Report From Rhode Island - March 3rd Super Tuesday

By Sue Bergeron

While Americans are forming lines, waiting for hours to vote in their state's Presidential Primary elections, I'm in a VFW hall in Rhode Island, dishing out pizza. I'm talking to railroad engineers and conductors about their Medicare benefits. I slide my nomination papers next to their greasy paper plates and ask them to sign. I explain how it will allow me to get on the ballot ahead of Rhode Island's April 28 Primary race. Everyone eligible eagerly signs.

The night before the meeting, I'm geared up in full Biden swag, wheeling my cart around in the local supermarket, looking for prospects. I live in Trump* Country, so it's difficult. My run-down neighborhood is a beachside enclave inhabited by blue collar workers, fisherman, struggling young families, and retired elderly who have settled here to enjoy an affordable life by the water. I've got the clipboard hidden under a huge bag of Little Cesar dogfood. I've gotten pretty good at profiling Trumpies. I'm not proud, but time is short. If I see a Harley jacket, I hurry down the next aisle and disappear behind a stack of Charmin. I spot two 50-ish women examining the label on a bag of organic walnuts. I move in. "Psst. Excuse me, ladies, but are you registered voters?" One asks who I'm campaigning for. I tip my "Joe 2020" hat and turn around to display the huge "Biden For President" on the back of my sweatshirt. They both crowd in and one whispers, "Good. Give us the papers. Anything to get rid of Trump." I'm reminded of what it must have been like to have been a part of the French resistance to Hitler---passing notes in the dark of night in dark alleys to avoid detection. This might sound a little dramatic but I'll tell you what happens when you make a mistake.

At the end of a long day of canvassing my neighborhood, I pull up to a neat ranch home and as I approach, the door opens. My list tells me that a Democratic couple in their eighties live here. A gray haired gentleman swings open the storm door and plants one foot on the stoop to cock it open. A gust of wind blows through the door, sending his Providence Journal airborne. "What's this all about?" he shouts. I'm geared up in Biden swag, as usual. "Hi. I'm running for delegate for Joe on the April 28 ballot. Let me introduce myself..." Before I can go further he lays into me. He tells me that he was a lifelong Democrat but "...after what you morons did in Washington this winter I'll NEVER vote Demo-RAT again. You hear me?! NEVER! You're a moron. He's a moron..." I stand there, not three feet from this monster. It's been a tough day, fighting the wind in freezing weather on four hours sleep. All the beautiful stories I've been reading in Joe's memoirs flood my head. A decent man. A life well spent. A life filled with unspeakable tragedies, not unlike the ones I experienced in my own family. The speeches I've heard Joe give in person were not those of a moron. The time I literally threw myself between Joe's podium and a charging pack of protesters in New Hampshire flash before me. "He's not a moron," I say. "Joe's a good man." The tears come. I'm frozen. I can't move. Shit! I let him see me cry! Then something even stranger happens. From behind the man, a frail figure with snowy hair emerges in a wheelchair, a pale crocheted blanket enfolding her. Her boney hand reaches out and a fragile voice says, "Give me the papers. I'll sign them." Then, the monster physically bars the woman from the door, his arms spread out like a giant airplane about to land on my head. "NO!" He bellows, while glaring at me, the enemy. "You're not signing anything! Get back!" I knew I had to leave or the woman might not get dinner that night. She might be punished. But I leaned in first to defend her; after all, she'd defended me. I said to him, defiantly, "You have no right to tell your wife what to do, Sir. She has a brain and a heart of her own." Then I hurried down the walkway and headed home for a good long cry. This is what happens when you make a mistake. 

After it's too dark to knock doors, I spend my nights trawling the bowling alleys, bars, and Elks Lodges until they are closed. Then I go home and work on creating "registered Democratic voter only" canvassing lists, sometimes until 3 AM. The names are provided by the Secretary of State. I sift through the pages on my tablet, looking for my district and ward. I copy names, addresses and ages. Age is important. I impose an age 50 cut-off because, again, I have to profile, in the interest of time. Previous experience has taught me that the young voters will not sign for me because they'll believe they are betraying Bernie. By 9 AM I'll hit the streets of my neighborhood, knocking doors, asking for signatures. I step over empty oxygen tanks and broken furniture on the porch of an elderly couple to ask for their signature. The woman, in a filthy duster, invites me in. I endure the smell of piss for half an hour, as she clings to a doorsill, telling me how her and her 90 year old husband prayed they would survive long enough to see an end to the Trump reign of terror. I will encounter a hoarder's home stuffed with yellow newspapers, old mis-matched shoes and other ancient junk piled to the ceiling. In the midst of the mayhem a big screen TV broadcasts Fox TV in the background---the latest misinformation about the "Coronavirus Hoax." I'll step around curious cats and yapping chihuahuas. They refuse to sign because they're going to vote for Trump again. They want to "Keep America Great." Too many sad faded Christmas decorations are still hanging in some of the windows. Some days, after seeing how some of the people who most fiercely supported Trump were living, I would sit in my car and cry. How can this continue in America? They are completely hypnotized by Trump TV!

There were endless obstacles. As I moved into the community looking for signatures, the deadly Coronavirus began to get a toehold in America. When it reached my state, the parking lots at the local restaurants, clubs, and bars went empty. Some people peeked through their blinds. "Go away! I'm sick!" They called out. Could I, too, get sick? Could this endeavor actually kill me---and my husband? I spent a day at the local mall getting signatures. Was I sitting in a giant pettri dish? The mood there was mixed. It seemed half the people were Trumpies. As I spoke to people I began to campaign for Joe now. This is what I was talking about when I said in an earlier column about how a nominee must run a dual race. It's a three dimensional chess game!

March 2nd, the nominees meet on the second floor of a BBQ retaurant for one last signing party and State Democratic Party stratagy session. Papers are flying everywhere. The notaries' stamps clunk-clunk on the table as friends and party members sign away. Delegates released from the suspended campaigns of Buttigeig, Steyer, and Klobuchar clamber up the steps where they throw themselves on the mercy of the Biden campaign. They're 'free agents' now. They are desperately hoping to switch their pledges at the last minute. Some are looking for staff jobs. A Party head meets with them for interviews. There are no cigars allowed here, but I think this is what they used to mean by "smokey backroom deals" of past political eras. A waitress delivers hot corn bread and cocktails to fortify the nominees. I leave early to go hit the laudromats and libraries and fire halls before closing time. The deadline is 4 o'clock on Super Tuesday.

I was given seven days to do this and the first couple days my husband couldn't help me; he had a respiratory infection that sent him to the hospital because he couldn't breath. It turned out to be "Just a cold." As he recovered, he helped me create lists and then he worked the streets for me. I owe him a debt of gratitude. I couldn't have succeeded without all the help I had. I needed runners to get my sheets to 12 Town Clerks by the 4 o'clock deadline. There's a lot of handing off. It requires trust and team building. It creates self confidence and poise. If I don't make the cut, at least I can say it was a character building exercise. And it all came together on Super Tuesday! At 3:45 PM, Tuesday, March 3rd, after the last affadavit was stamped and filed in our own town, Ron and I headed home to await the certification process. We would collapse on the sofa and spend the evening by the TV celebrating Joe Biden's incredible Democratic Political Earthquake across America. As a cable news reporter walked the endless hours-long wait line at the Irvine California polling place, my eyes welled up again---this time with joy. "See that?" I said to Ron. "You know what that is right there?" "Yeh," he said, "That's Bernie winning Cali." He smirked. "No," I said. "That's a massive mandate for Americans saying "Fuck you!" to Trump. Finally, blessedly, at long last, the worm turns.

*Third impeached president of the United States