Allan Appel Photo
Freshman Clare Kane might have been reading her The Knight’s Tale before U.S. Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal and other Democratic office-seekers showed up. But by the time the candidates were done firing up the Yale College Democrats, she and some hundred others had signed up to pilgrimage, phone-bank, and be boots on the ground to get Democratic Party candidates elected in the upcoming midterms.
The occasion was a campaign kick-off event Monday night for the Yale College Dems. Despite the rain, more than 125 students showed up at Dwight Hall on Yale’s Old Campus, where candidates cited what in their view is the crucial difference energetic students campaign workers will make in the tight race in November.
Analysts have predicted that young people who voted in droves for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election will stay home this election day.
“The notion that students are not going to turn out is dead wrong, “ insisted Michael Gocksch, a junior.
That was music to the ears of Democratic secretary of state hopeful Denise Merrill (pictured with Gocksch). She said she worries that the 225,000 new voters in Connecticut, largely young people, who had come on board in 2008 might stay away in 2010.
Channeling remarks that former President Bill Clinton made at a rally for Blumenthal at Wilbur Cross High School on Sunday, she said, “If you voted for change in ’08, it doesn’t happen one time. They need to come back.”
In her stem-winder of an address to the College Democrats, New Haven U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro emphasized Democrats’ achievements that might matter in the lives of young people, including the provision in the new health care law allowing them to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26.
She also cited the improved terms in student loans. She said the Congress has provided the “largest increase in college aid since the GI Bill.”
She too channeled Clinton saying that the midterms are not a referendum on Obama but a clear choice, but about who is fighting for the middle class.
DeLauro predicted a tough and close election in which student campaign workers will prove critical. She cited Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney’s 2006 victory in Connecticut’s Second District. It was decided by 86 votes, largely from students at the University of Connecticut, DeLauro said.
Senatorial hopeful Blumenthal agreed: “My race is a tough and tight race. You will make the difference.”
Without mentioning his opponent by name, he noted that Republican candidate Linda McMahon is on record as vowing to spend up to $50 million on her quest: “Connecticut wants an election, not an auction. This seat will not be bought. You will make the difference,” he said.
“There’s nothing people love more than a young, energetic, intelligent face at the door or on the line,” Blumenthal said.
New Haven State Sen. Martin Looney noted, “One of the challenges is that suburban turnout has been greater than urban. College students can be very important in [turning] that [around].”
Yale College Democrats Marina Keegan – in her intro of DeLauro she had called the congresswoman her own “personal fashion icon” – reported that by the meeting’s end 50 people had signed up to do phone banking, which occurs every Tuesday through the election.
Thirty more signed up to canvas on Oct. 2; and 25 people pledged to work in a registration drive scheduled for Oct. 9.
Keegan said that since school started 122 Yale students had been registered, Clare Kane among them. Group President Ben Stango said the crew registered 800 students in 2006 and 1,000 in 2008. This year’s goal: 800.