Election Day is my favorite holiday.
You read that correctly.
For others, Halloween, 4th of July or Christmas, win top billing, but for me, a person with a life-long love affair with politics, there is nothing as powerful or exhilarating as the moment when the most powerful in our country must submit to average citizens. The magic of a wrapped present under the tree, is, for me, the possibility on Election Day that for a brief moment, anything is possible.
This is my eighth presidential election as a voting age adult. I recall my first election in 1984, when I couldn’t wait to vote. I had volunteered for Reagan/Bush, in a liberal college town, manning the campaign headquarters office, handing out campaign material and answering questions. It was a kinder time in America. We didn’t face vandalism or threats of violence, even though my town went 80-20% for Mondale.
We had the old mechanical voting machines back then, where the lever closed the curtain behind you, leaving you completely alone with your thoughts and choices. It is a level of privacy we are no longer afforded. I felt a strange sense of empowerment when I clicked the switch for Reagan, and still remember the sound of the lever, which opened the curtain and simultaneously logged my vote. The election official, knowing it was my first presidential vote, congratulated me, and I don’t think I stopped smiling for hours after.
And that night, I got my first taste of what it feels like to win.
It doesn’t suck.
In 1988, I quit my job in New York and moved to DC to work a presidential campaign. I volunteered at Bush For President from March through November that year, a political vagabond who lived with relatives and made money at odd jobs to keep myself afloat.
I wanted as much experience as I could get, so I became an unrequested intern at my local congressman’s office. I showed up each day, despite the lack of any openings, to the point where they felt they had to put me to work. I led capital tours and learned the basics of constituent case work.
By September, there was a paid opening in the RNC Communications shop, and jumped at it. I’d work at the RNC from 7am to 12pm then over to the campaign across town from 1pm until we were done for the day, and start over the next day.
There were no weekends.
Election Day 1988 was gut-wrenching – at least for that time. Rumors of Dukakis rebounds were everywhere. The day seemed to drag on interminably. Having worked the RNC and campaign, I was able to score tickets to suites at the Hilton, as well as the coveted pass to the ballroom floor.
I watched Dan Rather call the election for Bush. Nothing could have been more satisfying.
Exactly a year to the day after I had moved to DC, I was sworn in as a presidential appointee in the Department of Defense. It remains one of the proudest moments of my life.
I had to sit out the ’92 campaign as a restrictive version of the Hatch Act was in place, governing political activities of appointees. Going into Election Day, I was convinced Bush would pull it out. The world shook when a friend from the RNC called me in the early afternoon, in tears. They had the exit polling. Bush was about to be blown out. Late voters saved Bush from a worse humiliation, but it was bad. I could not conceive how America could fall for a slick talking ball of corruption with a zipper problem. Little did I realize it would be with me for the next 30 years.
In ’96, I was living in Vietnam. Early that year, me and some expat Americans started Republicans Abroad in Hanoi. We had about 10-15 members at our height, hosting dinners at local restaurants with good food and drink. We sent pictures back to Washington for publication in the Republicans Abroad newsletter.
Back then, Hanoi was a pit stop for traveling congressmen and senators, and the occasional senior agency official. I remember meeting Senator Thad Cochran, and introducing myself as a founder of Republicans Abroad. He seemed shocked and fascinated – “Republicans in Vietnam, who could have imagined it!” We did voter registration drives for all US citizens, and ballot collection to submit to the US consulate.
On Election Night (election morning in Hanoi) Dole had already lost before I had arrived at a party hosted by the US Consulate’s Charge de Affairs. It was a mix of communist party people, Vietnamese government officials and elite students, and both me and my good friend, head of Democrats Abroad, were given the opportunity to speak. It’s hard to lose in front of a foreign audience, but I remember both of us talking about our election traditions and values – that elections are arguments and election day is about decisions. That was a kinder and gentler time as well.
In 2000, I worked with a local group in DC to raise money for George W. Bush. I buried my father on Election Day 2000. After the funeral, my family came home and I remember having the distinct sense of personal justice that God would not allow Al Gore to win on the day of my pop’s interment.
That evening, my brother, a liberal Democrat, was an island of Zen-like calm in the roiling waters that would turn into a recount. Writing notes of gratitude to those who had attended my father’s service, he met all of my frantic updates of states lost to Bush with a calm, “It’s not over yet.” In the end, he was right.
I joined the Bush transition on January 22, 2001, helping to process appointees coming into the Administration. Through that posting I was offered, and accepted, a political posting of my own, my second presidential appointment, at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), starting an eight year run in what was easily the best job I’ve ever had.
I worked 2004 in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania as part of the giant Get Out the Vote (GOTV) effort that the Bush campaign had built. I met and worked with phenomenal people, walking many miles and knocking on many doors. I ended the election back in VA, a precinct captain for my local polling station. The Democrat and Republican literature tables were side by side in my polling place. The Kerry people had a lawyer volunteering next to us, to make sure that me an my team didn’t suppress the vote. I laughed before I realized she was being serious.
After the polls closed at 7pm, I went in to watch the votes counted. The local election officials were absolute pros. Me and the Kerry representative carefully looked over every paper ballot, and we actually had to send one to Richmond for a decision there. But we were done and certified in proper order. There was no tampering.
Like 2000, I thought that all was lost, based on the exit poll data that had been released in the afternoon that pointed to a Kerry blow out. My friends, working in Florida, absolutely assured me that Bush would win there by a comfortable margin, and that the exit polls had to be wrong. In the end, they were.
Winning doesn’t suck.
In 08 and ’12, I did field work for McCain and Romney. I remember the Obama volunteers, walking the same neighborhoods that we did, as doors were slammed in our face with an assortment of cusses and assurances that these people would never vote for McCain. In ’12, I was also a poll watcher in my local precinct. We were visited by a delegation of foreign observers, who were watching for their own sense of vote tampering. After identifying myself as a GOP poll watcher, I remember one English-speaking delegation member approaching me and asking if my purpose at the polling station was to disqualify people who might be voting for Obama..
Yes, that actually happened.
I recount all those happy memories, in both wins and losses, as 2016 has been the most dispiriting, soul-crushing election in my memory. It has nothing to do with the fact that my candidate(s) lost. I got over that in May. It does have everything to do with the candidates from which America will choose. Nothing of actual consequence has been discussed or debated in this campaign. It has been pro-forma, emotional, and simplistic.
But the political bug still bites.
The polls don’t make sense. Clinton cannot be ahead by 4-6 points, but only within a point in FL, PA and NC, and within a slightly larger margin in MI. RCP shows Trump up by 2 in Nevada, but local pundits say the state has already been put away for Clinton by Latino early voting.
In this election, perhaps more than others, there is no advance “knowing.” Maybe Trump gets blown out as the polling indicates. Maybe the combination of factors that makes this the most unusual election in modern American history blows up the assumptions that inform our polls and campaign expectations.
But like every election, it is out of the hands of the powerful, and in the hands of the American people. The great wheels of democracy are turning as I write. The great power of a sovereign people choosing their leaders is underway.
No matter what tonight’s result, somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 million Americans are going to be unhappy. I can only hope that despite disappointment, we can find and focus on our better angels, take a pause from our toxic disagreements and with renewed spirit, try t find something like common ground.
It is in our hands.
Get out and vote.