Chapter 5: Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty

I left the conversation disgusted, but with a sense of closure and a sense of certainty of what we needed to do if we were going to pull this off. The student leaders left the conversation just feeling disgusted.

Again I tried to rally the troops. Again I tried to keep our forces together. The conversation ended with us agreeing to push for one more day to pull off our original plan, and if it didn’t work we would resort to Plan B: busing to Las Vegas.

But there was too much angst and urgency. We were less than five days away from “Get Out The Vote Weekend” and six hundred and eighty four volunteers still didn’t know where they were going or if they were actually going anywhere – and now we had to figure out if we had perpetuated a fraud (we didn’t).

Immediately following the final conference call with David Gall, Berkeley went black for what felt like an eternity.

There were about a dozen student volunteers from Berkeley who I had come to rely on intimately in the month of October. Each had been instrumental in rallying volunteers and helping with the organization effort and each been nominated to important leadership positions in our organization. They were on call for me for two weeks straight. One volunteer even had my phone number programmed in his cell under the name “Delegate Dan ANSWER IT!”

Together we had grown increasingly sleep deprived as the breadth and scope and shape of our organization grew. But at this moment, for about three hours, none of them answered their phones. None of them answered text messages. None of them answered their emails.

Sometime in the afternoon, the silence broke and I received an email. This email was not only sent to me; it was sent to the entire team of volunteers – including my family members, my friends and my former students – and not just to our volunteers, but also to official ranking organizers on the ground who I had introduced these student leaders to and worked closely with myself.

I remember reading the first few sentences, walking away from my seat, and taking a big exhale before continuing. It stated that, in light of current circumstances, the student leadership core had elected to disassociate with Dan’s Delegation. The tone of their email expressed a sense of panic and cast a sense of distrust towards myself.

I wish they had come to a different conclusion; however I understand completely why they did it. There was simply too much uncertainty. The reality of the situation was that they didn’t know me from Adam. The primary reason I had emerged so prominently in their lives just three weeks prior was because I had promised them a free flight. Now that wasn’t there any more.

They had stuck their neck out for me. They trusted what we were offering. They sold it to their friends and family members and I had failed to live up to my end of the bargain. My credibility was shot. Their credibility was on the line.

Furthermore, they no longer knew who they could trust and I wasn’t one of them. At thirty-two years of age, driving from the suburbs into the middle of Berkeley with my company car, I must have stuck out a sore thumb. Naked, I look like a Republican and the clothes I wore to our meetings must not have helped my cause at this critical moment of judgment. I was often coming from work or job interviews. My shirt was tucked in. My shoes were shined. I wore a sports coat and a tie to more than one meeting. In a mini-crisis of its own I recognized that I had become the establishment I questioned so intensely when I was their age. I am a salesman. My twenty-year-old self would be dubious of my thirty-two year old self.

Once I had the chance to put myself in their shoes – and, perhaps my old shoes – it became a lot easier to take. But at age twenty, I never went through anything like what I put those students through in those four weeks.

I composed a hurried response and sent it out to the entire group. Above all else, even if it was no longer under my leadership, I was doing my damnedest to keep the group together, and make sure these volunteers remained organized and willing to work for change. I was also trying to save face. After clicking the send button, I called my old teaching friends, many of which received both emails, and told them I needed a beer. I called my wife and asked her to come home.

But still it wasn’t over. I remained consumed, except now, instead of being consumed by the hope and optimism that had flooded my life just days before, now I was consumed by fear. Everybody involved was absolutely terrified. One media misinterpretation could lead to catastrophic headlines days before an election that was far from a sure thing. The email that the students sent to all the volunteers implying “fraud” was picked up by local media and I began to get phone calls at my home.

I needed to be as open and accessible as I possibly could. This required answering my phone at all hours of the day. One of my biggest fears was waking up and reading in an article that I was “unavailable for comment.” I felt I had to convince each reporter I spoke to of my credibility. My conversations were long and detailed. I never wanted an article to state something inaccurate. Most importantly I had to make sure that each of them knew that we were completely unaffiliated with the Obama campaign and were travelling to these battleground states freely and on our own volition. I got phone calls at odd hours – sometimes at dinner, sometimes when I was putting the kids to bed – and I took the calls. It was incredibly unsettling, but it was the only way to keep this from exploding into something worse than it already was. My wife wondered if she had returned too soon.

In the end, the reporters turned into allies. Many of them found out a lot of information on David Gall that we were able to submit to the FBI and Italian authorities. Although David never perpetrated a crime against us, he may have against credit card companies, travel agencies and airline companies. I wrote emails after the election in an effort to press the situation and get an update, but as of yet, there is no news. One thing that is for certain: the hospital he claimed to be at has no record of checking him in.

After taking a few days with my family and licking my wounds a bit, some of my colleagues and I decided to road trip to Reno for “Get Out The Vote” weekend. After all the administrative cyber-work I had done, I needed to step out of the machine I had created and till the earth with my own hands. I needed to talk to voters. I needed to be active in this moment. I also needed a road trip.

We would drive up Saturday morning and drive back Tuesday night. We weren’t sure where we were going to stay, but by God, we were going.

Continue To Chapter 6