A little over a year ago, I met Suhas Subramanyam for the first time. Last Friday evening, I attended a party for his swearing in as our Congressman in Washington DC. We are lucky to have him represent us, although it was not luck that elected him. It was hard work.
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We started gathering signatures last winter to place our congressional candidate on the ballot. We would have from February to November to get her elected – it would be a busy year. With redistricting, Fauquier County moved from a bright RED district, to a new slightly BLUE one. Slightly Blue is worth squadoosh, especially in today’s world. We had our work cut out for us.
Over the next nine months, we held and attended events for the candidate to meet members of the community. We wrote Letters to the Editor. Our Ad campaign placed ads in our local hardcopy paper, and digital pop up ads in local online publications. We expanded our social media presence. We texted. We phone-banked. We ordered and placed over 140 large signs across the county on major (and some minor) roads. We mailed well over 10,000 post cards to local voters. Our candidate attended rallies, visited people and talked with local businesses.
We raised money for her. In fact the fundraiser my friend John hosted at his barn was the largest fundraiser held for our candidate across her entire district.
And we knocked doors. If you want to see America, I urge you to canvass for a candidate. Here in Fauquier, it’s a bit different than canvassing in a city, where you quickly walk door to door to door on the city streets. Yes, we have the small towns of Warrenton, The Plains, Marshall, Bealeton and Remington where you can do that, but most of the county, and our 55,000 voters, live in the country. We criss-crossed the highways, byways and gravel roads of Fauquier over the summer, and into the fall. You might be able to canvass 100 homes in an afternoon, if in a town. If driving through the countryside, it might take 3 1/2 hours to canvass 35 homes.
We met voters with mile long driveways and magnificent vistas from their back porches. We knocked on doors of small apartment complexes that had seen better days. We spoke with voters whose families lived in Virginia since before the Civil War. We met newcomers who only recently moved to the county. Men, women, young and old (the oldest person I personally canvassed was 91). Brown, black, white and every shade of color in between. We met dog people, cat people, and families with no pets at all. Single moms, families with 2.2 children and bachelor guys were all spoken with and listened to.
A few weeks before the election, a call came from my friend Austin, the Campaign Manager. The race was tightening. Our opponent was closing the gap and we needed all hands on deck. I couldn’t find my notebook, and furiously scribbled notes on a 3×5 card for reference.
During the final three weekends and the Get Out The Vote (GOTV) effort, we doubled down on our door knocking. We revisited areas previously knocked. We spoke with parents, whose kids were away at college, making sure they too had a plan to vote. We encouraged people to vote early, and if not yet registered, to take advantage of Virginia’s Same Day Registration. We started in the morning and were still knocking as dusk approached.
Finally, it was Election Day itself. Our precinct captains and their teams covered every one of our 24 polling locations from 6AM to 7PM. It was a sunny, but chilly and blustery day. As I drove around and spoke with our volunteers, people were bundled up against the cold and wind, but remained in good spirits. A couple of volunteers continued to text voters, reminding them to get out and vote. Voter turnout was high, although it was difficult to tell whether there were more Republicans than usual, or more Dems. Fauquier remains a red county, but margins matter, and margins were what we would look at later that evening.
When I made a visit to a last polling location at 6:45PM, it was cold and dark. An election official came outside to announce the poll would close in 15 minutes. Our team reported the Republicans working at the location had already left to attend their Victory Party. Our team was still talking to voters at 6:55, 56, 57, 58, 59… At 7PM, they closed polling location 206, at P.B. Smith Elementary School.
That night, after the polls closed, there was an official campaign Watch Party at a brewery in Loudoun County about an hour away, and our candidate would be there. We were tired, and elected to stay local, rather than chance the drive. Our friend Whitney hosted a party, and we went to her house. To be honest, most of our volunteers were exhausted from the long day and went home. I popped a beer and ate a slice of pizza. While election coverage was on the big TV in the family room, several of us were in the kitchen where one of our members was downloading results from the Virginia Election site as soon as they were posted.
As I said earlier, our new district, the 10th CD, is slightly Blue. What that means is if we voted exactly as the district did one year before in the governor’s election, our candidate would win by two points* – not much of a safety net, particularly in this day and age. It’s why we were interested in what our margin would be when results started coming in.
Fauquier is always one of the first counties to report. As expected, we were losing across the board in the county, but something interesting was going on. As precincts were reporting, something was happening. Although still losing in the county, we were performing three points better than we had the year before. Wow – THREE POINTS!
Three points up from a year ago was great for us, but our neighbor to the north, Loudoun County – the largest county in the District by far, would be the deciding factor.
Their precincts started reporting as well, as did other parts of the district. Our candidate’s lead remained steady, dropped some, dropped some more, then started to grow. Things were starting to look promising. I traded texts with Austin, and he confirmed things were going well from their perspective, but no one wanted to get ahead of themselves.
Finally, around 10PM, our candidate, Democrat Jennifer Wexton, was declared the winner by multiple sources, and won re-election!
Emotions washed across all of us. Joy, relief, happiness… A bottle of bubbly was popped and we toasted Jennifer, each other and the Fauquier Democrats. We’d done our part to secure her re-election. The best candidate had won, and a Democrat would represent Fauquier County in the United States House of Representatives for the first time in a long time.
When all was said and done, there were about 700 more Dem votes in Fauquier than during last year’s Gubernatorial election. It’s unheard of for a stand alone Congressional election to have more votes than a Gubernatorial election. Our Republican brethren had about 1,700 less than a year ago. Together, those numbers accounted for our 3.4+ point shift in the county. 12,250 people voted Democratic in Fauquier this year. We turned parts of the town of Warrenton Blue, as well as the village of The Plains – something that hadn’t happened since before 2008.
Jennifer won overall by over 5 points, and 16,000 votes. Here in Fauquier County, we are proud of the part we played in this victory for her, and for Democracy.
Addendum:
Live Life Exuberantly 