After 15 hours on the road on New Years Eve, my brothers and I arrived in Des Moines just in time for the New Year. We are here to volunteer for the campaign the next 3 days, and then make the same long trip back home. We actually arrived one hour early since both me and my brother Luke moved the clock in my van forward one hour (time zone change) without the other one knowing. We didn’t figure out what happened until this afternoon.
Being in Iowa for the days leading up to the caucuses has been quite exciting. The political buzz here is seen virtually everywhere. It’s quite a culture shock. Political ads completely dominate the local TV. I actually saw a Mitt Romney ad on TV for the first time. They don’t run in my home state and I don’t have cable.
I’d like to introduce you to 3 of my younger brothers who have come with me here to Iowa. They are long-time Romney supporters and have been very helpful to me in many respects in pro-Romney activities. Luke, 26, is proud new father of cute little leprechaun. Aaron, 22, is a college student who eats, drinks and sleeps Mitt Romney and Led Zeppelin. Zach, 18 (the baby of the family), is skipping his high-school classes to be here. I assured my mom that we’d take good care of him and that he would learn much more here than he would at school. We are all extremely excited to be here to help assure Romney’s victory.
This morning (Jan. 1) we reported to the campaign HQ at about 10 AM. There was not much that we could do that early on New Years Day since folks were still recuperating from the late night festivities. So we got acquainted with the headquarters and painted some campaign signs until we could go out to do some contacting.
It is bitter cold in Iowa right now. We spent about 3.5 hours outside going to door to door and my appendages nearly froze off. It may have actually been good since people were quite sympathetic and my brothers noted that they generally admired our determination. Exciting as it was I am already concerned about doing it again tomorrow.
When we returned to HQ it was buzzing so much more than when we had left. Many more volunteers had piled in - so much that they had set-up three times as many tables with people finding nice places on the floor to work, there were no more cell phones available to make calls, and the calling sheets had temporarily dried up. It was quite an outpouring of volunteerism. At one time I estimated about 200 people in the building, and that didn’t include those who were out going door to door, or those who hadn’t arrived yet. After 1/2 hour we got set-up to make calls and found a nice floor space in the conference room to work.
While here I met fellow blogger John Cronin (picture of us below) for the first time. He has come up from Missouri as have a number of people. It was to nice finally have a face to face with someone I feel somewhat familiar with. I also met again with Vic, who took several of the pictures below on his camera, and met shortly with Jason Bonham of MyManMitt.com and Race 4 2008.
I have recorded some video that I will try to post if I can find a firewire cable compatible with my laptop. For now here are the postcards I promised:
Zach, Aaron and Luke shivering in front of the the Mitt Mobile. We encountered it in a hotel parking lot near to ours.
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Me and the Mitt Mobile
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L to R: Luke, Me, Zach and Aaron. In front of the Iowa map showing Josh Romney’s visits to all 99 counties. This was at about 11 PM on New Years Eve - we thought it was almost midnight.
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The youngest Mitt Fan I saw during the day.
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The signs we made in the morning. Aaron’s won the best design award.
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Me a John Cronin in front of the one the many huge barn signs.
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The following images were taken by Vic Lundquist with his super-powered camera:
Few of very many callers that appeared during the day.
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A few more callers.
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Nate, Luke, Aaron, Zach
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The office was fully equipped with these.
That’s it for today. It’s very late, and I haven’t proof-read my post so I apologize in advance for grammatical errors and such.
~Nate Gunderson
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