Election night brings joy, sadness

By Mark Fischenich

MANKATO — Amanda Barr donated hundreds of hours to Barack Obama’s Mankato field office and worked tirelessly Monday and Tuesday to get out the vote at Minnesota State University. But in the end, Barr decided not to spend election night with her fellow volunteers on the victorious night they’d all been working toward for weeks.

“I talked to my kids. They said, ‘We miss you Mommy,’” said Barr, a 23-year-old graduate student at MSU. “I told my supervisor I had to go home — they’re why I started this.”

Willa Dailey, the Blue Earth County coordinator for John McCain’s campaign, went into Tuesday night cautiously optimistic. By Wednesday morning, Dailey was consoling younger volunteers. Her message? There’s one thing that’s much worse than losing: failing to even try to make a difference.

“You can’t lose if you fought for what you believe in,” she told them. “You’re not losers.”

Marcus Penny, a political science major at MSU and the son of one of McCain’s most prominent supporters in south-central Minnesota, was admittedly obsessed with the election — desperately hoping Obama could beat McCain. Even after it was completely clear that Obama was cruising well past the 270 electoral votes needed, Penny couldn’t stop watching the coverage.

“I was up until about 6 a.m.,” he said. “Obviously it was about 10 p.m. our time when they called it.”

Kyle Lindblom was the counterpart to Barr and Penny on the Republican side, donating countless hours to campaigning for McCain, congressional candidate Brian Davis and others.

Tuesday night, Lindblom remained hopeful the work would pay off. Then Obama won Ohio, and Republicans knew the biggest race was lost. Early results in the 1st District contest showed Democratic Congressman Tim Walz winning by margins much higher than expected, and they had to write that one off as well.

Even the U.S. Senate race provided little comfort. By the time all the votes were counted, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman would have a narrow apparent victory, but that didn’t come until Wednesday.

“There were handshakes and hugs,” Lindblom said of Tuesday night’s Republican gathering. “We did everything we could and left everything on the field.”

The four were like dozens of other volunteers in Mankato. For the first time in their lives, they’d thrown themselves completely into a political campaign. It all came to a head Tuesday night, the moment when it was utterly out of their hands.

For Dailey, the difficult part was how quickly the presidential race was over.

“I was kind of disappointed it was decided so early,” she said.

Minnesota was called for Obama shortly after 8 p.m. and the presidency was clearly his a couple of hours later. By early Wednesday, she was back at the auction house she co-owns, knowing she’d spend the next month working seven days a week to catch up with her real job.

“No matter who wins, election night is always sort of like New Year’s to me,” she said. “... The midnight hour just came a little earlier than I expected.”

Dailey has no regrets about the time she gave to McCain, despite the results.

“You have to go into it with the attitude that somebody is going to win and somebody is going to lose,” she said. “You fight hard and the best you can for the candidate you believe in and hope your work pays off.”

Penny had spent so much time thinking about the presidential race that he had memorized the electoral votes available from each state, knew the voting characteristics of various locations in key states, and had contemplated various paths to victory for Obama. The one he wasn’t emotionally prepared for was his candidate blowing through the battleground states early in the night and locking up a victory.

He’d spent much of the afternoon and early part of the evening making sure likely Democratic voters in Owatonna had gotten to the polls, but everyone from his girlfriend to his grandmother were calling and texting him with updates.

“Every time they called (a state) I’d get a text message from two or three people or a phone call from my grandma,” he said.

Done with his volunteer duties, Penny found himself focusing on the nationwide returns as if the race was a nail-biter. Long after the race had been decided, he was digging into the results from the closely-contested state of Missouri — trying to figure out which precincts weren’t yet counted and whether they would favor Obama.

Eventually, he talked to his dad — former Congressman Tim Penny of Waseca, a strong supporter of McCain.

“I didn’t gloat,” the younger Penny said. “Ididn’t need to.”

And Barr unexpectedly found herself watching the first returns at home with her son Hayden, 5, and daughter Marina, 3. The kids went to bed early, and so did their mother, exhausted from the final get-out-the-vote push at MSU.

“I knew what we had done, the efficiency of the campaign and how many people we’d touched,” she said. “I was confident. I could sleep.”

Until midnight. Barr isn’t sure what woke her up, although she said the campaign has even been dominating her dreams of late.

Despite her confidence, she got up and turned on the TV, wanting to confirm that this dream came true.