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Camp Obama

On September 22, 2008, I responded to an email from the Obama campaign to apply to Camp Obama to train for a volunteer position as a Deputy Field Organizer—the goal being to work for the campaign in a battleground state.

The interesting parts of the application were the two text boxes that asked what you thought was important for working on the campaign and what experience you had to carry out those goals. I wrote things like organizing, problem solving, working in a fast-paced environment, working with diverse groups of people and managing a volunteer staff. I wrote that I had done all of those things in start-ups, nonprofits and established companies. They also asked whether the applicant would be willing to go to a battleground state for 2, 3, 4 or 5 weeks.

About 10 days later, I got a call inviting me to the IBEW hall in Dorchester for a 5 hour training on Saturday, 10/4. It turned out that they had about 2,000 applications and invited 350 people to the training.

I was surprised at the age of most of the participants. It was actually a pretty old crew—I would guess the average was around 40. The trainers were pretty young—mostly in their 20s or early 30s. The training talked about how the campaign was organized, how the pieces fit together to win and some basics about things like encouraging and managing volunteers.

They had a form asking how long we could travel and suggested 4 states: Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire and Other. I checked “Other” and said that even though I don’t like Florida I should probably work in the Jewish Outreach in Florida since I am a middle-aged Jewish man who lived in Israel and would probably have some credibility with that audience. I also said that if housing could be provided, that I could stay through the election.


Getting a Destination

A few days later, I got a call from the Jewish Outreach people in Florida. I told them that I could hop on a plane as soon as I had a destination and could buy a ticket. Unfortunately, they really wanted me to have a car. I thought about renting a car in Florida or making the 24 hour drive in my own car. The more I thought about it, the less enthusiastic I was about the idea. So I called the Boston office and asked to be rerouted to OH (only about 10 hours away).

When I didn’t hear from Ohio from Thursday through the weekend, I went online, found a phone number and called an Obama office near Cleveland. They told me to send an email to someone in Columbus who was coordinating all out-of-state volunteers. I sent the email and about 3 hours later was set to go to Mentor, OH—or, if you prefer, to mentor Ohio. I left the next morning—after casting my own absentee vote in Lexington.

While I was driving across NY state, I got a call from someone in the Mentor (pronounced MENer) office asking if I would mind being in a small office about 20 minutes south of there. So I ended up in the Newbury office and would stay in Novelty, OH. I said sure and appreciated the opportunity to tell people I was staying in a place called Novelty.

Newbury, OH is located in Geauga county. Barry, who you’ll hear about further on, gave the pronunciation as gee-AWE-ga, whereas I gave it as gee-AH-ga. To settle this Illinois/Massachusetts dispute, we turned to some of the local volunteers and were told that it’s pronounced J’AH-ga (the apostrophe is optional).

Regardless of how you say it, the word apparently comes from a native American word meaning raccoon. Judging from the dominant form of road kill, the name seems to be apt, although I did see more live deer than live raccoons.


Bill Clinton Rally

On my second day in the office, I had the opportunity to get a “VIP” ticket to an Obama rally in Cleveland in which Bill Clinton was the featured speaker. “VIP” meant that I was among the first people let in to stand behind the metal barriers. The rally was in sight of Lake Erie, the Cleveland Browns stadium and a big wind turbine.

I had foolishly left my camera in the car, but I cleverly realized that my cell phone had a camera. So I was able to take some low quality pictures. Also, from where I was standing, the big light in the air, gave the speakers a kind of celestial halo effect. Too bad Barack wasn’t there to get his halo.

Although I gave up my place at the barrier to a 9-year old so she could see, I was still close enough both to shake hands with the former president and to get this picture with my cell phone after he passed my spot.


Campaign Office as a Franchise

I assume that the ideas of a franchise or multi-level marketing organization were not uppermost in the minds of the Obama campaign planners, but it seemed to me that was what they created.

The campaign created a structure, much like a multi-level marketing organization, and taught their campaign staffers how the model worked. Then, they sent people out to replicate the model and organizational structure all around the country.

The way it worked was that the Field Organizers got people to host coffees. The Field Organizers recruited local volunteers at these informal meetings. Their first level recruits would then recruit their own volunteers to make phone calls and canvass (knock on doors). I’m sure I’m oversimplifying and that there were more steps that I didn’t see, but this was my impression from my position on the ground and from the information I gleaned at Camp Obama.

The approach won them the nomination and left the core of an active organization in place for the general election. And it left in place an active and committed grassroots organization that helped to win the election.


Canvassing, Calling, Data Entry and Office Management

I was in a small office. There were two full time paid Obama staff people, Mandy from San Francisco and Amy from Philadelphia. There were also two full time out-of-state carpetbaggers/volunteers—both old guys: Barry, from the Chicago area, and me. There was also a steady stream of local volunteers and sometimes the local Democratic party people and the candidates for local offices would come in. (I thought the strangest, funniest thing was that they elect the coroner!?!)

Mandy and Amy were often out managing their respective volunteer organizations. Barry really liked going out canvassing and I was less enthusiastic about it. So I fell into the role of office manager and greeter. I met a lot of interesting people—most nice, a few not so nice and some just plain strange. I also did a lot of data entry. Lastly, I performed the occasional feat of technical prestidigitation—like getting people’s computers to work with printers that had the wrong drivers delivered with them, or switching everyone to our own Internet service when I discovered that everyone was using the wireless connection to an office a few doors away instead of our own. The hours were also long, often: M-F from about 9am-11pm, Sat 9-9, Sun 11-9.

I also did some canvassing and phoning. I was surprised by the candor of some people expressing blatantly racist views to total strangers—or, as some people reported, to neighbors. I was also surprised at the liberal use of racially charged language even when used in a “positive” way.

For example, a story that I thought had happened in Geauga County, but turned out to be in similar territory in Washington, PA had an Obama canvasser knocking on a door and asking the lady who answered if she was supporting Senator Obama. She turned around and called to her husband, “Honey. Who are we voting for?” He called back, “We’re voting for the ni----.” She turned around and said, “We’re voting for the ni----.”

Another canvasser came back with the story about the lady who said, “I’m voting for the tall, skinny one. Is that Obama?” “Yes, ma’am, that’s Senator Obama,” he said.

Many of the local elections in Ohio are "non-partisan." The primaries are by party, but the candidates don't have a party designation for the general election.

A number of the local candidates also came in to the office from time to time. I suggested to some people that the picture on Dr. Bob’s literature perhaps should not have him smiling—he was the candidate for county coroner.


Intra-Party Challenges

I was in a small office in a heavily Republican area in rural NE Ohio. The local Democrats had opened and maintained the office since 2006. The Obama campaign rented space with them and moved in. Unfortunately, it did not work out very well—and that colored my experience of the campaign.

When I first arrived, one of the Obama staffers told me about the area: rural, heavily Republican, we’re going to lose the county, but the goal is to do better than Kerry did in 04. She also told me that the office had been opened in 2006 by the local Democratic party and that they were very proud of having a permanent presence. She also told me that they were very proud of their role in electing a number of people to office in Ohio.

I think that the problems stemmed from two things. There were two young women who were running the Obama effort and the independent young people were not welcome. I certainly didn’t have any problems with anyone. I also heard that a number of the local party leaders were staunch Hillary Clinton supporters who had not gotten over Hillary’s loss of the nomination.

While the Obama staffers welcomed any help the local Democratic party apparatus was willing to provide, they were not dependent on it and had instructions on how they were to run their organization. I don’t think that the local party leaders ever really understood that.


Geauga County Democratic Party Dinner

Despite the challenges with the local Democratic party people, they specifically invited me to attend their dinner where Ohio’s First Lady, Frances Strickland, was to speak. So I went.

At one point, I was speaking with some people and a new friend, Scott, grabbed me and took me to meet Mrs. Strickland. She and I spoke while Scott shot a few pictures and, after a few minutes, Scott told Mrs. Strickland that she didn’t have to be nice to me because I wasn’t a constituent—but as Scott pointed out, he said it with a lot of charm. (One of the reasons that Scott and I hit it off so quickly and easily was that we have similar senses of humor, tastes in movies and appetite for trivia.)

I met some interesting people, had a good meal and a nice evening. After that, I went back to work because there was a large pile of data to be entered.


Lawn Signs

Lawn signs were always an issue.

The position of the Obama campaign was that “signs don’t vote” so they said they didn’t really care about having lots of signs out. I heard that many of the local Obama offices were constantly complaining about the lack of lawn signs to give out.

So, until the last week of the campaign, we were always short of signs. As a result, we tried to limit the number of signs to one per household. The local party leadership wanted to use signs to generate revenue and the Obama people just wanted to get signs out. In the end, if the signs came from the Obama campaign, we could not ask for money, but if they came from any other source, we asked for a $5 donation. This was a constant, if minor, source of tension in the office.

At one point, one of the people responsible for the Get Out The Vote (GOTV) effort spent a day in the office. At one point, he said that he thought that lawn signs were important because people came into the office to get one and that allowed us to recruit them as a volunteer when they came in.

I actually think the campaign was wrong and that lawn signs are important because it lets people know that they are not alone. We found a lot of people who thought they were the only Obama supporters on their block and were surprised when we told them that there were Obama supporters in a number of houses on their block.

As in many parts of the country, signs were constantly being stolen. There was a sad (in my opinion) story on 10/17/08 in the Akron Beacon Journal that told about an 18-year old Eagle Scout who was caught on camera stealing Obama lawn signs. He was found to have more than 140 signs that he had not yet disposed of. I think it’s sad because people who steal signs are so oblivious to the notion of a diversity of opinions being a good thing in a democratic system. It’s sad that people are so convinced of the rightness of their viewpoint that they don’t realize how un-American it is to disallow other people’s right to express a different view. …and it’s just so petty.


Election Night

Election night was fun. There were two parties and I had planned to go to both although in the end, I only made it to one. Mandy’s birthday was the day before the election and someone brought her a cake.

We were mostly watching MSNBC in the room we were in, but Fox was on in the bar. There were cheers when Pennsylvania was called for Obama. But when Ohio was called for Obama, there were big cheers in our room. It was interesting that Fox called Ohio for Obama about 5 minutes before MSNBC did.

Fox also called Virginia for Obama about 45 minutes before MSNBC did.

When Obama reached 195 electoral votes, I turned to the person next to me and said that adding California would take it to 250 and asking if there were 20 more electoral votes to be had.

At 11pm when the polls closed on the west coast, MSNBC immediately called all 3 Pacific coast states for Obama—which gave him the election. I must have been the only one watching the TV, because I called out to a relatively quite room that “He’s over the top!” Someone said, “What?” and I repeated “He’s over the top!”

Then a BIG cheer went up in the room.

After that, we relaxed, celebrated and watched the rest of the electoral map fill in.

At one point, I was coming back through the bar and heard a 20-something guy comment that he wasn’t looking forward to finding out what it was like to live in a communist country. Whatever one’s politics, I think it’s unconscionable and scandalous to have created absurd expectations like that among the electorate—and I do fault the McCain campaign for that.

One final note: In Geauga county, we did about 2.5% better in the raw vote than Kerry in 04 and 5.5% better on the Obama/McCain spread than Kerry/Bush.


Conclusion

I was glad that the suspense and tension of the election was finally settled. I am not a conspiracy theory believer, but I am very distrustful of the electronic voting machines that are not auditable. When there were stories about machines switching Democratic votes to Republican in early voting, reported in the Charlestown Gazette (West Virginia), I was very worried. In the end, I was very pleased with the results.

I met some wonderful people and was hosted by two very nice families—who I thank very much for their kindness and hospitality. An amusing coincidence was that my first hostess lived the first eight years of her life living on the street I live on now.

To sum it all up, I was glad I did this and I was gladder it was over. And I gladdest to be home with my wife again.