A Day Well Spent

When it comes to bikers rights, what makes for a good day?

How about a nice long ride with your best girl? Meeting good people and eating good munchies at a beautiful desination? So far so good.

The catch? About two hours of real work, going door to door on behalf of a biker-friendly candidate. Knock on the door, talk for about 15 seconds, hand them a flyer, and go to the next address. There are worse jobs, that's for sure.

The best part, from a bikers rights standpoint, is results. Let's rewind the tape and note the important milestones.

Laying the Groundwork

It all had to start somewhere.

During the summer I looked at all the legislative races across my state. I discovered that only about a dozen of these races were truly competitive. I also looked at the voting record of each sitting legislator to see how they voted on the helmet law.

The next step was to contact the challengers to see how they felt about the helmet law. It was pretty easy. I visited their campaign websites and got their email addresses and phone numbers. Then I asked each of them a simple question: "What's your position on the universal helmet law?" In most cases they gave a simple answer.

Note: The candidate we helped today didn't have a quick answer. Instead it took about a week, but the answer came back, loud and clear: "Let those who ride decide."

As it turned out, we found 5 great races in one major city. All five were very close contests, and all five were between candidates on opposite sides of the helmet law.

Connect the Dots

I knew there were a couple of ABATE chapters near these five races, so I asked for help. Now ABATE is working directly with the five campaign managers, and ABATE is letting local bikers know about upcoming campaign events. In fact, that's how we found out about today's event.

Making a Difference

When we arrived at today's campaign event, we found a political rally in full swing. There were candidates for governor, delegate, and county commissioner. Not sure about the dog catcher. But we met two of the biker-friendly candidates that we're supporting.

We let our candidates know we were motorcylists, and we thanked them for supporting our right to decide. They let us know how happy they were to see motorcyclists making an impact, and how grateful they were to have the much-needed help in such a tight race.

Later on, while we were canvassing door to door, we came across a few homeowners that had motorcyles. Other times it was obvious that they were veterans. I happen to be both biker and veteran, so making a personal connection is almost certainly a vote for our candidate.

Some of the voters asked for campaign yard signs, taking their support for our candidate up a notch. And I encouraged them to volunteer in the campaign as well, possibly increasing the number of campaign volunteers. There's no better way to get a good candidate elected. Delivering many votes is more powerful than casting a single one.

Making our rounds, we noticed a business on a main roadway that had a bunch of bikes parked out in front. So we stopped and spoke to the owner.

It turned out that the business was a little bike shop inside of an equipment rental outlet. We told the owner about our efforts to support the biker-friendly candidate. He then asked us for a large campaign sign. Each of his customers are now potential votes as well.

Bottom Line

We went out there and made a difference. A big difference!

Candidates on both sides of the helmet law saw us working -- right where it matters most to legislators. We helped "get out the vote" for a biker-friendly candidate in a close race. And a business is now helping spread the word to the motorcycling community.

And that was what two bikers accomplished in two hours.

With a little help from the motorcycling community, five more biker-friendly legislators will be at the state capital. And that means five more votes in support of a repeal bill, as well as bikers rights across the board.

You can make this kind of difference in your neck of the woods. Get connected by visiting RIDE2REPEAL.COM and click on the red "Subscribe" tab at the top of the page. You can also contact us at BikersGOTVibes@gmail.com for more info.