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Think You Care About the Midterms? These People Upended Their Lives to Volunteer
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/us/volunteers-midterm-elections.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage‘I believe this is the most important election of my lifetime.’
After listening to a piece about politics on NPR, Robert Hill, 43, quit his job as an events planner in California wine country, and moved to Ohio to volunteer for Danny O’Connor, a Democrat running in Ohio’s 12th Congressional District, in a special election. He didn’t know much about Mr. O’Connor when he started. All he knew was that there was a chance to flip a seat, and that Mr. O’Connor had refused corporate PAC money.
“My biggest issues are the money in politics,” he said. “All this money is coming in from corporations. It’s not how this country was supposed to be governed.”
He’d never been involved in politics before. But he found his way to a campaign office in Ohio in June and offered his services for free. “Every day there was organized canvasing,” he recalled. “Knocking on doors. There was a place where you get your literature packet and a little pep talk.”
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‘I’m burning savings. I will probably have to work an extra year or two because of this.’
Matt Yust, 59, a nonprofit consultant, subletted his Manhattan apartment and moved to Iowa for five months to volunteer for Swing Left.
He still remembers the exact moment that the idea popped in his head: “I was sitting at the Blind Tiger Ale House, in the Village, and everyone was complaining about Trump. I said, ‘Stop complaining and do something about it.’”
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‘If things don’t go our way on Nov. 6, I don’t want to feel that I could have done more.’
Grace Hamilton, 24, from Sammamish, Wash., quit her job at a tech firm and embarked upon a 9,000-mile loop around the country, with the goal of volunteering for as many Democratic candidates as she could. She mapped out a route through the toughest battlegrounds, hoping to lend a hand to 34 candidates. In the end, she made it to 28.
