From the new book by Sam Carpenter, a chapter from Making Oregon Great Again: Guide to the Grassroots Revitalization of the Oregon Republican Party (and the Defeat of the Ruling Class).
Download the entire book for free at www.makeoregongreatagain.com/book
CHAPTER 11
Relentlessly on the Road…and on the Laptop
Starting January 3rd, 2018 and ending May 15th, 2018, Diana and I traveled by car to every corner of Oregon, visiting voters one-on-one and attending county and private Republican voter meetings of one format or another. Many times, there were six or eight gatherings in a single week. Occasionally there would be 200 in an audience, but not often. Usually only 20 or 30. We’d be on the road for five or six days, staying in motels usually, then head back to our home in Bend for a day or two. LOTS of miles! Oregon is a big state!
In time, generous supporters allowed us to use their second home in SE Salem. It was a life-saver because the trip from Bend to Oregon’s major population centers to the west always included winter mountain pass crossings.
We also had a wonderful operational base in La Grande at the Bob and Sharon Beck ranch. NE Oregon is a long, long way from Bend.
The meetings we attended typically lasted two hours or more, and my presentation time was often just three minutes. There were one-on-one, coffee-shop meetings, interspersed. It was grueling, but we stuck to the torturous routine knowing Republican conservatives were hyper-enthusiastic and that our polling was good and getting better. Momentum built quickly through January and into February, and our plan for talking to as many Republicans, both in groups and one-on-one, was paying off exponentially. And in the four and one-half month time-frame, we spent enormous time communicating with voters individually via Facebook (“Sam Carpenter Make Oregon Great Again”), building quickly to 30,000 followers, then 50,000, consistently adding over 500 new followers every day. Near the end of the campaign we were adding over 1,000 every 24 hours. We would exceed 93,000 by primary Election Day, May 15th, while none of our opponents had exceeded 12,000.)
By mid-March, the grassroots were on fire and our conservative audiences grew larger and hyper-enthusiastic. April meetings in Florence and Eugene especially stand out to Diana and me. Wow!
Physically and emotionally it was brutal. Most times, Diana would drive and I was on the phone, writing up blog posts, or getting back to people online. With our SUV set up as a WI-FI hotspot, and both of us equipped with new Apple Mac Pros, we put 25,000 miles on the car during the 22-week active campaign. Our message was classic conservative: pro-life, limited government, lower taxes, fewer regulations, end sanctuary state status, 2A as-written, pro-School Choice, pro-Trump, a balanced budget, and especially we told everyone we met that there was plenty of evidence to suggest that we really could turn this state inside-out; that we really could “Make Oregon Sane Again.” (Maybe in a future political race, “MOSA” would make for a good hat…).
In all of this, we did not personally bash our opponents publicly or personally. Not once.