The evolution of my feelings about Fayetteville was telling. The general sentiment that existed somewhere within every FO (field organizer) was summed up beautifully on the hungover morning after a training in Raleigh by Shaun, our resident Lewis Black. In answer to the question "Why is it called Fayette-nam," Shaun replied, without missing a beat, "because it sucks."
I don't know if that's as hilarious to an idle blog-reader (thanks by the way!) as it was to us unwitting inhabitants of Fayette-nam. To us, that one comment, which would be repeated again and again over the next two months, summed up the more dominant side of Shaun (who, I feel the need to say, is a really nice guy), but also made at least as much sense as the real reason it's called Fayette-nam- that being that it contains (I think) the largest military base in the country in Fort Bragg (and because 'nam = Vietnam and Vietnam = war associations in America).
Ah Fayetteville. Seemingly endless strip of fast food joints and shopping centers with 80% of the life bleached and processed away. The place where concrete goes when it has nothing else to do. Where you are never more than five minutes from a Wafflehouse or a Bojangles. Why is it called Fayette-nam? Because it sucks.
And yet, after a month or so of living in Richmond county, I started to really look forward to my once-or-twice a week trips into Fayetteville. A lot of that had to do with seeing the other FOs. They were mostly college-educated 20-somethings like me, and, of course, we could commisserate over the struggles of the FO. I also liked having the drive (90 minutes each way) to air out my thoughts. It wasn't a very scenic drive, but it was an easy one, so it was often therapeutic. Even Fayetteville itself started to hold some appeal. After all, it had the occasional coffee shop (I think the lack of coffee shops in Richmond county will get its own post) and it had food options. Food options! You know what my main food options in Richmond were (keep in mind, I'm veg)? Subway and lunch #14 at the Mexican place. La Cabana repeatedly put me into a food coma as I was approaching call time, and call time, like a 4-5 hour drive, was sometimes hellish if I had low energy, but could be fun if I was feeling up. That meant I usually went for Subway. By October, I would walk in, and whoever was working would immediately start preparing a foot-long veggie sub on wheat. Every sandwich-maker there voted for Obama.
Anyway, Fayetteville. I would never live there, I don't have any desire to go back there, but some part of me appreciates it. Not unlike how you would never hang out at a gas station, but when you're on a long journey, a place where you can refuel, physically, and in this case mentally, can feel like an oasis.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
The Volunteer Ask
The main tool of the FO is the volunteer ask. That's the industry term for asking someone to do something for which they will not receive any sort of compensation or tangible reward. I tried to explain the power and importance of what they'd be doing. I would bribe them with food when I could. I would downplay the time commitment, and do my best to make them realize that they do have a few hours somewhere in their week. And then I would say, "So, can you volunteer?" or if I was feeling feisty, "When can you volunteer?" I would ask some version of that question maybe 50 times a day. Anyone who came into the office for any reason, and anyone I met who showed some enthusiasm for Obama got the ask. That's on top of 4 hours of calls a night.
The reason is simple enough. Let's say you need some volunteers for a weekend thingy. So you call 100 supporters- that should do it right? Well of those 100 calls, you actually talk to, say 22 people. And of those 22, you get 3 yes and 5 maybes, and then you call all of them the night before to remind them, and 1 or 2 of the yes people show up and 0-1 of the maybes. 1-3 volunteer shifts out of 100 calls. Daunting. Daily reality.
One night, about a month in, I got a call about an NAACP meeting, starting in just 20 minutes. It was during call time, but I thought this was too good an opportunity to pass up. I raced across town to the meeting, was introduced by the secretary, said who I was and what I did, made my pitch for volunteering, explained the lack of yard signs as best I could, took names and gave out my number to everyone. I left beaming. I had hit the volunteer jackpot! Right?
Well, no.
I found it very easy to get people riled up and excited about Obama- much less easy to get them to do much about it, especially the specific tasks that I needed them to do- namely make calls and knock on doors.
Before long my perspective had shifted away from sympathy for all those who were "too busy" or "too anything" to volunteer. It was all the more infuriating when they assured me they were helping, and then defined helping as talking to their friends and family about the election. That's not to say that those things don't help, but for most people, two months of talking with folks you know about the election is worth about two hours of focused voter contact. Almost everything the campaign did was some form of focused voter contact, but I had to explain the importance of it many times a day, in the hopes of hooking someone into putting in some extra time. The trick was to draw as straight a line as possible from what I needed them to do, to Obama winning the election. It was probably the hardest part of the job, but I did just enough to turn my county blue, and we did enough collectively to turn NC blue (and, y'know, elect Obama).
I can get weary just thinking about it, but it's over it's over we did it we did it.
I lost my personal cell phone a month into the job, and didn't get it replaced until after the election. When I finally did, I had five voicemail messages. Three of the five were from Obama staffers asking me to drive to Indiana to volunteer or come to a phonebank in Chicago. Had I been in town, I probably would have. If I had time, and I was feeling up for it, and remembered to actually show up.
The reason is simple enough. Let's say you need some volunteers for a weekend thingy. So you call 100 supporters- that should do it right? Well of those 100 calls, you actually talk to, say 22 people. And of those 22, you get 3 yes and 5 maybes, and then you call all of them the night before to remind them, and 1 or 2 of the yes people show up and 0-1 of the maybes. 1-3 volunteer shifts out of 100 calls. Daunting. Daily reality.
One night, about a month in, I got a call about an NAACP meeting, starting in just 20 minutes. It was during call time, but I thought this was too good an opportunity to pass up. I raced across town to the meeting, was introduced by the secretary, said who I was and what I did, made my pitch for volunteering, explained the lack of yard signs as best I could, took names and gave out my number to everyone. I left beaming. I had hit the volunteer jackpot! Right?
Well, no.
I found it very easy to get people riled up and excited about Obama- much less easy to get them to do much about it, especially the specific tasks that I needed them to do- namely make calls and knock on doors.
Before long my perspective had shifted away from sympathy for all those who were "too busy" or "too anything" to volunteer. It was all the more infuriating when they assured me they were helping, and then defined helping as talking to their friends and family about the election. That's not to say that those things don't help, but for most people, two months of talking with folks you know about the election is worth about two hours of focused voter contact. Almost everything the campaign did was some form of focused voter contact, but I had to explain the importance of it many times a day, in the hopes of hooking someone into putting in some extra time. The trick was to draw as straight a line as possible from what I needed them to do, to Obama winning the election. It was probably the hardest part of the job, but I did just enough to turn my county blue, and we did enough collectively to turn NC blue (and, y'know, elect Obama).
I can get weary just thinking about it, but it's over it's over we did it we did it.
I lost my personal cell phone a month into the job, and didn't get it replaced until after the election. When I finally did, I had five voicemail messages. Three of the five were from Obama staffers asking me to drive to Indiana to volunteer or come to a phonebank in Chicago. Had I been in town, I probably would have. If I had time, and I was feeling up for it, and remembered to actually show up.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Election Night
E-Day felt like another day at the office in a lot of ways. I had to be at the office at 5:15 instead of the usual 9:00, and the operation was different from the usual, but I didn't feel the enormous culmination of the last two years (or eight, or forty depending on how you're counting) bearing down on that one day as I went about my job. Like the last three months, I knew I had a job to do, and, while I was aware of the national hoopla, I didn't let it distract me too much. I did get a tingle when I realized that the polls were open and people were voting, but for most of the day I kept my fatigued head down and kept at it.
It only started to hit me when I got the call from the next rung up the ladder that my job was done. No more five hours of calls. No more nagging strangers to volunteer (I was doing vol recruitment 6 hours before the polls closed!). No more battles with the printer. There would be more people coming in asking for yard signs and other "chum." That will go on until they cut off my campaign phone and possibly longer (there will DEFINITELY be at least one post about chum and the misery it caused).
I stepped outside into the fresh air that I didn't get quite enough of in my long days in the office and glowed for a little bit. The moment I had been awaiting for months had finally arrived. I was finished. I could go home.
When I went back into the office, a crowd of about 15-20 had gathered for the moment a lot of the world had been awaiting for months or years for some. The group at the office consisted of some of my most devoted volunteers, my host and caretaker for the last three months, some people who had volunteered sporadically, a local barber who had allowed us to use his shop as a satellite headquarters, and some who had only watched the campaign and hadn't been involved. The mood was festive. The possibility of defeat didn't seem to be on anyone's mind. I felt good about our chances, but the thought that we could lose was somewhere in my calculations.
My mood followed a different trajectory than the rest of the crowd. I was well aware of which states were most important and which hardly required announcing. I was also extremely fatigued, energized by excitement, but completely out of reserves. I didn't cheer half as much as anyone else when Obama won Maine, and I cheered the loudest when he won Pennsylvania. When he won Ohio I knew it was over, but no one else seemed to.
The eruption happened just after the polls closed in California. In practically no time at all its electoral votes were awarded to Obama, putting him over 270 and giving him the victory. My memories of the five minutes after that involve no words. Just screams and crying, elated faces. Most of the people there were African American, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone so overwhelmed as they were at that moment.
For much of the campaign, the higher ups kept us in the field motivated with quotas. The national picture was always somewhere on my mind, but I was fighting most immediately for good numbers. Looking back, my mind replaces the drive to hit my benchmarks with those faces. Soon the actual Obama presidency will begin, and I'll get more reminders of what I fought for in his bills, appointments and speeches, but I don't think anything will make me understand the significance of that moment more than those faces, some of them over 70, crying with joy, the ghosts of their ancestors crying with them.
It only started to hit me when I got the call from the next rung up the ladder that my job was done. No more five hours of calls. No more nagging strangers to volunteer (I was doing vol recruitment 6 hours before the polls closed!). No more battles with the printer. There would be more people coming in asking for yard signs and other "chum." That will go on until they cut off my campaign phone and possibly longer (there will DEFINITELY be at least one post about chum and the misery it caused).
I stepped outside into the fresh air that I didn't get quite enough of in my long days in the office and glowed for a little bit. The moment I had been awaiting for months had finally arrived. I was finished. I could go home.
When I went back into the office, a crowd of about 15-20 had gathered for the moment a lot of the world had been awaiting for months or years for some. The group at the office consisted of some of my most devoted volunteers, my host and caretaker for the last three months, some people who had volunteered sporadically, a local barber who had allowed us to use his shop as a satellite headquarters, and some who had only watched the campaign and hadn't been involved. The mood was festive. The possibility of defeat didn't seem to be on anyone's mind. I felt good about our chances, but the thought that we could lose was somewhere in my calculations.
My mood followed a different trajectory than the rest of the crowd. I was well aware of which states were most important and which hardly required announcing. I was also extremely fatigued, energized by excitement, but completely out of reserves. I didn't cheer half as much as anyone else when Obama won Maine, and I cheered the loudest when he won Pennsylvania. When he won Ohio I knew it was over, but no one else seemed to.
The eruption happened just after the polls closed in California. In practically no time at all its electoral votes were awarded to Obama, putting him over 270 and giving him the victory. My memories of the five minutes after that involve no words. Just screams and crying, elated faces. Most of the people there were African American, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone so overwhelmed as they were at that moment.
For much of the campaign, the higher ups kept us in the field motivated with quotas. The national picture was always somewhere on my mind, but I was fighting most immediately for good numbers. Looking back, my mind replaces the drive to hit my benchmarks with those faces. Soon the actual Obama presidency will begin, and I'll get more reminders of what I fought for in his bills, appointments and speeches, but I don't think anything will make me understand the significance of that moment more than those faces, some of them over 70, crying with joy, the ghosts of their ancestors crying with them.
Begin the Odyssey Rewind
Here I sit, alone in Rachel's bedroom in D.C., waiting for her to come home, and trying to somehow make sense of it all. One of her housemates, who I've met once before, pokes his head in the door to say a quick hello and a "Thanks for winning us North Carolina." It was a light thank you, so it was easy to respond to, but lately I've been getting all manner of praise, and I scarcely know what to make of it. A core component of my job the last three months was to make people understand the connection between their actions (or lack there-of) and what goes on in government, and especially the election. Still, when people point out my own impact with their thanks, I'm a little baffled.
I understand that I was part of the instantly-legendary Obama ground game, and that we were a crucial part of his win, especially in North Carolina. Still, after three months of grind and slog, I find my own impact hard to quantify. What I have an easier time with is the Obama field operation as a whole. Yeah, we did that. We won NC, we helped put MI in the bag early on, we protected the lead in PA, we convinced a whole lot of wary Ohioians. I only have a vague sense of what I accomplished, but I can tell you with much more certainty what we did.
Of course, you'll be able to read about the ground game as a whole in many places, and I'm sure a zillion books about it are on the way. So I'm going to use this space mostly to look back on my time in the trenches. Maybe it'll make more sense to me when I'm done.
I understand that I was part of the instantly-legendary Obama ground game, and that we were a crucial part of his win, especially in North Carolina. Still, after three months of grind and slog, I find my own impact hard to quantify. What I have an easier time with is the Obama field operation as a whole. Yeah, we did that. We won NC, we helped put MI in the bag early on, we protected the lead in PA, we convinced a whole lot of wary Ohioians. I only have a vague sense of what I accomplished, but I can tell you with much more certainty what we did.
Of course, you'll be able to read about the ground game as a whole in many places, and I'm sure a zillion books about it are on the way. So I'm going to use this space mostly to look back on my time in the trenches. Maybe it'll make more sense to me when I'm done.
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