South St. Louis resident Trisha Boyle has perfected the art of knocking doors across the region for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
“You’ve got to have a good knock,” said Boyle, a 24-year-old African-American mother who is about to finish up her master’s degree in international relations at Webster University.
Boyle has never considered voting for Clinton’s strongest competitor for the Democratic nomination, U.S.. Senator Bernie Sanders, she said, and having a woman leading our country “can help a lot of women abroad and nationally.”
On Sunday, March 6, Boyle volunteered to knock on doors for Clinton in the neighborhood near Goodfellow and Delmar boulevards in North St. Louis. In that neighborhood, she found that security systems are often the only way to reach residents. The first house she approached belonged to George Roberts, a middle-aged African-American man who actually had a doorbell, not a security buzzer.
“Do you know who you will be supporting in the upcoming election?” she asked him.
He told her that he and most of his friends will be voting for Clinton.
“Bernie has some really good points, and if they could combine them that would be great,” Roberts said. “But I think that Hillary can take us further.”
Boyle said she agreed.
“I think that Bernie is coming from more of an idealistic mindset, which is good,” she told Roberts, “but I think Hillary has the experience that will take us a lot further.”
Roberts said, “I think that we’ll get to that stage that Bernie is coming from, but it’s not going to happen in this election. Society is not ready for that yet.”
On March 5 and 6, about 200 volunteers knocked on doors in the St. Louis region for Clinton’s campaign, with the assistance of five paid organizers, in an effort to get people to vote in Missouri’s presidential preference primary on Tuesday, March 15.
Boyle is normally a field organizer, who instructs teams how to canvass and interact with people in neighborhoods. But she also enjoys getting out and talking to people as well, she said.
“It’s going to be really important for people of color to get out and vote,” she said.
Out of her family, she said she is the lone political junkie. Her sister is studying psychology at University of Missouri – St. Louis (UMSL), one brother owns a barber shop and another brother serves in the military. She started canvassing in 2008 for President Obama.
“I wasn’t even old enough to vote, but I was able to get out and volunteer,” she said.
Boyle is working on her second master’s degree. She completed the first in health care administration from UMSL at 22. When asked why she believes Clinton will benefit the African-American community, she pointed to education.
“She has a policy called the New Compact College,” she said, “and I think it’s going to help a lot of people have better access to higher education. It’s going to make community college free and four-year college debt free.”
At the next house, Boyle met Joanne Parker, a white woman who said she is voting for Sanders.
“He doesn’t associate himself with the Wall Street, big business establishment like Hillary does,” Parker said. “But she is our second choice.”
The third house was occupied by a middle-aged white man who said he was still undecided. Then she knocked on the door of Eddie Brown, who said he is voting for Clinton.
“She’s pretty much in line with what President Obama is trying to do,” Brown said. “Although a lot of people don’t like Obama, I like him. Plus, her husband is President Bill Clinton, so she probably won’t waste any time because she knows where a lot of the dead bodies are buried.”
