I am writing this post on Friday, November 7, 2025, just a few days after the U.S. elections.
The day after the election, Wednesday, November 8, I found out that my good friend Ann Swanson had won her race for a seat on the Pocatello, Idaho, City Council. That was wonderful news. I knew that Ann had worked hard on her campaign. She had been advised that one of the most productive activities she could engage in was simply going door-to-door and becoming a face and a person to as many voters as possible. Ann was often joined by her boyfriend, Blake, and her children, but no one put in the time and effort the way she did.
Ann decided that no one was going to outwork her. For months, she knocked on doors. It was a lot of hard work, and it paid off. Ann had one opponent in the election, a woman with party dominance on her side, and Ann beat that opponent 57 percent to 42 percent, the largest margin of victory of any of the Pocatello City Council races.
I had visited Ann and her family in July, and Ann had visited me in August during a vacation swing down the East Coast. (I should mention that Ann is the daughter of my oldest friend, Bob Swanson, and so I have known Ann her whole life.) So I had some good opportunities to discuss with her the process of running for office.
After the election, Ann and I spoke on the phone, and I told her that all her hustling had paid off, all the tedious hours walking from one house to the next and knocking on doors.
Ann disagreed. She said that at first, she felt that the door-to-door canvassing was going to be a real slog. But it wasn’t!
Each house was an adventure. She noticed the lawn decorations, the garden gnomes, the flower beds, unusual decorations. She took photographs of the most impressive layouts and posted these on Facebook.
And then came the exciting moment of meeting the residents. Sometimes there would be a cloud of smoke when the door opened, if the family members were smokers. Often, there would be delicious smells from dinner preparations. Of course, she occasionally ran into a bit of hostility, but that was very rare, maybe 1 percent of the time. Her real nervousness came from dogs, but these were usually kept under control.
Ann found that she really enjoyed this canvassing. It was an adventure, not a chore. She was getting to know her city in a way that can’t come through in demographic printouts. She was getting to know Pocatello in a personal way. And she was loving it.
This was a lesson for me—a lesson in how to adopt a positive mindset sensitive to possibilities and discoveries. Maybe the hard work paid off for Ann. But I think what really paid off was her mindset and enthusiasm as she connected with one resident after another. Pocatello is lucky to have Ann on its council.
