Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Tuesday, August 22, 2006 10:37:23 AM
When you walk precincts.
When I knock on people's doors, I don't know their occupation. However, about one in 200 adults in the country is or has been a lawyer, so if I knock on enough doors, I am going to hit at least one lawyer. Today it was three.
One was new in the state and was buying a home that she was moving into in two days. She was unregistered. A very nice lady who wanted to mother her children (good priorities), was concerned about school quality (more good priorities) liked what she saw. and didn't plan to practice law in Colorado.
The second was a registered Independent who was clearly a Democrat. He would, he told me, vote for my candidate when hell froze over. He didn't think Ritter particularly qualified, and would have preferred to have been able to vote for Hickenlooper. When I mentioned the state supreme court, he said "I know most of those people." He was clearly a lost cause, so I moved on.
I would call this Democrat a perfect gentleman. While he and I disagreed, he was polite and engaging. So often, people go out of their way to be impolite to political volunteers, which damages public discourse.
The third encounter came at the end of the day, near dusk. I had a driver/navigator who was waiting while I talked to another voter, and this lawyer very correctly wanted to know what my driver was doing loitering in the neighborhood. I wish I had neighbors as observant and as willing to challenge strangers.
It turned out that this lawyer was an undecided voter, and raw meat to me. Most undecided voters do not identify a reason they are undecided, or if they do, they make some general claim that one candidate or the other is too "something." Usually, that something is so nebulous that it can't be discussed. I don't remember what this voter said, but I turned on my moral outrage spiel (I never use that term and I try to have a very calm discussion).
It took me all of 30 seconds to discern that he was a lawyer. It happened when he asked why I thought the court system was "messed up." We talked for a few minutes about the defense attorney's tactics and my attempts to stop them. I mentioned my interactions with two supreme court subagencies who discipline lawyers and judges and how each had told me it was the other's responsibility to solve my problem.
I am sure this voter thought he could end the conversation when he asked me what I would do to fix the system. I have had years to think on that very question, and I gave him my solution. He said "well don't throw the baby out with the bath water."
Then he suggested that every judge had to answer to a retention committee, and I should go to them.
Since I am using this conversation as a segway to my interaction with the local retention commission, I will stop the story at this point, except to state that as he walked away, my driver/navigator heard him say "I would never vote for a Democrat, anyway."