a debate; or sponsor a forum; or votunteer on election day, etc. etc.

But even with much stronger community ties, we still have the problem of 'zombie voters:' people who don't follow the campaign, who are driven to the polls and automatically vote the straight party line. Even though we were included in all those debates and forums, only a hand-full of people showed up for each one. 22,000 people voted in Council district 39 (about 30% of the electorate) but if you add up all the people attending the debates and forums, it comes to less than 5% of that number.

Electoral infrastructure. Now here's something we really lack as Greens. That's partly because we're still very young as a party. But it is also because of ideological choices we've made (this is going to be a bit controversial). We don't take corporate money; we don't take large contributions from individuals. Solid ideological decisions to maintain our independence from the corroding influence of money. Price? Now that this individual campaign is over, there is no on-going staff to clean and update the data-base with the invaluable information that every campaign generates. There is no systematic evaluation of the unique particulars (like which election districts we did well in, just for one) that will be useful information for the next election. There is no staff to maintain and expand the contacts to community organizations, press people who actually treated us fairly, and community leaders we cultivated. Greens need to find a way to develop this on-going electoral infrastructure. We will get nowhere without doing so.

Since the election, David & I have been going back and forth with the Board of Elections on their mis-count of the votes that were cast for David. On election night we had poll watchers in 18 of the 29 polling sites, and as the numbers came back from our people, our total was about 1,750. Then we saw repported on NY 1 that David's total (for all 29 sites) was 1,550. How could that be? So, a week later, at an appoiinted time, we were permitted to go to the warehouse to check the numbers on the machines. What I found was that our poll watchers' numbers were correct. So started the 're-canvassing' odyssey. It was up to us to figure out exactly where the discrepancy lay.

The problem became apparent as soon as I could see the sheet the BOE employees were working with. On the ballot, David's name appeared dead last, with the Libertarian candidate to his left; on the canvassing sheet, the Libertarian candidate appeared dead last, with David's name to his left. On the BOE sheet, David's and the Libertarian's numbers were consistently switched (we had the foresight to collect both on election night). After working the polls for 16 hours--that's how long the day is for election day poll workers in NYC--ANYONE could make this error. My question is why was the canvassing sheet set-up differently than the ballot, and who authorized it to be so? That decision set-up the poll workers to mis-report David's numbers. And later, the BOE workers don't check through every candidate's numbers; they flag problems by anomalies in each machine's vote totals. Just as I don't think the positioning of candidates was random in the butterfly ballots of Florida in 2000 (Canadian studies have shown that the ballot was confusing to certain populations), so I think that a deliberate attempt was made here to reduce the reported number of votes for this Green Party candidate because of his recognized potential for doing well.

Another campaign concluded. Many lessons learned. And I'll report more as it comes to me.

Jonathan Fluck