"What I'm feeling is caustiously optimistic," said Craig Benjamin on the phone just now. That's the sort of response you usually hear from campaign insiders when you ask them how they're feeling on election day. Actually, that's always the response you hear from campaign insiders when you ask them how they're feeling on election day. We insisted on an answer that wasn't such a cliche, and he replied, without hesitating: "Nervous as fuck."

Benjamin has been a volunteer for the McGinn for Mayor campaign since March, and has a daughter who's 7 months old. "I've been involved in that campaign longer than my daughter's been alive."

What's he been up to today? "Phone calls. I was up at headquarters making phone calls, getting out the vote." He says there were 12 to 15 volunteers when he was up there. McGinn himself was at a get-out-the-vote event at Red Square on the University of Washington campus with four or five volunteers. And still more volunteers were phone banking at the campaign's Southeast Seattle office.

"We had HUGE phone banks over the weekend," Benjamin said. "People were hitting the phone and the canvas hard. Like, ridiculous numbers. People were making phone calls from 10:00 in the morning to 8:00 at night Saturday and Sunday. It was pretty insane. It was actually really exciting to see. People know it's really close and that every call matters. Had some of our best phone conversations because there are still some undecideds."

What will Benjamin do if Mallahan wins? "First of all, cry. And then I'd write a letter of apology to Greg Nickels." Benjamin, 30, was in the Mayor's Fellows Program (a program through the Evans School at UW) in 2007—basically, a "glorified intern" (his phrase) at the Department of Planning and Development, and then worked at the Office of Policy and Management in the fall of 2007. "Like a lot of folks, I think he was a pretty good mayor." He just likes McGinn better. "To go from Nickels to Mallahan would just be a huge step backwards and hugely disappointing."

Benjamin, like the rest of the McGinn staff, will be at the War Room tonight. The SECB will be there, too.