Barbara Lonergan was the PC of the Year from the Addison Township Democratic Organization.
Here’s some information about her great work in Barbara’s own words.
Jim Caffrey asked me to manage Addison Township precincts in Elmhurst for his campaign. In some cases, ATDO/Elmhurst PCs canvassed this territory once for Jim, then walked a second time for all the candidates. In other precincts, we canvassed on Jim’s behalf and then transitioned the conversation to the other candidates.
We had a handful of PCs who couldn’t canvass, so ATDO/Elmhurst PCs stepped up and filled in where needed. I walked 5 precincts, which included helping with both Jim and Bob Peickert’s precincts so they could focus on bigger district and county campaigning and fundraising.
I participated in a lit bag-stuffing party, wrote letters and emails to my own precinct neighbors, phone banked, postcarded, shared and posted candidate info on social media, delivered campaign signs to individual voters and on election day to polling places. Post-election, my home was the drop off location for campaign signs that I then took to Lombard Public Works for recycling. I also spent one day in Naperville confirming votes for Dan Hebreard.
I’m also on the board of Progressives for Change, which played an important role in the election. We hosted candidates, recruited volunteers, held postcarding events, and distributed a weekly “Countdown to the Midterms” e-newsletter to provide info on volunteer opportunities, events, and more. I mention this organization because I really believe they played an important role in the election, and the camaraderie of this group kept me going.
I appreciate the acknowledgement from ATDO and DPDC for my work, but: I’m not a fan of being in the spotlight; our work in ATDO was a team effort with so many people contributing; we had a wonderful group of member-candidates who we couldn’t help but get excited about; and most importantly, I am very aware that by spreading myself thin over so much territory, I failed to bring in the numbers that could have made a difference in Jim’s campaign.
As far as the ATDO team, we have: a member who is a dynamo at miniVan, pulled lists at the drop of a hat and answered countless questions to help us all make the most of canvassing; two women who organized lit bagging parties and did an enormous amount of bag sorting and stuffing on their own; PCs who stepped up to walk multiple precincts; a teenager who canvassed and put most of us to shame with her knowledge on issues and candidates; and our fearless leaders — Matt, who created a beautiful website with links to candidates’ pages, and a candidates guide to leave behind while canvassing; and Diane, whose history, wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm should be documented and bottled up for the rest of us to learn and benefit from.
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