Clark County fair, July 30
Kenn Gividen and I arrived a few minutes before the local party members to find a sloppy mess. We had our own little outside tent, rather than a booth in a building. We ended up having to trash some LP literature, notably a big stack of thoroughly soaked "million dollar bills." That's all right, they'll print more - much like the federal treasury.
The cavalry came riding in right behind us. The lovely and charming Floyd County chair Grace Martin came out, as well as Greg Hertzch. John Harbeson is our Clark County chair, and the missus thoughtfully brought a most useful bag full of towels. Besides being the bringer of towels, Debbie Harbeson also writes a mean column. Check out her group. Check out the local party website.
All the political and most of the commercial stuff was stuck way in the back corner of the fairgrounds. Considering that, and the rainy, overcast and highly humid conditions, I frankly wasn't expecting much traffic.
We probably didn't see quite as many people as we did last week in Hamilton county particularly, but I still went through probably 200 cards. I was pretty satisfied with that.
The locals also had nice blue "Vote Libertarian" balloons for the kiddies. This gave a chance to at least figuratively kiss some babies like a good politician. Plus I got to teach some kids how to bop brothers and parents and politicians with balloons. "Take that, you Republican, you!" Now, now, don't be calling your little brother names like that.
This slightly lighter traffic also gave me more time for singing. I do enjoy this campaigning stuff, and the the fellowship of my Libertarian brethren (along with the smell of elephant ears and the bleating of 4H goats) just seems to fill my heart with song.
"Mountain Dew" was my primary song choice of the night, and soon everybody around knew all about short Uncle Nort who thinks he's a giant when he gets him a pint. Local Clark County party members (specifically Miss Debbie), however, were notably somewhat more open than previous party locals in telling me when it was time to pick a new song.
I had several good conversations with Clark County voters about Social Security. Here's one issue in particular where both the Democrats and Republicans have absolutely, undeniably both colluded together and dug US a big, very deep hole. They've taken and blown your retirement money - all of it.
As I explained it to one young working woman, that money she paid out in FICA taxes even just now in June is all gone. What did they do with it? It doesn't matter. They may as well have spent it on crack, and smoked it up, cause the money's just as gone as if they had.
She kind of blinked to hear a candidate saying something that blunt, but she laughed and agreed. Yeah, the money's just that gone. Why would anyone trust a bunch of Yankee revenuers with their retirement money?
We had a visit from the lovely young daughter of a local city councilman. I might not have guessed from her appearance that she was in fact old enough to vote. A few minutes chatting with her, however, showed her to be more knowledgeable and thoughtful about political issues than most voters twice her age. She's quite an impressive young lass.
I don't really know the relative strength of the Republicans and Democrats locally, but there sure didn't seem to be much going with these Democrats. They only finally had two people show up somewhere around 8PM, not much more than in time to go home.
They apparently didn't have a table or literature of any kind. Best I could tell, they just stood under their tent among the various yard signs watching as people walked past. Or maybe they were just a couple of random fair patrons getting out of the rain. Keep that up, and us Libertarians will eat your lunch for you. Ha!
I hate to talk nice about danged old Republicans, but they were good enough to give us some voter registration forms when we ran out. Thanks, ladies.
It sprinkled a little off and on through the evening - just enough to make it fun by my figuring, but it was definitely moving in as it got toward 9 o'clock. Kenn and I skinned on out, making it back to his van just as the sky opened up.
Campaigning sure is fun.
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