On the final Sunday before Election Day, volunteer Nina Wootan of Belmont picked up her canvassing assignment at the Elizabeth Warren campaign office in Cambridge and set out with her list of Democrats living north of Harvard Square. The single mom estimates she has walked about 75 miles over 20 days canvassing for votes.
Wootan prefers going door to door to working the phones, because she says people often don’t like getting a call from a campaign volunteer. No one has ever slammed a door in her face, but she did run into something unexpected when she knocked on a door that she thought would be answered by a registered Democrat.
“You know one guy actually stood there, he was older he was in his 70’s and he was trying to convince me to vote for Scott Brown,” Wootan said. “There I was covered in my Elizabeth Warren buttons and everything, and he was convinced he could change my mind.”
Wootan has never persuaded a Scott Brown supporter to vote for Elizabeth Warren, and she doesn’t do a hard sell. “I give them the facts; I give them the information and say this is what I think she can do for us. Either they are going to vote for her, or they’re not. You have to let people make up their own minds,” Wootan explained.
The neighborhoods of Cambridge were pretty friendly to her candidate, but she did run into one undecided voter. After trying unsuccessfully to persuade him to discuss Warren, Wootan left him to make his decision. A bigger issue at this point is voter fatigue. Even one ardent Elizabeth Warren supporter asked Nina to take her name off the list because she’s been canvassed four times.
Wootan has learned not to take anything personally but she isn’t sure how she’ll respond if the campaign doesn’t succeed. She believes that every vote counts and she’s certain that the time she has devoted to her candidate is time well spent. “It sounds so cheesy when I say it, but it’s our civic duty and our say in how things are run,” Wootan said. She will spend the remaining hours left working the phones, distributing leaflets and possibly even driving people to the polls on Tuesday – anything to get out the vote.
