Part of a series of behind-the-scenes looks at the Judy Chu for Congress Campaign by APAP PAC Glen S. Fukushima Campaign Fellow Michael Nailat.

If you've never worked on or volunteered for an electoral campaign, you might get a shock when you walk into our offices in the morning.  Well, I know I did.  I've spent most of my young adulthood doing very grassroots, community-based campaigns, and if you've worked on one of those, you know how intense, demanding, and sometimes chaotic they can be.  But on my very first day at the campaign offices I was shocked by an encounter with something I was definitely not used to.

Quiet.

Well not completely quiet.  There was some sparse chatter here and there, the occasional ringing phone, and the beeping of barcode scanners (I'll explain that one in a future post).   But for the most part, the campaign offices were quiet. 

When I told people I would be working on this campaign, more than a few people would respond "Oh, just like in that move 'Definitely, Maybe' right?"  And no offense to Ryan Reynolds fans, but I have yet to and probably will never watch that entire movie.  But the few excerpts I caught while waiting for Flight of the Conchords to come on did portray what I've always imagined campaign offices to be like: loud, bustling affairs with phones constantly ringing and people running around all over the place with manila folders in hand.  None of that was apparent the first time I walked into 4153 Maine.   At least, not on that first day.

After about 6 weeks of working here now, what I've come to discover is that there really are moments when the phones keep ringing off the hook, and distressed campaign staff run around with folders and stacks of papers in a mad dash to beat the deadlines.  Electoral campaigns are still very grassroots, community-based undertakings that at times descends into chaos.  The main difference here is that it's a controlled chaos.

The best way to explain it all is to describe a typical day at the office.  From morning to early afternoon, things are pretty quiet.  The staff is busy processing statistics from yesterday's work and prepping for the day's tasks, all fairly time-intensive work, but otherwise not much else is going on.  But right around 2 or 3 PM, the canvassers start coming in.  This is where the controlled part of the chaos begins.  Each group of canvassers must sign in, grab a bag of outreach materials, receive a list of doors to knock, determine driving and walking routes, and then finally dispatch.   Not the most complicated process, but now imagine doing that with a couple dozen canvassers, most of which who show up at the same time.  Now imagine that there's only two staffers managing this process, one of which doesn't even speak the canvassers native language.  Of course they all have plenty to say to each other and to us, so it can get kind of loud.  And all of this happens in our dispatch area, a room the size of a two-car garage. 

Once the canvassers all finally head out, the office get quiet for about an hour until the phone bankers come in.  It's a process not nearly as busy as dispatching canvassers, but the sound of a few dozen people all talking about Judy in three or four different languages can also get deafening.  And phone bankers always get perplexing questions, often at the same time, leaving the two or three staffers managing the phone bank with quite a bit of work to do.  And a few hours later, just when the phone bankers are finishing up, the canvassers begin coming back in to liven things back up again. 

I've been reliving days like that for the past month and a half now, and while the momentary chaos can at times be overwhelming, the point here is that it is also very well organized.  Almost unbelievably so.  It's a well-oiled machine, and for the most part, is just as reliable.  But it has to be.  Campaigns like these are won by those that never forget to dot their i's and cross their t's and lost by those who forget to use spellcheck.  So if you ever come to our offices in the morning and wonder why it's so quiet, it's not because we aren't busy, we're definitely busy.  But it's because we like to leave the noisemaking to those who are the best suited for it, because we need them to be: our volunteers.