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Canvassing Key Largo
Opinion · November 1, 2002

What's the difference between a registered voter and a parrot? In Key Largo, not much.

We've been foiled by the talking birds a few times during the campaign. We knock on someone's front door - candidate Kari Haugeto, our five-month-old son, Aren, and me - and the bird answers through an open window, "Hello?"

Kari then steps up to the mosquito screen, unable to see through the heavy storm shutter, and says, "Hi. My name is Kari and I'm running for the Key Largo Wastewater Board. I'm …"

"Hello?"

"I'm here to remind you that we have an election on November …"

"Hello?"

At this point I quietly say, "Kari, it's a bird. Nobody's home."

She rolls her eyes. Duped by another parrot.

Think it's hard to distinguish between a bird and a voter? Try campaigning door-to-door in one of the Southernmost voting districts in the United States, a place where you not only have to look out for talking birds, but also snakes, lizards, attack-dogs and cats that insist on being petted.

And that's just the half of it. Although most people who answer the door are about as normal as you'd find anywhere else in the United States, you meet some that are, to put it delicately, unique to the Florida Keys. But taken together, they've taught our family a valuable lesson about politics that will remain with us long after Election Day.

You're probably wondering why a 32-year-old mom decided to run for public office in the first place. Kari threw her hat in the ring for one of five open positions on the Key Largo Wastewater Board when she returned to the islands after a hitch in the Navy. She's always served the community as a volunteer, but she wanted to do more this time. Helping sewer the Upper Keys represented a new challenge.

After collecting her campaign contributions - all $200 of it, most of which covered filing fees - it became clear that hers would be a grassroots campaign in the truest sense of the word. On such a limited budget she couldn't afford to print a single poster, run an ad or press a button. Her only indulgence was the purchase of a thousand unsharpened pink pencils bearing her name and the date of the election.

So we set off to canvass Key Largo's neighborhoods - Kari with her pencils, Aren and I with a stroller and diaper bag packed full of sunblock, bottled water and bug spray.

Reaching the voters wasn't easy. Many homes in the Keys are built on stilts to protect them from a storm surge and inaccessible to a stroller. Others are fenced-in, protected by barking dogs and "No Solicitation" signs. Still others have walkways so overgrown that you almost needed a machete to reach them. Somehow, a knife-wielding candidate wouldn't have made a good impression, so we skipped those residences.

Not everyone could communicate with us. Kari doesn't speak Spanish or Creole, and often she could do little more than talk slowly, gesture and finally hand the would-be voters a pink pencil and hope they would cast a ballot for her. If they could. One time we rang the doorbell of a home belonging to a man with a heavy foreign accent. After Kari introduced herself, she added, "I hope you'll consider voting for me. I'm the only woman running for the Wastewater Board."

To which the man said, "Mais oui. Of course I will vote for you. I'm French; I have to vote for the woman."

We collected a number of unusual campaign contributions along the way. One couple in Tavernier gave Kari an avocado they'd picked from a tree in their back yard. It made some of the best guacamole I've ever tasted. On a sweltering Sunday afternoon, one woman sent us on our way with two-ice cold bottles of water. A little boy gave Kari a painting he'd done of a "scary Halloween monster."

The people who greeted us weren't always prepared for visitors. The clothing-optional ones come to mind. Sometimes, it was just a guy with no shirt. But on a few occasions people answered the door in underwear - or less. Even these voters would listen attentively to Kari after they had slipped on a bathrobe or a pair of shorts.

Finally, there were the troublemakers. Most of them had seen Kari on TV or read something she'd said in the newspaper and wanted to ask her a really difficult or controversial question about the Wastewater Board.

I'll never forget one elderly man who lived in a trailer just off Highway One and spoke with a Texas twang. He kept asking Kari if she favored sewering the Upper Keys, and try as hard as she would to explain that the decision had already been made, he kept repeating the question. From time to time, she'd also run into plumbers or water treatment professionals who wanted to convince her that they knew more about wastewater issues than she ever could.

All the door-to-door campaigning paid off earlier this week when two local newspapers - the Florida Keys Keynoter and the Key West Citizen - endorsed Kari, calling her a "refreshing face on the political scene" and "the ideal person to champion the views of younger families."

But for Aren and me, the lessons we learned are equally important. The troublemakers taught us that in politics, sometimes the best answer to a question is "I don't know." From the nudists we learned that you shouldn't judge people by what they're wearing - or aren't wearing. The folks who helped the campaign with spontaneous gifts showed us that you can't underestimate the generosity of voters. And the ones who couldn't go to the ballot box were a reminder of how precious our right to participate in an election is.

We also learned the difference between an African Grey and the guy next door.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.