A week ago tomorrow, I recorded a robocall that was dropped into the voice mails and answering machines of about 5000 voters in the 6th district. The text of the call (more or less) is as follows:

Hi, my name is Bridget Dooley, and I'm working on Christine Cegelis' Congressional campaign. Sorry I missed you, but there's something you should know if you don't already.

   One of the other candidates, Tammy Duckworth, doesn't even live in this Congressional District. In fact, she's never lived here, and won't move here even if she's elected. Plus,  she's raised about 98% of her funds from outside our district - places like Chicago, New York, and Washington.

   Christine's support is local - local organizations, local union members, and local people  like me.

   So, we've got Christine Cegelis, who lives here, works here and represents us, or the other candidate who represents... well, I'm not sure who she represents.

   Thanks for listening.  And remember to vote tomorrow.

Several politically connected people in my life berated me for choosing to put my full name out with this call, telling me that I was stupid to do this if I ever wanted to work in politics in this town.  I disagreed, but more than that, I didn't really care. Nothing that I said in that call was untrue and I felt it was important to stand behind my actions in a very transparent manner. By God, if I was going to do something as ballsy as drop a robocall attacking the establishment-preferred candidate, I was going to give voters AND the establishment the respect to know who was calling.

So, needless to say, I was in a position unique to other Cegelis supporters in attending this function. I felt uncomfortable and unsure of what I would face upon meeting with Tammy Duckworth and her staff. Would they automatically shun me or would they show a willingness to work together?

Regardless of my apprehension, I knew that it was the right thing to do if I wanted to see Peter Roskam lose in November. So I sucked it up, held my head high, and went to the breakfast.

Immediately upon entering the room, I saw several people that I knew and breathed a little sigh of relief. I was happy to see Laura Fletcher, as her and I go back a couple years. Aside from doing awesome work as the Chairwoman of Wayne Township Dems, she's an incredibly warm and pleasant person who sees things from a similar perspective as myself. She believes, as I do, that it is important for us all to find common ground and work together as Democrats in a united front against the Republican party.

My next stop was Lindy Scott, who I have since we met serveral months ago considered a friend and comrade. We chatted briefly and I moved on to find a seat. There were about 150 people in attendance and I knew that I would be standing if I didn't do that right away.

Next, I spotted and approached Rob Bisceglie, candidate for 45th District State Representative.

And the next stop was none other than Tammy Duckworth. I approached her, shaked her hand, and immediately took a seat so as to be at her eye-level. With a laugh, she explained to me that her husband had "forgotten to plug in her legs last night".

I introduced myself and told her that I supported Christine Cegelis and that I was the one who dropped a robocall attacking her. I figured it would be best to deal with that issue immediately and gauge her response. She said that she knew and she didn't appear to be too offended by it and for that I was glad.

I told her that she wasn't my first choice, she wasn't even my second choice, but that I was willing to work with her to ensure that Roskam does not get elected. She indicated to me that she understood and we chatted briefly about Roskam and what it would mean should he come into office.

I told Tammy that she would not be able to run the kind of campaign that she ran against Christine in order to defeat Roskam. Big money mailers and TV ads will not work. The Republicans will outspend  her 5 to 1. I told her that in order to win, she needed the kind of grassroots support, people power and infrastructure that we had built upon the Cegelis campaign.

The fact is that we came within 3 percentage points of kicking Tammy Duckworth's butt, which is exactly how she described it to the crowd. We didn't have the money, we didn't have the starpower of folks like Obama and Durbin, and we didn't have the endorsements of powerful national organizations. All we had was several skilled and experienced organizers and a hell of a lot of passionate, dedicated volunteers willing to work their behinds off to see that their candidate get elected.

We did it by connecting with people in an organized manner, by harnessing the power of everyday people, most who had never been involved in the political process in the past. We showed them that they, as individuals, had the power to instigate change in their community and we put each and every one of them to work in a position where they were most effective. And, as far as I'm concerned, every one of them delivered. The margin upon which we lost is nothing to look down upon. At the very least, we made them sweat and proved ourselves as a force to be reckoned with.

Tammy indicated to me that she knew that she needed us to win. I'm not entirely convinced that she really believes that and I suppose that only time will tell. I am even less convinced that her staff understands this, though they indicated verbally to me that they did and expressed a willingness to work together.

Dealing with Duckworth's staff was an interesting experience. While I found both Tammy and her husband to be very warm and welcoming towards my effort to reach out and bridge the divide, I did not have the same experience while dealing with her campaign manager, David Lebreton, and another staffer, Joe Schafer. Their words said one thing while their manner said another.

Both spoke in cold, robotic political-speak and appeared very disengaged when I was speaking with them. They were cocky and arrogant, they were cold, and they appeared very uninterested in my pursuit of some degree of unity between our camps. I had to wonder if they were fully unaware of the backlash that I have been receiving and the difficulty of the task at hand. Did they not understand that I was putting myself out there in order to reach common ground for us all and that many Cegelis supporters would not take kindly to this? Frankly, did they not understand that I was setting myself up to take loads of shit for what I was doing? If they knew, they sure as hell didn't indicate that they appreciated it. The blasé attitude these two displayed was nothing short of incredible.

I hope to god that these people are not in charge of reaching out to volunteers. Because they will fail and Tammy Duckworth will lose come November. I can say unequivocally that Cegelis volunteers, the hardcore workers among us, are used to beng treated with a far greater level of respect from both the candidate and the staff. I hope that Tammy Duckworth chooses to nip this behavior from her staff in the bud before folks much less tolerant than myself witness it.

So, that was the bulk of my experience at the unity breakfast. There's much more and I would be happy to talk about it, but this post is already far too long.