Broken ankles and bikes on pandemic campaign trail
Think of this as the third part in a series.
Two years ago, I shared war stories from candidates about knocking on doors along the campaign trail, highlighted by U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th, being greeted by Naked Guy.
Last year’s trail tales demonstrated that candidates sometimes have to provide civics lessons on stoops (“They’ll say ‘What’s a selectman?’ ”).
Third times can be the charm, but that is also when movie franchises commonly derail. COVID-19 shuffled everyone’s script, forcing candidates to improvise.
For some, that meant losing the supporting cast. State Rep. Patricia Billie Miller, D-145 (Stamford), said she usually brings along a team, “but because of COVID, I’m not comfortable doing that.”
State Rep. Matt Blumenthal, a Democrat, didn’t want to put any of his squad at risk, so he walked the Stamford and Darien streets of District 147 alone. He confesses he started later than usual after seeing how it was working for others, “because I didn’t want to be the experiment.” The first door he knocked on in Springdale happened to be opened by a member of the opposing political team.
“He was a constituent I had helped with unemployment. He was a Republican who said, ‘You helped me with something and I’ll vote for you.’ ”
Navigating the trail for the first time, Republican state House candidate Juan David Ospina learned quickly that he had to make adjustments in Stamford’s District 145, which is top-heavy with Democrats.
“They heard me use ‘the R word’ and shut the door. I learned to counter that.”
He subsequently responded to queries about his affiliation by saying “Does it really matter what party I am?”
“And then we’d be in a discussion.”
Some candidates leaned toward more socially distanced approaches. State Sen. Alex Kasser, D-36 (Greenwich, Stamford, New Canaan), set up meetings in backyards, while Republican Senate District 27 (Stamford, Darien) candidate Eva Maldonado used Cove Island Park to her advantage.
Others, such as Stamford state Rep. David Michel, D-146, and Republican House District 147 candidate Dan Maymin are leveraging phone banking and virtual meetings.
Despite being a member of Greenwich’s Board of Education, House 150 Republican candidate Joe Kelly is a newbie to the trail because he secured his current seat without opposition. He was initially disappointed that traditional campaign events were not on the schedule for 2020.
“Hey, I love a cocktail party. That’s my favorite thing in the world,” he jokes.
After getting a late start door-knocking, Kelly regretted not starting sooner, as “I got to see people I haven’t seen in years.”
Democrat Hector Arzeno, running in House District 151 (Greenwich), who also is new to the ritual, found it so enriching that he told friends “I could write a book about this.”
Win or lose, candidates commonly express how stirring such human connections can be. As we talked by phone a couple weeks before the election, Democratic state Rep. Stephen Meskers estimated he had already visited 2,600 homes in his Greenwich 150th
district.
Like other candidates, he reaffirmed civility was alive and well during this polarizing season. Only a handful “were not receptive to the message.” At one home, a couple with a 5-year-old greeted him “with the Heisman maneuver.” I pictured Meskers thrusting his forearm like the bronze statue of NYU footballer (that was a thing in 1934) Ed Smith.
“They had a child with a temperature of 105 and they were concerned about me,” Meskers says. “That was touching.”
The pandemic can also mean a trapped audience. As state Rep. Dan Fox, D- 148 (Stamford), summed it up simply, “For the most part, everybody is home.”
Republican state House candidate Kimberly Fiorello hardly sounds like a neophyte as she outlines her door-knocking strategy.
“You look for clues. Do they have a flag, or a garden? You try to get a sense of who is going to come to the door. But you really don’t know.”
She admits to learning from those with more experience, including Greenwich First Selectman Fred Camillo, who has a black belt in canvassing. Fiorello also offers an almost poetic perspective, a nod to her former career as a journalist (she was a reporter for the Hong Kong edition of the Wall Street Journal).
“You get a sense for who lives in each neighborhood and it’s a beautiful patchwork quilt. You really get a guttural, instinctive feel for each district.”
That particular district, 149, offers a particular challenge for candidates, as it covers backcountry Greenwich and part of North Stamford. “You need a motorbike for those driveways,” state Sen. Carlo Leone, D-27 (Stamford, Darien) cracks of the challenges faced by Fiorello and her rival, Kathleen Stowe.
Stowe sometimes opts for her bicycle, which means “I look kind of funny because I have a helmet on and a mask.”
“(The bike) is very heavy,” she says. “I’m pretty sure I got it at Walmart 20 years ago. And I’m not one of those cool bikers with the outfit.”
She mentions walking in a neighborhood she describes as “harder.” During this cycle, “harder” is Democratic code for a block dotted with Trump signs.
Stowe didn’t go it alone that day, bringing along her father, a military veteran who wore his 1st Cavalry Division shirt.
Every once in a while, there truly are perils lurking in the bushes. House District 148 (Stamford) candidate Wilm Donath, an 88-year-old political rookie who left Germany after World War II, says “one guy called me a fascist because I’m a Republican.”
That didn’t stop him. But another peril lurking in the hedges did.
“It was a stupid accident. I turned into a bush as I was walking away from door-knocking.”
Donath fell and broke his ankle, knocking him off the trail.
It’s a pretty good metaphor for candidates in 2020: When strolling (or cycling) the campaign trail, look for hazards on the left and the right.