367 in the 505

I have mentioned before that I spent 2004 working on the Bush/Cheney reelection campaign. I started in Washington, DC, as an intern; got sent to Arizona; then when we were up by double digits in Arizona, I was sent to New Mexico.

New Mexico only had five electoral votes, but in 2000, President (then Governor) George Bush lost the state by only 366 votes. And there was some shady business that went on. There was a snow storm and like weeks later ballot boxes were found in people's basements. Slim shady business, I tell you.

Because of that, and the fact that you shouldn't take any electoral votes for granted, there were quite a few resources sent to New Mexico in the final months and days of the campaign.

I was sent as a general clean-up batter. Meaning that anything that needed to be done or that wasn't getting done, I was in charge of. 

Long story short, we ended up winning New Mexico in 2004.

There is a friend of our family who honestly tells people that because of me, George W. Bush won the state of New Mexico in 2004.

Now, I'm good, but I'm not that good. I would go out on a limb and say that Big Country* probably had a little to do with it as well.

Either way, it has kind of become a joke in our family.

So on Saturday night, Sissy, BIL, and I went out to an alumni pub crawl for BIL's alumni group. It was in downtown Scottsdale, which isn't really where my kind of people hang out. So Sissy and I are hanging together and we start talking to a very nice guy. Somehow it comes out that he is a Republican. And a very serious one. So Sissy busts out with the story and tells him, "My sister is the reason that George Bush won New Mexico in 2004." 

He seemed pretty impressed. If he only knew...