This week’s guest is Peter Toll, campaign coordinator for the Clackamas County Democratic Party and a long-time political organizer and party activist. Peter discusses what it takes to energize people in local- and state-level politics and the new and old barriers to success in Democratic politics. Peter also recently “appeared” (via phone interview) as a guest-lecturer for my PSU course in campaign politics. He further discusses his work as a grassroots organizer and local party campaign coordinator, with particular emphasis on the challenges people like him are facing because of the COVID-19 pandemic. You can listen to that interview, recorded on April 8th, 2020, at youcandowhatyouthink.com/ps310/guest-lecture5.

As promised, here are a few links to help get you connected with county parties and elected officials. You can find your Oregon state legislators and member of Congress here: oregonlegislature.gov/findyourlegislator/leg-districts.html. Web pages for the Democratic Party of Oregon’s county-level parties are listed here: dpo.org/counties. And here is a contact list for the county-level parties in the Republican Party of Oregon: oregon.gop/getinvolved.

This episode features "Nice ‘Stache," an original song by Patrick Rademacher performed live via Instagram on Friday, April 3rd, 2020.