Door Knocking and Dog Bites: How a Montana Couple Made a Difference in 2012

When Bob and Joan Carroll decided they were fed up with the current state of politics, they didn’t just complain about it. They drove to a tea party meeting in the next county over. “We didn’t know anything about politics,” Joan says, “But oh my goodness have we been learning since.”

When they got home, the two talked and decided to start a tea party group in their home county of Mineral County, Montana. A few likeminded individuals later, the Mineral County Tea Party was formed. “We joined up with the Montana Tea Party Coalition and do everything we can to learn and get the tools we need to do our work,” Joan says.

That’s when the Carrolls and the Mineral County Tea Party found American Majority. The Carrolls and most of their organization attended an American Majority activist training in early September 2012. There, they learned how to be more effective at door-to-door voter canvassing. “One of the big things we learned from our training was to take a look at the yard before going up to the door,” Joan says. “Toys, American flags, bumper stickers on cars—you can find lots of clues for how to start conversations.”

The Carrolls and their group of 44 members focused on door knocking for conservative candidates in Montana. “We were new to this kind of thing, totally green, and at first we had no idea what we were getting into,” Bob says. “Each time we went out, the first door was the hardest.”

Together, the Carrolls knocked on 2,024 doors before the election, in a rural county full of gates and long driveways. Joan was even bit two separate times by small dogs, but the two kept knocking. “The biggest lesson I took away from training was to persevere,” Bob says. “Whether someone at the door was rude to you or you lose the election, keep going.”

They tasted success. In the November elections, conservative candidates won races for County Commissioner, State Representative, State Senate, and Public Service Commissioner. Mineral County Tea Party campaigned for all of them.

This January the group attended a leadership training session with American Majority. The training built on much of what they had learned in September. Joan says she learned how to create a computerized database of the people they talked to during the 2012 campaign. “We’re going to take good notes for every person we talk to so when we go back we can have an even better conversation with them.”

Joan, Bob, and the rest of the Mineral County crew have big plans for 2014. They’re currently looking for a good, conservative candidate for County Commissioner, and are even considering taking on their liberal U. S. Senator.

“When you see everything going to hell in a hand basket, it’s time to stand up and do something,” Bob says. “Everything in DC is so centralized and they don’t pay attention to the voters. We figured if we started in Mineral County—in small communities—and started working, and if that happens all over, we can start changing things locally, then statewide, and begin to make a difference.”­­