Campaigning - lessons learned in Richmond VA

I've been gone from Richmond for over a week and back in Seattle for a few days. It's great to be home, though I am really glad that I spent the time in Richmond. I have little more perspective on my time there and campaigning.

First let me say that I am very happy to have spent the time I did in Richmond. I learned a lot, did good work, met interesting people, watched history being made, was part of it, and collected a bunch of unusual memories to carry with me. I got close to the field organizers and Cheryl the volunteer coordinator in a way that only happens when you are stressed and in the trenches together. I was very sad to abandon them to the tough job of getting Virginia to vote for it's first democratic president since 1964. Good luck guys! Work hard! I'm with you in spirit and perhaps on the phone.

While in Richmond I read a book called The Tipping Point that talked about how phenomena can change from slow, linearly increasing trends to explosive fads very quickly. I looked at the campaign and tried to figure out what might make it tip, and decided that wasn't a good model for a campaign. First, Presidential campaigns are trying to appeal to many different demographics simultaneously. You might be able to find the key that tips one group of people to vote your way, but that group will only represent a small portion of the people you need to vote with you. To win, a candidate needs roughly one in TWO Americans who cast ballots to vote for him or her. That's a lot of different people. The book also talks about tipping points being reached when connectors, mavens, and salesmen start advocating for the idea. Obviously if you can find those people, you can accelerate your campaign more. Candidates already do a lot of that, reaching out to all manner of celebrity, community leader, local politician, media organizations, etc to spread the word. Again, no one connector is going to be affective at reaching a large portion of the population, so you need lots of different ones. By simply talking to everyone around them and reaching out in 10,000 directions, you are bound to catch some of the right people.

What has the Obama campaign done well to market Obama to the masses? There are TV stars and Football players stumping for him. The campaign is reaching out to churches and other local organizations to promote Obama, register voters, and get out the vote. Every volunteer that finds another Obama supporter is supposed to ask them if they want to volunteer with the campaign. On average, a person might find one new volunteer in four hours. The volunteer force is increases exponentially, thereby ramping up the total number of people it can reach. Staff are also getting creative, going to freshman lectures to register voters, going to high school football games to find undecided voters, and asking the fraternities and sororities to compete on who could make more phone calls for the campaign.

It certainly helps that Obama is a compelling candidate. I haven't seen the kind of excitement about previous democratic candidates. Many people were pissed that we weren't selling yard signs, buttons, shirts, and bumper stickers. They wanted to proclaim loudly that they supported Obama. The Obama campaign decided to only sell paraphernalia over the internet. Having seen my uncle spend half a day going to pick up orders of Obama gear and dropping it in the right places one day, I can see why. It takes a lot of time to sell all that gear, time you could be contacting voters. Then again, every person who comes in wanting gear might be interested in volunteering and each sale can add a little money to the coffers. I can see why they did it, but I'm not sure it was the right decision.

I think the Obama campaign has some inefficiencies. The field organizers get a new set of people to contact each week, selected based on some unknown criteria by the national campaign. If you are going door-to-door, only hitting the ones selected this week, you skip a lot of doors that you might go back to next week. That isn't very efficient. A few times they put a lot of effort into finding hosts and attendees for house parties with the idea that in that intimate setting it would be easy to convince people to volunteer. I don't think they were worth the effort. They are also not working closely with the democrats. Now, the democrats in VA, PA, and WA are a lot more mellow than the campaign. They only have a few people volunteering and mostly in the evening or on their own. They spend a fair amount of time meeting and selling shwag. They aren't in crazy mode like the campaign. Then again, they have been around a while, they have connections into the community, they have trained people who don't need to come in to be active. More cooperation could probably help Obama and might teach the democrats a thing or two. On another front, the office is chaotic and thrown together. Most of the equipment is donated and not very comfortable. There aren't mail boxes for the staff members. Things make their way to the correct person in a haphazard fashion and sometimes get lost. Still, it's an amazing operation.

The thing that seems most important to me in running a successful campaign is keeping track of all the details. If you are running a canvas, make sure you bring enough pens, clipboards, and forms for everyone. When someone asks you to call them back, put it in your calendar and do it. If someone needs a ride to the polls, make sure that gets entered into the data base. If someone attends an event, call them back and ask them to volunteer. Have good resource sheets for greeters so they can get people involved in any way that person is interested in helping, be it money, writing a letter to the editor, bringing in food donations, etc. There is a lot to keep track of, but if you succeed, you show a professional demeanor and make a lot of people happy.

Now lets go out and win!