I live in a battleground state.
Not just any battleground state – THE battleground state: Florida. And not just anywhere in Florida – the epicenter of the notorious recount: West Palm Beach.
My old office was just a couple blocks away from where the infamous butterfly ballot was designed and where demonstrators posed for the news cameras (if I sound a little jaundiced about those demonstrators, it's probably because I knew one of them personally, and I knew he hadn't even bothered to vote, he just thought it would be cool to go pretend to be a protester).
Living where I live, I am keenly aware of how every single vote really does matter, as opposed to in a state where the outcome for electoral votes is a foregone conclusion. And so are my fellow residents. Which is why, most election years, my neighborhood is typically plastered with political yard signs in the weeks leading up to election day, and the polling places are littered with signs and clogged with people wearing buttons and waving signs (all precisely 100 feet away from the actual polls, of course).
But not this year. This year, there wasn't a single political yard sign on my block. In fact, in driving through my neighborhood, I found only a handful of signs. The even bigger surprise was what greeted me when I got to the polling station: not a single button-wearing sign waver to be seen and just two signs stuck in the ground — both of them urging me to vote in favor of the 1% sales tax for local schools (it passed, by the way).
This has been a unique and logic-defying election cycle for the entire nation, but here in West Palm Beach, it was downright surreal. When I finished voting, I called my husband and asked, "Was there a new law passed prohibiting ALL electioneering, and I just missed it?" Nope.
I can only conclude that no one had the heart for it this year.
But that is all the more reason that credit unions had better be ready to move full steam ahead to develop strong relationships with their lawmakers. Will your members have the heart to lobby for you when the next big battle comes?
Because one way or another, in one venue or another, it's coming.
Editor in Chief Lisa Freeman can be reached at
