Returning from several days out of state I picked up the phone to see who had called us and found a collection of messages I had never had before.
For clarity’s sake, I must tell you I don’t have a pen name that differs from my real name. I do, however, have a phone book name different from “Steven Gardner,” a decision I made years ago to avoid having my wife and children harassed because of something I wrote. Call my desk phone and you can get my cell phone number to harass me personally.
When we returned home (Primary Tuesday) we had two messages from the local Democratic party and one from U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Bainbridge Island, who was campaigning for two Supreme Court candidates.
The question I had, and thought you might be able to answer, was given the trouble Democrats are supposed to be in, were the phone messages we had evidence of a stepped up campaign on their part this year? Or do you think I just happened to pick a nom de fone close enough to a real person who has voted Democrat in the past such that by coincidence we got the phone calls this year?
I checked other news outlets to see if there was any evidence of stepped up Democratic effots, but didn’t find anything.
Steven,
It could be that your wife has been somehow identified as leaning Dem or Independent, or, as you say, that someone with a name like the one you use in the phone book has been identified that way.
By the “local Democratic party” do you mean the Kitsap Dems or the 23rd LD Dems? Or did both call your household?
The Republicans also had a stepped up local campaign. It’s interesting that they didn’t call you. Neighbors had calls from “Your Republican Party.”
No one called me.
Cean,
I don’t remember which local Dems called, and they asked specifically for someone with the same last name as the fake name we use in the phone book.
Steven Gardner
Kitsap Caucus blogerator