The Southside office is not funded by the HCRP – it is a joint project between the Bay Area Republican Women and San Jacinto Republican Women clubs. In addition to funding the office, the club members volunteer their time to staff the office Monday – Saturday.
So who are the volunteers and what do they do? When I arrived Saturday morning around 10 am, guess who was sitting at the reception desk? None other than Ed Hubbard. He explained that he, along with BARW’s Lilian Norman-Keeney, had volunteered to make certain the office was open each Saturday and that other volunteers were responsible for specific days of the week. He gave me a tour of the office and explained some of the work they are doing.
The first thing I noticed (after Ed) was the number of candidate signs. The office serves as a distribution point for candidate signs, both in bulk for block walking and for walk-in voters. In fact, during my hour and a half, there were 7 different people walk in requesting signs. Most of the requests were for Pete Olson signs, but Ed and Lilian made certain that they carried out more than just Olson signs. Heck, I even got into the act and pushed a couple of Jack Morman signs out the door – what a Goliath slaying it would be if Jack were to upset Sylvia Garcia. The do have Rick Perry signs but you have to pay for them because of the Perry camp’s strategy.
Speaking of the Perry camp, Lilian was a little disappointed that she had been asked to set up additional tables and such for a group of Perry volunteers that were supposed to be using the office that morning for phone banking but were no-shows. Hey, gotta roll with the punches during election season.
Ed walked me through the phone banking system. Everything is automated, you just push a button and a computer selects a phone number to dial. You are provided a script in case someone answers. If voicemail picks up, a pre-programmed automated script takes over and the volunteer moves to the next number. A total of eight phones are provided, although during my time there, only one volunteer was using them. Students at local high schools can get credit in their government class for each hour they spend on the phone banks.
In a separate room, three volunteers were stuffing envelopes for a candidate. The candidate has to provide the envelopes, inserts, and postage – the volunteers provide the labor. They were stuffing 6,000 envelopes for a candidate on Saturday – I’m guessing that they didn’t finish!
As usual, they need more volunteers. It is interesting to see Tea Parties get all of the publicity but the traditional Republican womens groups remain the ones doing the bulk of the work – and this is work, make no mistake about that. I promise you that Ed Hubbard has other things he could be doing on a beautiful Saturday – but if we don’t win elections, none of the rallies matter.
The office is located at 1849 El Dorado Blvd in Clear Lake (NW corner of the intersection with Space Center Blvd.). Click here for a map.
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