Daley Phone Bank 3

Transcript (Download)

Is this the Vellisaris residence? Anastasios Vellisaris.

Would you like to have one? Hi.

I appreciate your support.

February the 28th for the primary elections.

Thank you very much.

Next Tuesday is election.

Hello my name is Juan.

I'm a volunteer for Mayor Daly's campaign office.

Can I please speak with Governor Catherine? Hi Catherine.

My name is Michael.

I'm a volunteer for Mayor Daly's campaign.

Can the Mayor comment on your support? Hello.

My name is Juan.

I'm a volunteer for Mayor Daly's campaign office.

Can you please give me a check Diane? Do I have to tell you who's on board? Yes.

Okay there's like three pluses at one household.

You count that as one? Hi I'm Bob.

I'm a volunteer for Mayor Daly's campaign office.

Sorry to disturb.

Mayor really appreciate it.

So that means, and if there's a cut off for number the same? Yeah.

They don't want to give you an answer.

I just wonder if you would be...

Who got here? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

You didn't do this did you? No.

I'm a true hero.

Did I do that? Are you serious? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

Four, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

I'm a volunteer with the Daly team.

Just a profession.

Just a profession.

Just a profession.

Just a profession.

I am a student of the University of Tokyo.

You're welcome.

This one works.

Thank you very much.

They are invited to us.

Thank you very much.

My name is Frank.

My name is Frank.

I appreciate you for coming.

I just got your home.

I'll see you in February.

Mayor Daley's campaign.

I'm sorry we missed you, but the mayor would really appreciate your vote in February.

28th Democratic primary.

Hello, I'm from the Longstead.

My name is David.

Kitts? He's married to Patula Clark.

My name is Sal.

He had a Smith.

He goes, hello Mrs.

Are you going to Washington? Hello, my name is John Colliman.

This is your for Mayor Daley's campaign.

I'm sorry we missed you, but the mayor would really appreciate your vote in February.

My name is Sal.

Hello, my name is John Colliman.

This is your for Mayor Daley's campaign.

I'm sorry we missed you, but the mayor would really appreciate your vote in February.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate your vote.

Rotunda, this is the 16th District Police Station.

Sal's been locked up.

Thank you for your support.

No, it's just Sal's not locked up.

Sal's not locked up.

Hello, my name is Sal.

I'm a volunteer for Mayor Daley's campaign.

Can the mayor count on your support at a Democrat primary, February the 28th? Yes, I can have that.

I have a window saying drop it off there.

Dave, my name is Rob.

And how many voters is in that building? That sounds good.

And is he going out for the mayor too? He's going to the next meeting.

Alright, we appreciate that very much.

Alright, thank you very much.

Have a good day.

Hello, my name is Sal.

I'm a volunteer for Mayor Daley's campaign.

Can the mayor count on your support on December the 28th? Yes.

That sounds interesting.

Yes, would you care for a window sign? Okay, appreciate that very much.

Thank you very much.

Is that a plus or a minus? Plus.

That a lot of pluses? No.

One, two, three, four, five, two plus, one minus, one, two, three, four, and two, four, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, not at home.

And four machines.

Answer machines.

Got one more not at home, we'll see if they're there.

Nine, three, five, four, four, four, four, three, four.

Yes, I was wondering if you and the family would support Mayor Daley.

My name is Sal.

I'm a volunteer for Mayor Daley's campaign.

The mayor is looking for a little support on February 28th.

Are you supporting the mayor? You are.

Would you care for a window sign? Oh, okay, that sounds good.

That sounds good.

You get out there and vote.

The mayor really appreciate that.

You got one more at home.

That's another plus.

All these in here you didn't get at home? Yeah, not at home.

Okay, let me try once more.

Two, four, eight, zero, one, nine, oh.

Yeah, my name is Sal.

I'm a volunteer for Daley's campaign.

The mayor is looking for a little support.

Are you supporting the mayor on February 28th? Sounds good.

I'm sorry I bothered you then.

That's all right.

Well, at least they told me they were for the mayor.

Let's call back.

Most of these people are starting to come home now.

See, earlier they weren't home.

Dorthy, you see, six, six, five.

Try the next one.

I'm a volunteer for Mayor Daley's campaign.

I'm going to need you to support him in this coming election.

I'm a volunteer for Mayor Daley.

My name is Frank.

I'm going to need you to support him in this coming election.

Okay, thank you.

I'm a volunteer for Mayor Daley.

My name is Frank.

I was wondering if you would support him in this coming election.

Hello, I'm calling from Mayor Daley.

My name is Frank.

Are you on February 28th with both? The mayor is looking for both support.

I can't only support on February 20th for you? Okay.

Would you like a signing in your window? Would you like to volunteer on election day? Oh, he would.

Would you need a ride to the polling place, if necessary? Okay, great.

Okay, hope to see you on February 28th.

It's nice to hear from you again.

Could you support the mayor on the next primary on February 28th? Okay, all right.

And would you like us to send you a sign for your window or your yard? Mm -hmm.

You have one already? Fine.

How about getting down to the...

for volunteering on election day? Would you care to help out that way? Oh, you can't.

You're babysitting.

How about anybody in the family? Do they need a ride to your polling place on election day? Oh, okay.

All right, thank you very much.

We asked you questions, you need to concentrate.

You can ask any questions.

You're adding numbers up on the...

Okay, you wait.

There you go, completed.

What are you guys doing? Telling out.

We're telling out.

What we're doing is all the phone banks results, we're taking pluses, minuses, we're all gonna break them down by all the volunteers that were here.

And then it was all the work that was handed out because we split up the precincts, certain areas.

And then after we telly out all the volunteers that were here, then what we're gonna do is we're gonna put it on a master sheet for the evening and then we're gonna relay this information to the daily campaign headquarters downtown.

And that's gonna give them kind of a sort of idea how their pluses are going and minuses and everything else.

So what happened? What does on here tonight? Let's go back to the bottom line.

Basically, we're going to our best and strongest democratic voters and we're trying to turn them into pluses.

And when we go and say, can we count on your vote? And they give us a strong definite yes.

Those are the people that are gonna come out next week Tuesday and vote for the mayor.

So, and the end decides I think they're good daily voters.

They're just not gonna say that.

There's a lot of people that will never discuss what they want to vote.

But they're probably good daily voters.

And a minus usually is a minus.

No doubt about it.

I mean if they don't like you, then I don't like you.

So how do you use this list in elections, right? Basically, if we take we get all these good pluses, we could have a precinct captain or a volunteer go out and get those true good pluses and bring those people to the poll.

And that usually decides an election.

If you bring out all your strong pluses, you're a winner, really.

Cause usually the strong pluses, if you bother them at home at night and they're really cheerful and happy and they say, yes, I want to come out and vote for Rich Daley, you could go back to those people on election day and bring them out to a poll.

And they'll usually vote your way.

So and from what the way things look tonight here, his honor is doing very well.

He's doing very well tonight.

And this was, this turned out to be a great phone bank because we got we had a lot of volunteers that gave up an evening to come out here and start making phone calls.

So we're doing very well tonight.

We need the basic basic statement of what this is.

We don't even know what this is.

Phone banking This is a phone banking is basically another tool that basically during an election, what you could do is you could target an area of the city, go in there with phone banking and get an idea of how a ward is doing basically for the mayor.

And like I said, when you basically go off a script sheet and you ask them how they feel about the mayor and they come out and say, yes, I'm coming out to vote for the mayor on Tuesday.

Basically what happens is we'll give this information to a volunteer or through an organization, a precinct captain and he'll go and on his election day, he could either match that up with what he's been doing in the precinct and say, yeah, you guys call the good plus.

He's going to go to that person on election day or the night before and say, hey guys, you gave me a plus before.

You're going to be out tomorrow and vote.

And usually 99 times out of a hundred, that precinct captain, that volunteer who's been working there has been doing an excellent job.

That person's going to come out and vote on Tuesday.

And what it is, all those pluses add up into a major turnout and by the time you know it, seven o 'clock when the polls close and CNN's doing an exit poll, Mayor Daley's going to be probably ahead and he's going to win.

You want me to give you my prediction on this election? Mayor Daley wins by 72 % of the vote in the city of Chicago.

So this will be on next year.

So guys, both of you, in other parts of the country, I know it's maybe hard to believe, people don't do this.

So why do you guys need to do this in Chicago? Do you really need to do this? Cause in Chicago, I think that by getting people to come out and vote, you can make positive changes.

I mean for the city.

And you know, I don't know, I just feel that it's not that hard.

And I figure, you know, if you got spare time and you have a free time, it beats sitting in front of a TV when you get to meet, I've met thousands of great people doing this.

And all the people that usually come to these are very dedicated people.

They sit, you could see, I mean as you panned around here, these guys are talking and they're trying to get the vote out.

And Mayor Daley's a great candidate and I think he's everything that basically since he's been elected has been very positive.

I mean, the city I think is doing very well compared to, you know, what might have been if he wasn't elected.

I think he's a very positive Democrat for this city.

Well in my opinion, Chicago probably always brings out between 10 and 20 percent more voters than any other part of the city.

Not the city, but the country.

In my opinion, what we're doing here, we bring from 10 to 20 percent more voters out than any other part of the country.

I remember back in, I believe it was either 91 or 87 after the mayor won here with around 64 percent of the vote.

I went out on a little seminar out to my son in Southern California and Mayor Bradley had won with 83 percent of the vote in L .A.

23 percent of the voters came out in L .A.

I believe it was 64 percent came out, 58 percent, I'm sorry, in Chicago.

So this brings the voters out.

Chicago is an old time political organization.

Everybody else doesn't do this anymore.

They just sit back and look at TV and whoever they figure they're going to vote for, they vote for.

Like I figure right now, probably we should get somewhere around 50 percent of the registered voters out to vote this time, which is tremendous in a primary.

Most people don't like to vote in a primary.

A lot of people don't like to declare themselves.

They just feel we'd rather wait until April, but in Chicago, for Democrats, primaries are very important.

This is one we move.

I mean, if you're a good Democrat, you've come through that system of organization, a good, solid precinct captain or a volunteer will go and get those people out and say, come on, let's go out and vote Tuesday.

We're going to show that the Mayor's got a lot of support.

And it's always been known in Chicago that a Mayor who wins a primary big come April has never lost a general election.

Because all of those people that came out in the primary, in the February primary, they'll all be out and they figure, you know what's another thing? Everybody wants to vote for a winner.

And they figure, wow, look at the numbers on Mayor Daley.

Hey, let's go and throw them a vote anyway.

And by the time you know it, I'm not going to say there's going to be a great, tremendous turnout in April, but there'll be even more coming out and voting for the Mayor.

So what is it about Chicago? What is it about politics? Organization.

Chicago's always been organized.

How about what you're looking for? The last strong political machine in the United States is in the city of Chicago.

That's the whole thing.

Other places were just like Chicago 20 years ago, but they're not that way anymore.

Chicago still is probably the hub of the Democratic Party as far as any of the big cities.

Everybody presumes the big cities are all or the urban population is all Democratic.

That isn't true anymore.

You look at the big cities.

Most of the vote is in the suburbs.

Chicago, I think it was three years ago when the suburban Cook County had a larger vote the first time ever than the city had registered voters.

And a lot of people like that thing.

You're knocking on their door on a Saturday or a Sunday, and you're giving them your name and you're saying, hey, I'm a volunteer.

We have a great candidate here.

We have a good mayor.

They love seeing you come to their door.

It's like a personal thing.

You're going up there and speaking to a person.

They're amazed that hey, look at this person.

He's giving up a weekend or a day, and he actually came to my house to talk to us about an election that's coming up.

I'll tell you, you don't see that in the suburbs around Chicago.

I've been to certain areas, and I said, do you guys have any organization out here? We haven't seen anybody in years.

We haven't seen anybody since we left Chicago and moved to the suburbs, which, like I said, it's a personal thing.

We actually knock on doors.

Hi, my name's John.

I'm a volunteer for Mayor Daley.

We could really use your support Tuesday.

And they have the feeling, wow, this guy actually came to my house and he wants me to come and vote.

We have a great candidate.

And I'll tell you something, we have a mayor here.

We got a list of accomplishments.

I tell you the truth, there hasn't been candidates that have a list of accomplishments like Mayor Daley in years.

Just hold it one second.

Why don't we get Jordan? I'll go ahead.

I was going to ask you, you said this is the last machine.

What does that mean? Well, what I mean, it's the last place where everybody is involved in politics.

People expect somebody to knock on the door and say, why is A better than B? I mean, they've been doing this for 100 years here, and they used to do it all over the country.

They don't do it anywhere else that I know of, really, the way we do it in Chicago.

I think I mentioned earlier to somebody here that I have a friend of mine that worked in Washington with television, and now he's with CNN.

And he says the only thing he really misses about Chicago is the politics.

We have the same problems as other big cities.

We have our crime.

We have our gangs.

We have other things.

This mayor has been doing more than anybody I've ever seen do.

I mean, just one little thing that I was involved in, graffiti on Vidoc underpasses.

Man, he has them all painted.

In the Latino areas of the city, they have what they do in the old, in their mother countries, the burials.

They come in there.

The city has these Latino artists come in, and they do beautiful murals on the Vidocs.

The phone bank tonight, I mean, it has all these different languages.

Tell us about what was going on here in terms of languages and how that relates to this coalition.

Well, as everybody knows, Chicago's known as the city of big shoulders, but it's also known as the melting pot of the United States.

We probably have more different races, different creeds, different nationalities, any big city in the country.

And we have people in here, like tonight on the phone banks.

Somebody's calling, and the person may be a Latino, and they're calling, and they say, oh, I have a Polish person here that speaks Polish.

And they just hold the phone up, and a Polish person will walk over and pick it up and call.

And this is the main reason that we have people like that.

They just volunteer.

They want to come in.

Why do people volunteer at their time like this? Well, you know, in a time of, you know, they claim that there's a lot of voter apathy.

What amazes me, we call from these sheets, and we'll ask them, hey, would you like to volunteer, or would you like a sign? And by the time you know it, you'll look at some of these sheets, and you've got five volunteers.

And you know, the thing is, I think in Chicago, there's always been a spirit here that people want to get involved in a positive thing.

And I think what we got, we have a positive candidate.

And Mayor Daley brings out, like I said, we had Filipinos here tonight, we had Chinese, we got Polish, we have Italian.

There's phone banks going on the South side, and the North side, with all blacks.

I mean, these are all people working for Mayor Daley.

They have a positive candidate.

He's a mayor for everybody.

I mean, he's not, I mean, in the past, I think this mayor actually has brought the city closer together than any other mayor before.

A lot of other mayors have isolated, and oh, he's just with the whites, and this guy's just with the blacks.

This guy's a mayor for everybody.

I mean, he, and he's worked hard, really hard to do it.

And there's, like I said, there's been, in the last couple of days, there's been a lot of black ministers, and a lot of black politicians that are very powerful in Chicago, they're throwing their support to Mayor Daley.

Let me ask you something.

We saw one thing tonight, we saw a phone bank, for this part of the city.

If we could look all across the city, and we can see what would go out of the day, and you talk about the machine, what's the machine doing to get the mayor re -elected? Right now? Oh, it's in high gear.

I mean, if you could imagine all the activities that are going on simultaneously.

Thousands and thousands of volunteers are out.

You have several phone banks running.

You have people knocking on doors.

You have people hanging signs.

You have people having coffees for the mayor.

You have people going, the mayor going to bingos, and meeting all the old people at the bingos.

And I don't mean that only old people go to bingo, but it's the majority of them do.

I, looking at the city, why and what are they doing? They're involved.

They're raised that way since they were kids.

We were raised in politics, all of us.

You don't have that.

I know that people that move into the city from other parts of the country, they can't wait to volunteer because they've never done this before.

They think it's the greatest thing in the world.

The young people come in.

They think it's great.

Because they were never brought up this way.

So you don't think this is dying out? Because you said all these, you used to be in other cities, and now it's only Chicago.

No, I think in Chicago it's a well -oiled machine.

I say it's still going in Chicago.

I say in other parts of the country, the phone bank, now let me, let's get to the phone bank, which we're really mainly interested in here.

The phone bank is fairly new to Chicago.

It's probably eight years old.

Roughly last eight years.

The phone bank is not new in southern California.

They've been doing it for 20 years.

So you say, I said before, we're way ahead of it.

It's a different type of politics out there.

If somebody wants a sign there, if you're running for an office out in southern California, and I'm a friend of yours, I'll call your office up or I'll go to your office and say give me a sign.

You won't have somebody calling me up or knocking on my door and say you want a sign because it's a different type of politics.

But yet they cannot compare with the amount of voters we get out than they get out.

And we're called the second city, actually we're the third city population wise now.

But I would say that we probably get more voters out than either New York or L .A.

on a given election.

Identifier

V.2026-05-0021

Date Of Production

1995

Abstract

Continued footage documenting a Mayor Richard M. Daley phone bank where a diverse group of volunteers conduct voter outreach to gain supporters and distribute campaign signage, as well as interviews with phone bank coordinator John Calhoun and assistant John Kolomay detailing the importance of personal voter contact.

Language Of Materials

English
Spanish

Format

Cassette Tape ➜ Betacam SP ➜ 30 min.

Subject

Political campaigns

Related Collections

The Center For New American Media: Chicago Collection

Related Places

North America ➜ United States ➜ Illinois ➜ Chicago

Main Credits

The Center for New American Media (is production company)

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