A blue dot in a sea of red – that’s the way I felt when I first moved from an inner ring Cuyahoga County suburb to Mentor 21 years ago. Conventional wisdom was that EVERYBODY here is a Republican. Not true. It’s safe to come out of the closet, fellow Democrats. The party of the people is alive and well in Lake County’s largest city. You just have to go out and find them.
You never know who you are going to run into volunteering for a national election. Here is a photo of herself in Lakewood with Vice President Joseph Biden. He asked me to call him Joe. What a guy.
That’s my job – I’m Donna Miller – mild-mannered, sometimes grumpy, desk jockey by day – political warrior on the weekends and weeknights. The D in my DNA stands for Democrat – or the Do-gooder party for some Republican cynics.
I have to laugh at the idea that a civilized society can live with a limited government. Not the roll-around-on-the-floor, teenage giggle-fest over the stupid things Archie Bunker used to say. More of a sad laugh, mixed with a sigh. The laugh of the adult who has seen and heard it all.
A new connection on LinkedIn asked me how I got to be the first person to run Mentor’s volunteer effort to reelect President Obama. I just started doing it, I told him. He thought that sounded implausible. But, as Woody Allen said, 90 percent of success in life is just showing up.
Actually I had some direction from the Obama campaign. I’m on just about every liberal and Democratic email list and saw an intriguing invitation to apply for a summer organizer fellowship. That was last summer. I went to Columbus to learn all the grass roots campaigning tools and “Best Practices” and things just blossomed from there.
Now I’m working with a new class of summer fellows, mostly young college students and high school students, who put in 20 to 40 hours a week – for free. Ah, the enthusiasm of the young. If we could just bottle it.
If you are on my side politically, I hope you’ll follow this blog. The News-Herald was kind enough to offer me this platform to educate people about the grass roots political process. Of course I wouldn’t be a political animal if I didn’t use it to promote my own agenda.
If you play for the other team, or are just burned out by politics, maybe you’ll come here and tell me I’m a fool. That’s OK too. I know politics is a touchy subject and I’ve been called worse.
Burning the Shoe Leather for Barack 