Day zero by Nora

Day zero by Nora - February 2017 Scholarship Essay

There is failure and there is what happened to us in the 2016 election.

99 days. I received a call from the Regional Organizing Director for the Wisconsin Coordinated Campaign for Hillary Clinton and Russ Feingold offering me a fellowship position with the campaign. I accepted.

59 days. I arrived in Milwaukee for the statewide fellows training. Congresswoman Gwen Moore gave an impassioned speech about grassroots movements— one in which we were all about to engage.

58 days. The Clinton campaign was sophisticated and data oriented. Each fellow learned how to use their story to mobilize others and best organize a team of people.

54 days. This was the first time I met Senator Russ Feingold, a humbling and kind man in who I truly believed. We could not let him down.

34 days. Before Senator Sanders’ powerful speech about Stronger Together, I shifted several people for our Get Out the Vote effort. After the speech I shook his hand.

32 days. I made 202 calls.

24 days. In “dry run one” we prepared for our Get Out the Vote effort in which we contacted every person identified as a democrat in the past 6 months twice via door knocking.

17 days. In “dry run two” we had two staging locations, one for canvassing and one for phone banking.

11 days. FBI director James Comey reopened Clinton’s email investigation. When phone banking, a man answered the phone and flipped 180 degrees. He now was a supporter of Donald Trump and Senator Ron Johnson, saying he was “done with the democrats.” I brushed aside this reversion of support as an isolated incident and continued on.

7 days. Senator Tim Kaine traveled to Appleton and told us we were underdogs until we won. So, we dug in deeper.

4 days. We stayed in the office until after midnight, preparing for the storm of people that would ebb and flow out of the offices in the next four days.

3 days. I canvassed for six hours and found a few GOP people on our list, at one point however they had polled as democrats. This phenomenon should have been an indicator of disconnect but I brushed it aside and walked on.

2 days. While canvassing, many people wouldn’t disclose who they intended to vote for.

1 day. The night before Election Day about 25 percent of the people I talked to were undecided. I didn’t think that “undecided” was a disguise for a Trump vote. In hindsight, I was wrong.

0 days. Tears were already falling, my breaths were short and harsh, I sat in a crumpled ball, immobilized from the pain of the loss we were enduring. Each race, one by one was called. A loss for State Assembly candidate Bob Baker, a loss for Congressional candidate Tom Nelson, a loss for Senate candidate Russ Feingold, and once Pennsylvania went — a loss for Hillary Clinton.

1 day. I got up. I was broken, the day was a daze. Where do we go from here? No one had answers.

2 days. I asked myself: “If the most qualified presidential candidate in modern history could not be the first female president then how far can women go in this country? Where do I really stand as a female?” I was easing out of the shock. All the Youth Governors had a group call where we discussed divisions in our perspective states and the unity we could bring to our communities. They gave me hope. This group of 40 people who, as we were reminded at the Governors Conference in DC, represent 50,000 could change the tone. So, as the Youth Governor I must teach the delegates not only how to succeed but also how to fail. How to take one of the greatest national failures and make it an opportunity to learn and grow with conviction and grace.

Day 3. Time to rebuild.