Between now and Tuesday, I hope no one needs to get in touch with me. With only 5 days until the primary election, it's crunch time and all the things that the campaigns said they'd do later have to get done. That means lots of work and little rest for me.
The one campaign that I'm most heavily involved with is so completely up in the air right now that it scares me. Really. It's a 5-way race in the Democratic primary and polling shows that right now the winner is "Undecided." That means that we have a chance, but we have to do everything right until the polls close on Tuesday night. I'm going to be running the show until then (checking in with my boss for guidance, of course). While I love having the responsibility, there are people who want answers that I don't have yet. This weekend is going to be spent organizing the Get-Out-The-Vote drive on Tuesday and I don't yet know how many people we'll have helping out. We're still IDing our supporters, so I don't yet know where the resources will need to be allocated. We're still fundraising so I don't know what we'll be able to afford. So things are pretty crazy here at HQ, where I'll be spending most of my waking hours until Tuesday night.
In other news, I had a job interview two days ago. The job is a communications position with SEIU 1199, the union that covers healthcare workers. I would be working on their recruitment campaigns, writing press releases and literature, contacting media, and generally strategizing how to increase membership. The pros for this job are that it pays well and it would be great experience for continuing down the communications track later on. The cons are that it's less focused on government and policy than I'd like. It's really more of a parallel focus, along the same lines as policy communications, but one step removed.
The interview went well, I thought. I'm pretty sure I came across as qualified and competent, and they seemed to like me. The question is whether or not I want the job, should it be offered to me.
If I had to choose right now between a State House Aide job and this position, I'd probably lean toward the aide job, especially if it was for a good legislator who I liked. For example, if the candidate who I'm working for (who I discussed above) wins, I would really want to work for him. The dillemma is that even if he wins the primary on Tuesday he'll have a tough challenge in the general as well, and although SEIU said they can wait for me to start work until after the general election, they probably can't wait for an answer until then. So if Patrick (that's the rep candidate) wins next week and I get offered the job, it would be risky to hold out to see if Patrick wins the general election as well.
But that's a lot of speculation at this point. I don't know if Patrick will win the primary, and I don't know if I'll get offered the job (if both don't happen, then I'll be disappointed). And there will probably be other opportunities poking their heads up over the next month or two anyway.