Nikhil Goyal

So give us the, as I did with Lieutenant Governor John Rogers, let's start out with, you know, we always hear the state of the state, the state of the union, the state of the city.

What's the state of the Nikhil Goyal campaign for Senate as we sit here one week out from the election?

I launched this campaign in January, so it's been a long 10 months, and I was really honored to win the Democratic primary in August, come first in that election.

We've been working really hard knocking on thousands of doors.

I think my last count, we have knocked on more than 7,200 doors.

I've personally knocked on thousands.

some 5,000 plus doors.

So we are, we've been reaching and talking to voters all over this district.

Uh, you just yesterday, we had two forums, one at Winooski high school and then town meeting TV.

So really getting out there, talking to folks and, uh, hoping to finish strong in the next week.

How did you finish? We haven't talked to you since the primary.

We reported on it, of course, but how did you finish first in the primary? Uh, I mean, do you think you, I don't think anybody projected that just because you had two, uh, people to incumbents who'd been around for a long time and another spirited challenger in the race.

How do you think you ended up finishing first? I mean, it threw a lot of people for a loop, I think.

Not that people were totally saying, oh, he hasn't, but just that you finished first was

what jumped out at people.

Totally.

My mantra from the beginning was that I was coming into this with very low name recognition, and it was critical for me personally to get out there and meet people, introduce myself, and present the vision and platform I have for the state.

And I think people... enormously resonated with that message.

We also did a lot of work to turn out people that don't necessarily always vote in primaries.

We had huge primary turnout.

Initially it was looking like the numbers were down, but on election day we had much higher turnout than we expected.

And so we turned out immigrant communities, Nepali immigrants, Somali immigrants, many folks that had never really ever voted in elections apart from presidential years.

And we turned out a lot of young people.

So we really courted the UVM students that were still on campus as well.

And again, if you've got a question for Nikhil Goyal, he is a Democratic candidate for Chittenden County Senate in the Chittenden Central District.