Raising Kaine, the blog dedicated to electing Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine the next governor of Virginia, interviewed David recently about his primary victory and next steps for Team Englin:
In an exclusive post-election interview with RaisingKaine, David Englin looks at high points and low points of the campaign that just was, and looks forward to his plans for the next weeks and months. Among other topics, Englin discusses grassroots politics, progressivism’s prospects in Virginia, and his intent to help other Democrats — Greg Werkheiser, Bruce Roemmelt, David Poission, Kaine/Byrne/Deeds — win this November. Needless to say, we here at RaisingKaine are looking forward to helping David, and his “grassroots army,” do just that!
1) So how are you feeling at this point, Delegate-elect Englin?
Of course, winning the nomination feels great, but I mostly feel incredibly grateful to everyone who poured so much of themselves into our campaign. Watching so many new people become empowered to make a difference gives me immense hope for the future. I also feel a deep obligation not to let them down, either in November or in the General Assembly. By the way, as much as I appreciate the vote of confidence, I prefer “Democratic nominee” to “Delegate-elect.” Regardless of how strong my chances are, I do have a Republican opponent, and it’s important that we respect the democratic process.
1a) Do you have any voice left or any leather on your shoes now that the primary campaign is over?
We all worked so hard that I’m sure it took everyone a couple of days to fully recover, but now I’m fine. Shayna and I celebrated the day after the primary by going out and buying me a new pair of walking shoes for all the work we have in store between now and November.
1b) Is your house back in one piece?
I think the victory party was harder on our house than the campaign was, but it’s slowly but surely recovering from both. I used to be a bit anal about certain things in the house, but now pushpins stuck directly in the walls don’t bother me as much. Truth be told, Shayna and I miss the barely-controlled chaos that we had in our home for the last several months. We miss having our organizers and interns in here all the time. It’s just not the same without the daily sing along (seriously, there was a daily sing along among our organizers and interns).
2) What would you rank as the high points and low points of the campaign?
The high point was realizing a few weeks from election day that our plan and our months of hard work was actually paying off. Our volunteer ranks started to swell with people we first met by knocking on their doors, and random people from around the district started calling to volunteer or donate money or just pledge their votes. Every time I saw a person go from occasional voter to committed activist because of our campaign, it was a high point for me.
There were a couple of weekends when we expected several volunteers and only one or two showed up. Those were definitely low points for a grassroots campaign entirely dependent on volunteers. But we persevered and had faith in our plan and our strong, positive, progressive message, and the volunteers were there when it mattered most.
3) What do you feel went better than expected, and worse than expected, over the past few months?
Our field operations went better than expected. We thought we had an outside chance of going into the weekend before the election with our ideal number of supporters identified, but we actually surpassed that goal two weeks early and went into the election with several hundred more identified supporters than expected. That’s why we were able to still win decisively even with a number of forces arrayed against us. We ended up exceeding our vote goal in every single precinct. In several Fairfax precincts, we pushed up turnout by several hundred percent. We organized in precincts like Mount Eagle (where we won 58% of the vote) where we heard again and again and again that nobody had really worked before.
As I mentioned before, there were a couple of times when we expected more volunteers than we got. Other than that, nothing really went worse than expected. That’s a real testament to Stephen and Mara’s leadership, in my opinion.
Click here to read the complete interview.
