No campaign, no gain

I have always been interested in local politics and Dr. Bach’s class project gave me the exciting opportunity I was looking for: to learn about political campaigning and volunteer in a local election campaign.

Little did I realize the amount of knowledge and experience I would gain from this event.

Bob Romano’s campaign was a grassroots campaign. Many of his supporters included educators and others in the community. Compared to his opponent Linda Harper Brown’s campaign, his did not have financial backing. His had to rely on a down-to-earth group who I knew could have a great impact on the community if used strategically to its fullest.

As the class project leader, one of my responsibilities was to walk in target neighborhoods of the State House district Bob Romano was trying to win. This district roughly includes the city of Irving. My task was to distribute campaign literature from door to door and sometimes even explain to residents what my candidate stood for.

I learned soon the way a neighborhood would vote, based on the large number of political yard signs – leaning Republican or leaning Democratic. It was obvious to me that I was not the only one to care about Irving. Volunteers from our opponent did their part as well in dotting front yards with their campaign signs. Campaign walks were interesting because I came across a very diverse population and sometimes neighborhood profiles changed from one city block to another. Carter Thompson, who was elected district criminal judge, even came along one day with one of my teammates.

Naturally, the culmination of all our efforts was ‘E Day’ or Election Day. The combined effort of Romano, his campaign manager and top assistant was getting volunteers to the polling places and trying to influence voters one last time. One of the volunteers witnessed the following at a polling place he attended. One of Linda Harper Brown’s campaign volunteers had placed a sign near the polling area. When he saw our opponent’s move, he placed Romano’s sign in front of her sign. Later on, our opponent retaliated and moved his sign in front of ours.

This went on for two or three times until Harper-Brown’s volunteer won the ‘battle’ by placing the sign as close as possible to the perimeter allocated by election laws.

Romano lost the election. I realize it was a tough fight to begin with. First, he was running against an incumbent and this, historically, is always an uphill battle in Texas and American politics. Being an incumbent gave Linda Harper-Brown immediate name recognition and a head start in many areas. Secondly, his opponent had a huge financial advantage over him, which proved extremely useful to the very end of the campaign. Romano had to fight for every dollar he received.

— Daniel Sanchez is a student in Dr. Gabriel Bach’s government class.