By Garrick Hoffman

Sam Underwood is a student here at SMCC who spent his fall season canvassing for the Maine Democratic Party. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing him to discuss his experience. This is the first of three installments.

You’ve been working for the Maine Democratic Party this season. Can you give any details about what that job entails?

Mostly it’s the same stuff that I was doing [for the Equality Maine Foundation]: voter outreach, fundraising, voter mobilization. We call it “Get Out The Vote” (GOTV). You might see that acronym tossed around a lot. That’s when you just scatter shot anyone you think will support you. This is true of any campaign or candidate. Anything that you do throughout the entire campaign up to the end – it all comes to a head. You find out whether it worked or not when you do get out the vote.

What attracted you to the Maine Democratic Party? Why did you want to pursue that one?

I think that we all remember 2010, and a lot of us are really disappointed with the results of that race. Going to work for the democrats is, for me, really a public service piece. It’s a little bit easier because I’m paid staff and that’s cool. But I think even if I weren’t I’d still be supporting Congressman Michaud in the race. Just like [the marriage equality initiative], it’s about doing something for the state or the community or the people in your life who could really be affected by some of the issues out there. When I got into marriage equality, my mom couldn’t marry the person that she wanted to be with. That can engender the kind of resentment that can eat you alive if you let it. So going to work for her wasn’t about me. I got into this line of work by accident so it’s not like I’m set on some kind of career in politics. If anything I’m getting out of it after this race. I’m going to look for a different career in another field. I don’t think I’ll ever get away from it completely, but going to work for the democrats is about going to work for my state.

Do you think its like fulfilling your role or duty as a citizen?

Absolutely.

So what do you believe is the role or duty of the average citizen?

I think the responsibilities of a citizen in this free republic are to stay informed, to think critically, and to take action in the best interest of themselves and their community. The only way they can do that is if they stay informed and think critically. You have to get the information first, then you have to analyze it and pick it apart and understand, and then go out with the information that you got and make the best choice you can. A lot of the time Americans treat voting as if it’s their opportunity to go out and grab whatever they can for themselves and shout from the top of their lungs in favor of what they want personally. But really I think that the electoral process here is more complicated than that because there are people who have less than I do, who have fewer advantages and fewer privileges, and if I’m not taking into account what I can do for them when I cast my ballot, I’m really not meeting my obligations as a citizen.

How did you attain the position that you have right now? Did you need any merits or accolades, or did they just look at your experience?

When I got hired, my political experience definitely played a role in that. You don’t need to have a background in politics to start working in politics; that’s one of the amazing things about it. You can start fresh off the boat, so to speak, and work really hard and advance up the chain. I wear a couple different hats, but my primary responsibility is to contact voters. You don’t need any kind of previous experience to do that. A good organization will train you up and get you competent to have those conversations because it’s really about what you’re bringing to the table yourself. It’s about your personality and your personability and how you can identify with and create meaningful connections with people you’re talking to.

So your position would be pretty desirable as an entry-level position into politics for anyone who would want to get involved. At the risk of sounding demeaning, do you think it’s the “bottom rung of the ladder” to climb into politics?

I wouldn’t say thats demeaning at all. And I would also say it’s correct.

Would you need to supplement your career or resume with college to be able to climb at the top, or do you think just starting there could enable you to climb to higher office or a higher position?

I’ll start by saying that it is always a good idea to get your education. It is never going to hurt you to get more academic qualifications or degrees. If you have the opportunity, and you can do it without backing yourself into a corner in terms of financial debt, it never hurts to have an education. Having said that, there are plenty of people who start just as a field canvasser, which is my primary responsibility. I’ve been doing this for a while, so I’m pretty good at it. But you can start doing that, you can go to school part time while you’re doing it, take semesters off to make sure you hit those elections, and the rest of the time go to school part time and get your education that way. There’s no reason why you can’t advance up the chain; sky’s the limit. It’s up to you how far you go with it. That said, if you really want to have the most opportunity to make the biggest difference, and also the most opportunity for advancement, what you really want to do is be a field organizer. Field organizers reach out to volunteers and actually mobilize volunteers.

Do you only call registered voters? Or do you call people to encourage them to both register and vote?

What I can tell you is that any organization that canvassses will target registered voters. Depending on the organization, the organization might prepare you to actually assist an eligible voter by pulling out a registration card to get you registered in the event that you encounter someone like that in the field. When I worked for Equality Maine, there was actually a question on the ballot about same-day voter registration, which is a really crucial, really awesome feature we have in the state in which you can go to the polls on election day, register there and then vote.

Is same-day voter registration not something found in other states?

I don’t have a tally for you, but at the top of my head I can tell you it’s not something found in all fifty states. The voter registration laws [in Maine] are not strict, and there are people who would tell you that’s a bad thing. I’ll tell you right now that the incidents of voter fraud in Maine are negligible, practically non-existent.

Do you only know when you’re successful with the job when you see who gets elected, or when you see the voter turnout?

I would say it depends on how you’re defining success. Obviously you want your candidate to win, and it sucks when they don’t. This is my first time working for a candidate. I’ve never worked for an organization that didn’t succeed. I’ve worked for solid organizations that took good care of me with knowledgeable, senior staff who knew their stuff and set realistic goals and then blew them out of the water. In terms of success, yeah, you want your candidate to win. You also want to enfranchise the electorate. You want to get young people involved when you can. Because the fact is that even if your candidate doesn’t win this round, a couple years down the road you’re probably gonna be doing it all over again, potentially in the same place if you’re a local like me. And the people you mobilize the first time – they’re still gonna be there. They’re gonna want to see some continuity. So if you can deliver that for them, even if you don’t win every election, if you’re a local organization or a local politician, you wanna deliver that continuity so they can have faith in you to ultimately achieve what you want to achieve.