On the last day of early voting in Wake County, North Carolina, I took an afternoon to volunteer for Mitt Romney. It was my first time volunteering for a campaign of any kind. I wasn’t really nervous, but more on the side of excited.

When I got there, a great young man in his last year at NC State got me set up and started to work the phones. I quizzed him for a few moments about his experience at college and found he readily identified his professors as being nearly all liberal leaning. Go figure. He was undeterred and had been working with the campaign for quite a while.

Working the phones was basically calling and implementing a survey that consisted of inquiring if people had gotten out to vote already or if they planned to on Election Day.  Seeing how it worked on the caller side was interesting and softened me on actually answering such callers instead of screening my calls in the future. The amount of disconnected numbers, wrong numbers and no answers was pretty high, but the live people I did get were incredibly nice and all had voted already. Of all the live people I spoke to, ALL offered that they had voted Romney.

I was struck by the diversity of the volunteers. Some as young at 15, elderly, women, men, black, white, asian and hispanic. The young lady I met, who was about 15, had interned at the headquarters all Summer and had won the chance to meet Paul Ryan when he came to Raleigh. I was thoroughly impressed with her dedication and clear grasp of the issues at hand this election. Her mother was equally as impressive and I chatted with her briefly as we worked the phones.  I even ran into the mother of a child who was in my own child’s Kindergarten class. She was volunteering to go door to door, with her young daughter,in the suburb of Raleigh we both live in. What a small world!

During my volunteering, I had the honor of meeting and listening to three fantastic women, Congresswoman Renee Ellmers, Former SBA Administrator, Jovita Carranza and RNC Co-Chair, Sharon Day.  I was pretty bowled over that the RNC Co-Chair was there. I was honored to have a few moments of her time after the speeches –  she’s so down to Earth and her drive is amazing. After blogging and writing several stories on Congresswoman Ellmers, it was fantastic to meet her in person. Her energy just pulsed through that room when she spoke. Having her in Washington working for us is a BIG plus. The Congresswoman assured me they are going to work for #FullRepeal. I believe her.I wasn’t able to catch up with Ms. Carranza, regrettably. I loved her speech and I’ve linked to her bio (above). Please take a moment to read it and the corresponding article.

I shot some video of their speeches using my regular camera for pictures. I apologize for the shakiness; no tripod and I was doing this on the fly.

Just a few of the pictures of the event via the NC Victory 2012 Facebook page: