The Obama campaign turned the old school way of political outreach on its ear once again, this past weekend. Rap music mogul Jay-Z and his crew hit Detroit, Michigan, Saturday, for a free concert at Cobo Hall, in an effort to register young voters before the deadline (today, October 6th). The strategy seemed to work, with nearly 12,000 young people, of all ethnicities, showed up to hear the rapper put on a full concert and to show their support to the campaign of presidential candidate Barack Obama. In addition to the 75 minute concert, there were hundreds of young Change We Can Believe In volunteers with clip boards registering young voters and signing them up to volunteer in the critical days left in the campaign. While final numbers aren't in, Brent Colburn, a member of the Michigan Obama campaign staff said "we registered thousands of people through that event." He estimates that one in three people who got tickets also got registered to vote. Many who scored tickets were already registered.
Jay-Z, whose real name is Sean Carter, told the crowd that "this is the most important election of your lifetime, and your parents' lifetime." Carter, who has been an ardent and vocal supporter of Obama said, "I just wanted to make sure that I have done everything I can do to help elect the first black president of America."
One concertgoer said, "I came to see Jay-Z, but I registered because of Obama." One of the volunteers said that the flow of people coming up to her to get registered had been constant. "In the last hour I have registered 30 people myself," she said. She added that they were also signing up volunteers to help get registered voters to the polls. Volunteers asked for phone numbers, addresses, and emails in order to make future contact.
Will the concert Jay-Z held in Detroit and the one in Miami on Sunday translate into young people actually hitting the polls? We won't know until November 4th. But if this and the other strategies the Obama campaign has used, such as social networking sites and text messaging to engage younger voters where they are, prove successful, look for the rules of political engagement to change from now on. As comedian Bill Maher says, "New Rules!"
