Sharon, Political Sar, Oklahoma Blog

Up and running now are New Mexico for John McCain and Pennsylvania for John McCain (this site). Also, Sharon from Norman, OK ("Go Sooners!") has agreed to manage Oklahoma for John McCain, and it will be running hard soon. Sharon is a political version of The Energizer Bunny, and she's extremely skilled in organizational and GOTV (Get Out the Vote) activities. We "ordinary mortals" will never be quite at Sharon's, but many of the things she does are learnable and doable.

In the first few weeks this site is alive, I'm going to post material from Sharon and others who are very skilled in making sure their candidates get elected -- and, in this case, that means John McCain.

The woman who heads the New Mexico site blogs usually at The Pink Flamingo. Her initial experience was with political guru Lee Atwater in South Carolina. She also worked on the campaigns of Senator Lindsay Graham. She set up on blogspot 49 of the state sites. I did a grand total of one, Pennsylvania. But I did find the great picture of the Amish kids!

We very much need volunteers to take over the other state sites. I believe we have one for Texas, but a state like that one (huge in geography and populaton) could probably use more than one blog manager.

In my exchanges with Sharon, she gives me a lot of information about her political background. Invariably, what she says is applicable to others -- although perhaps not quite at her level of commitment. In her most recent e-mail, she told me the following about the "Air Force life."

She says, "OK is in the bag for McCain for the general election. I can easily help out with Texas. We lived there for eight years before moving to OK when Kelly AFB ended up on the BRAC list to be shut. We were some of the first people from that area to transfer to Tinker AFB. If you cannot find a Texas person, I will see if Brad who comes from Houston will take it over (he helped me out on the Bush yahoo groups) if I promise to help him out. I know several states better then OK - Ohio where I grew up, CA where we used to live, TX where we used to live, and FL where I work with my good friend on elections -- he went to McCain a week before the FL primary and ended up escorted Sen McCain and his wife to events for the final week. In 2000 I knew much more about FL then OK including giving directions to people for Bush rallies. My brother lives in Orlando."

What if a state like Oklahoma is, as Sharon says, "in the bag" for McCain (as I agree it is)? In that case, activists from Oklahoma can contact family and friends in other more hotly contested states.

The two columns below discuss what the 50 state blogs for McCain are designed to do. Each blog will look alike, but the approaches will all be different. There will be no "orders from the top," because there will be no top. In each case, however, they're designed to bring together activists to work TOGETHER toward the election of John McCain.

Soon, you'll see blogrolls with the 50 states for John McCain. Within a month, there will be on this site a blogroll for Pennsylvania. People who don't have blogs -- and that's the vast majorityof people online -- are very much invited to participate. They can receive e-mail alerts about political developments of interest in PA.

Anyway, welcome aboard all.