{"id":3372,"date":"2008-06-11T07:57:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-11T13:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/06\/primary-perspectives\/"},"modified":"2009-08-22T14:09:44","modified_gmt":"2009-08-22T20:09:44","slug":"primary-perspectives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/06\/primary-perspectives\/","title":{"rendered":"Primary perspectives"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Carter Bundy<\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been in 10 states over the last seven months supporting my union\u2019s candidate for president. That candidate was Hillary Clinton<\/a>, although my union has already endorsed Barack Obama<\/a> because his labor record is 180 degrees from Senator McCain\u2019s<\/a>. <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Having front-row seats for the longest presidential primary campaign in American history has been an incredible privilege. While our program consisted of union-member outreach, it wasn\u2019t hard to learn something about the different campaigns along the way.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Just because I think political geeks like myself might find it interesting, here are a few of my observations about running a national campaign (primarily focusing on field work). None of this is meant to diminish the incredible achievement of Barack himself or denigrate Hillary; rather, this year merely provided a sharp contrast in how any good campaign should be run.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Event planning<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Events are important both for firing up a candidate\u2019s base and winning over undecideds. While campaigns have to be flexible and move anywhere in America<\/st1:country-region><\/st1:place> at a moment\u2019s notice, if you want a good event, you usually have to commit to a plan ahead of time.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The Obama campaign did a fabulous job with event planning. Often everyone in a city knew about an Obama rally a week in advance. I rarely saw an Obama event that wasn\u2019t widely publicized at least three days ahead of time.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Sure, Obama generated rock star-esque enthusiasm, which helped. But his campaign also planned events for locations and times when supporters and undecideds could attend in large numbers, and made sure everyone had enough notice to re-arrange their schedules if necessary.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

By contrast, it was a running joke that the Clinton campaign would rarely give more than 24 or 36 hours\u2019 notice, even to her best supporters (because we were doing a member program, we were allowed to communicate with the campaign).<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Bill\u2019s Wisconsin<\/st1:place> wipeout<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

My personal favorite was a Sunday evening in Milwaukee<\/st1:city><\/st1:place>. The staff (and remember, these young field operatives didn\u2019t set the schedule) called fairly freaked out and asked if we could help build a crowd for a 9 a.m. Monday event in Milwaukee<\/st1:city> and an 11 a.m. event in Waukesha<\/st1:city>, a suburb of Milwaukee<\/st1:city><\/st1:place>, both with Bill Clinton<\/a>. Yes, 16 hours\u2019 notice. For early- and mid-morning events on a Monday.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The campaign did a nice job of phone-banking Hillary supporters, but it\u2019s unlikely that they got many undecideds to either event.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

But there weren\u2019t more than 400 people in Milwaukee<\/st1:city>, and about 150 in Waukesha<\/st1:city><\/st1:place>. True, the local Wisconsin version of Rush Limbaugh announced on air that the Waukesha<\/st1:city><\/st1:place> event was cancelled, and that hurt. Afterwards, rumor rapidly spread that Bill called the Waukesha<\/st1:city><\/st1:place> event the worst one he\u2019d been to in his entire political career.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

ID programs<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

While Obama supporters were famous for canvassing all over the country, more often than not, Clinton<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> staff and volunteers were calling voters on a system called \u201cActivate.\u201d Obama supporters were asking for specific voters at each door, which is almost always a better and more reliable form of ID contact than phones.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

But in big statewide races, phones can make sense, if they\u2019re done well. Unfortunately, Activate was not done well. It was a system where a computer, which knew the name, gender, party registration and age of voters in most states, would call to the volunteer when someone in the voter\u2019s household picked up the phone.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

But the volunteer had no idea who to ask for, and was basically forced to ID the entire household off of whatever person happened to pick up the phone. In a year with many divided Dem households (and given that the person answering the phone may not have even been a registered voter), this was a terrible ID system.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

GOTV<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Compounding the ID problem during the last few days in each state, Clinton<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> supporters were going out and doing what seemed to be virtually blind pulls of voters. This happened even in strong Obama areas, so that Clinton<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> volunteers were often going to doors of Obama supporters and guaranteeing Obama voters knew where to go vote.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

While that seems to be a nice civic goal, it\u2019s not a very good campaign activity. GOTV stands for \u201cGet Out the Vote,\u201d but more accurately should be called \u201cGOOV — Get Out OUR Vote.\u201d Turning out your opponent\u2019s supporters, non-voters and Republicans ain\u2019t good field.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Again, this wasn\u2019t the fault of the field staff or volunteers; it reflected the atrocious planning and field knowledge of a highly-paid consultant or high-level staff in D.C.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The Obama campaign, by comparison, seemed to have some solid targeting, although it\u2019s harder for me to know just how finely tuned its GOTV program was. I guarantee it was no worse than the Clinton<\/st1:city><\/st1:place> campaign\u2019s, though.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Dems\u2019 under-the-radar bonus<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

This year\u2019s crazy primary gave several thousand (mostly) young Democratic operatives and volunteers real-world lessons in campaigns that normally are accrued over multiple election cycles.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Not only does the Obama campaign have several thousand operatives who have run one of the best field programs ever, but they can tap into talented Hillary staff who directly observed and learned the lessons of a sometimes poorly planned field program.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The intense in-the-fire training of thousands of young Democratic activists and volunteers may be the most underrated development of the drawn-out Dem primary. Even if not all the Obama and Clinton<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> staff are on the presidential campaign this year, many of them are going to be on congressional races this year and in down-ballot races for years to come.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME<\/a> in New Mexico<\/st1:state><\/st1:place>. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here<\/a>. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Carter Bundy I\u2019ve been in 10 states over the last seven months supporting my union\u2019s candidate for president. That candidate was Hillary Clinton, although my union has already endorsed Barack Obama because his labor record is 180 degrees from Senator McCain\u2019s. Having front-row seats for the longest presidential primary campaign in American history has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bundy-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}