John McCain said this week he was suspending his campaign to help solve the nation’s financial crisis.
In Ohio, Brenda Lewis of the Greene County Victory Office seemed surprised there was any doubt that the office would be open. “Suspension of the campaign?” she asked out loud, before saying that her colleagues would be phone banking, going door to door, and could use some front desk help as well as assistance getting signs together.
In Ashland County, Ohio, a McCain worker named Ken confirmed, “We’re still campaigning for him.”
An official at McCain’s Missouri headquarters welcomed more volunteer work. “It is not the suspension of the thing that is going on, it is a postponement,” she said over the phone. “We are not shut down. Everything is still going on.”
A man named David working at the Senator’s office in Fairfax, Virginia, said, “We are not suspending any of our activity, not the phone banking nor the volunteering…”
The same held true in the state’s Richmond and Charlottesville “victory centers.”
Down in Florida, another swing state, work did not cease.
In McCain’s West Regional Headquarters based in Nevada, an official named Alex said they still were accepting volunteers. In the Colorado Victory Headquarters, an aide said people were doing phone banking today and were “setting up to walk around Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.” And in McCain’s North Mountain Regional Headquarters, based in Minnesota, the offices, an official said, would be open until 8:30 in the evening. In fact, of the 15 offices the Huffington Post called, only one, Palm Beach in Florida did not have an official pick up the phone.
Also, from Andrew Sullivan’s blog entry “What Suspension?”:
I’ve been besieged by reader emails telling me of McCain ads blasting away on television all day.
He’s a liar. He’s risking the country’s financial well-being through his “bull in a china shop” political grandstanding and he’s making things worse.
Heckofa job, Senator, heckofa job.
By the way? His television advertising resumes tomorrow.
I’m just sayin’…
