Diary of a Candidate: Mary Gonzalez - HD 75

As I previously wrote, I offered candidates a chance to have me shadow them for a day so they could take me through a day in the life of a campaign.

The only one who took me up on the offer was Mary Gonzalez, who is a candidate for State Representative in HD 75. After spending a day with someone, you start to get to know them pretty well. I spend a lot of time with the candidates in general and I try to be as observant as I can along the way. But a day with Mary Gonzalez was eye-opening and I now understand why she does some of the things she does. I'll explain that later.

BREAKFAST

We met at 7:00am at Cotton-Eyed Joe's, which is the place to hang out in Clint if you want to talk politics. And the food is pretty good too. The restaurant is pretty much another campaign office for the young candidate.

I arrived a few minutes before she did and she sent me a text to let me know she had arrived. I went to meet her at her truck and she was already multi-tasking. She was on speaker phone with someone about the campaign, she was applying a quick coat of lip stick or gloss (I don't know which is which really) and she was digging through some papers.

Mary is a whirlwind of activity. And...like all candidates right about now...she lives out of her vehicle. There's walk lists and phone lists and campaign literature all over the dash board, although she knows exactly where everything is at. They are empty water bottles, some snack wrappers, heels, pants, a make-up bag that looks like a pouch of gold dust blew up in it, and other clothing around as well.

We go inside and Mary knows exactly where she wants to sit. She wants to be able to see everyone that walks through the door while we eat huevos rancheros. I hate sitting with my back to the door, so I was uncomfortable as all hell, but she's the candidate. So we start talking about the returns at the polls, which is what she is worried about for the morning. 20% of the people that voted in HD 75 are 1-D's going back to 2006. In other words, they are people that don't vote often and were probably not ever contacted by any campaign.

I told her to relax, that it was probably because of the Commissioner's race for Precinct #3 and that she shouldn't be too worried about it. My guess is that they are people who live in the homes of triple D's and only voted in the State Rep race in 2006 because that was the Gandara V. Quintanilla race, which was a valley shoot out.

I have NOTHING to back that up with, its just a hunch.

As we continue to go over that topic, people start to flow in. And thats when my first revelation about Gonzalez occurred. I've been critical of Gonzalez as a public speaker primarily because of her inconsistency. At times she's brilliant, but other times she's pretty average. But one-on-one...thats where Gonzalez shines. She greats every single person there, most of them by first name. The wait staff, which is all female, love her and call her "mija". Well, actually most people refer to her that way now that I think about it.

She's the touchy-feely type of person. Its very authentic and very disarming. The older gentleman seem to love the attention she gives them. She doesn't talk about politics with them. She talks about them. The conversation is never about her. She gets it. She understands rule #1 in campaigning. In order to get them to vote for you, they must first like you.

And they do. All day long that same scenario was replayed in one form or another.

So we saddle up after breakfast and jump in to her truck and head out to Fabens. We get off the truck and immediately the poll works are glad to see her. She goes around and greets each poll worker. She was checking to see if anyone needed anything. We only stayed for a few minutes and then it was off to Tornillo to get something from her dad. We walk in to her dad's work and everyone refers to her as the State Rep. Again, people are drawn to her and they pay attention to everything she says. Its different here though because they've known her forever.

One of the guys at the counter was someone who actually has a very interesting connection to her. He was one of the fire fighters that responded the night Mary's family home was burned to the ground. He remembered details about the situation. He shared that it was really cold that night. Gonzalez looked like she was starting to tear up a little and then her dad came out from the back.

After a few minutes visiting we hop back in the truck to check on her signs (they'd been vandalized recently) and we had to make our way to her home in Clint. Mr. Gonzalez is still her dad after all and he sent her on a family errand.

As we made our way to Clint, we turned down dirt road next to a pecan farm and made our way up the road to her home. And thats when the other revelation occurred. I know get why Gonzalez's has always had such a rural message in her campaign, which I still think is a mistake by the way.

But I understand it now. She's a country girl. Thats who she is. Its imprinted on her DNA. She could no more stop being a country girl than I could stop being barrio boy. We go inside her home and as you walk in the door to the left, there is a saddle. Its clearly a rural piece of property. There are calf hutches along the road up to her house.

So despite the fact that she's dressed up in a blouse and some dress slacks and shoes with a small heel, she invites me to the back. We make are way around the house and we are greeted by a black and white working dog that looks straight out of a national ad for Purina dog food. One blue eye, one brown eye.

We walk back to the stables where the horses are kept. Gonzalez introduces me to each horse and tells me what kind of horse they are and other information I can't process because, well, I'm a barrio boy.

She spends the most time with the last two horses in the stable. A mother and her colt. Gonzalez is very attached to the pair. I ask a few questions about what things lying around are for and what is the purpose of a small fenced in area and then we make our way back to the truck. All along the way Gonzalez was opening fences and moving stuff around that would take someone who isn't a farm girl a long time to figure out and I'm more amazed at how she seems to do it with ease given her small frame.

We hop back in the truck and we are off to Subway to buy sandwiches for the Fabens poll workers. The entire time we are in the truck commuting from one place to another, Gonzalez is fielding calls from campaign people, consultants, labor contacts, etc. She really tries to maximize her time.

When we arrive at Fabens, the poll workers start chanting her name. Literally. And that's before they saw she bought lunch.

We then left to head over to her campaign office to take care of some thank you letters and pick up some phone banking lists. The headquarters office was staffed by two volunteers when we arrived. One was in route and then the GOTV guy was out in the field with the canvassers.

The campaign has really got the ground thing rolling now. Gonzalez's demeanor changes completely in the campaign office. She is all business. She asks for the status on a range of issues and starts issuing statements about what needs to be done, who needs to do it, and by when it needs to be completed.

Then its off to get fruit for the workers at Pavo Real. She wants them to eat healthy for some reason. So we spend way more time an Ranch Market than either of us really wanted to and scored what she was there for. We made our way to Pavo Real and the fruit was distributed. One of her opponents, Tony San Roman was there at the time, along with Vince Perez, a candidate in County Commissioner Precinct #3. So she and San Roman exchange some polite conversation and she offers him some fruit. He teases her about her signs and about the debate the previous night. He remarks how he never eats fruit. They rib each other a bit and she walks off saying that "your not the one I'm worried about anyway Tony".

Sas! is what ran through my head. But she's right.

And San Roman is actually a really funny guy. He has a great personality. Next time he runs for something he needs to harness that quality and he'll get more traction.

Gonzalez was off to find some shade under a tree and start phone banking. So far, I've only seen a couple of candidates actually having the sense to make sure they had someone doing that. In the case of Gonzalez she not only has her volunteers doing it, she likes to do it herself. She was going to be on task with that list, which is a couple hundred calls every day, for a couple of hours so I slipped away to check out another polling location.

When I come back, San Roman is there eating fruit. Gonzalez's fruit. I joked with him about it.

And then...their other opponent showed up. It was Hector Enriquez. By they way, Hector Enriquez has one sweet pick-up. Its awesome.

Enriquez waves at me from far away but he's not pleased with some of my writing and he had a little fit about it. Whined like a baby and then left. But as I walked away he yelled "God Bless You" to me, so I yelled "God Bless You Back" and he said "Jesus Loves You" and I said, "Yeah, I know."

Enriquez just can't seem to help himself. He just rubs people the wrong way and his lack of authenticity makes Gonzalez's that much more palpable.

After the poll-sitting is done, its off to the campaign office to debrief. Again, Gonzalez is back to business mode. She cracks the whip and gets down to business. We are there in the office for a couple of hours while she wraps things up. Then, its back on the phones as we head back to Clint. She takes some more calls, but clearly they are less business-oriented than before. She's back to being a twenty-something wonk and is playfully harassing another candidate on the phone about who he is supporting for State Board of Education.

Its nearly ten before we part ways for the evening. She has a couple of hours of work ahead of her that night and then tries to get some shut-eye before she starts all over the next day. Such is the life of a candidate.