The Primary Election

We did it! Whoo Hoo! Party all around, right?

Or, just sleep. That's much more satisfying. We are exhausted.

The early voting in MD had Jeremiah waving and shaking hands and handing out his card to voters for days- 8, I think. On top of still attending community meetings and trying to get his signs up. Plus work, the kids, good stuff like that. Early voting is super duper taxing on candidates! Can we please go back to just one day?

The numbers from early voting showed that it didn't increase voter turn out and that most people preferred going on the regular day when the polling location was closest to their house (instead of only 2 locations open for early voting, located at either end of the district).

Jeremiah said that most people took his card without expressing anything, some people were nice and talked with him, and some people said rude things and wouldn't take his card. The kids and I were there with him for about 2 hours on Voting Day Proper and we witnessed an evil lady be rude to him, right there in front of us. Jerk. To be fair, her problem was with "all the Democrats" and not him personally, but still. And also, that's a stupid way to make a decision on a brand new candidate. But anyway. Jeremiah just smiled and let her walk on.

The kids were really looking forward to help daddy campaign and we put his signs all over the stroller and walked up to our polling spot. There are 3 polling stations on the 2 mile road that our street is off of. Geez, we have a lot of neighbors! The kids just played on the hill behind daddy while he campaigned but Jillian took a few breaks from that to hold daddy's sign and say "thank you for voting" to people leaving. She also wanted to hand out daddy's card to people and a few were nice enough to wait patiently for her to get one from the stack that she always dropped on the ground. We figure she's so cute she can only help the campaign!

We weren't the only ones at the polling station. Right by the door and the boundary that campaigners can't cross was a gauntlet of Republican candidates and their representatives. Jeremiah went over to say hello of course and they were nice. But the kids and I got to that station before he did so we picked a spot farther from them, over near the cute gay guys from Equality Maryland who were asking people to sign postcards in support of gay marriage. It was heartwarming to see how many people stopped and signed their postcards. Less cool how many people were rude to them but I honestly expected most people to be rude. Afterall, we are a district where 2 out of 3 of our local delegates sponsored anti-gay marriage legislation in the last term! (These are the guys Jeremiah's running against.) Maybe it's a sign that our delegates are not speaking for the majority...

Jeremiah appreciated how many people voted and then told him "I voted for you!" That's really cool. We need to get more volunteers for the general election so we can have a Chiappelli presence at all the voting stations at once! But we need a few days to recover from this first.

The campaign sign sabotage continues. A mild mannered guy told Jeremiah that last week he woke up to find his front yard vandalized, his tires slashed, and all the Chiappelli signs stolen from his yard. Poor guy. Talking to another guy, it seems that this combo is pretty popular. And the sign by our mailbox got knocked down and ripped too. And another one that we know of that was in a good location. But I replaced all of them. Whatever dude. I have 1,000 in my garage!

So the final tally is that Jeremiah made it through the Primary Election, gaining the second highest number of votes out of the Democrats. The guy who got the highest is the guy that we expected wouldn't survive the Primary. He hasn't been in any of the parades/community days or at any of the meetings that Jeremiah goes to. His signs are only present in 1/3 of the district (the area he lives in). He's the guy that jumped in the race on the last possible day, after the other 3 guys had been campaigning for a year. So how did he do it? We have no freakin clue. But we're just going to have to work harder to be sure that Jeremiah gets the highest Democrat vote in the General. The one thing that the other Dem has going for him, and unfortunately might be what got him so many votes, is that his father used to be a politician in this area and he might benefit from that name recognition. Damn. And on the Republican side, the three incumbents easily beat out the one challenger. Politics, as usual.

So we're now paired up for the General Election in November (which actually starts in October, damn Early Voting). The three incumbent Republicans, plus Jeremiah and the other two challenging Democrats, all vying for 3 Delegate spots. May the best Jeremiah win!