Obama and His Field Force: How California Roared

There's a good chance that the role California played in Barack Obama's victory will go unnoticed by even by the more astute political observers. After all, California was never in serious play -- it's been twenty years since it went for a Republican in a presidential election. The Obama campaign's directive to the California operation was simple: keep up a presence but don't spend money. Fewer than 20 paid staff members were hired in September (compared with 100s in battleground states), a handful of offices opened and a minuscule budget approved. So it may come as a surprise that the California team actually pulled off what can only be called a field operation coup: on election day, California volunteers got on their own phones and managed to make an astonishing 2 million calls into battleground states -- a number that outstripped the calls made by all other Obama phone banks in all other states, combined. They called from coffee shops, from houses, from parks. They called from baby groups, from pajama parties, from book clubs. In the end, the state logged a total of 10 million calls between Obama's nomination speech and his victory speech. It was a milestone achieved with very little drama, and one that is noteworthy not only because it is unprecedented, but because it nearly took the national campaign by surprise. How it was done may also provide some insight into what lies on the horizon, on the grassroots front, going forward.

I had the good fortune to witness this operation first-hand when I morphed from being an Obama fundraiser into an Obama field volunteer, embedded in the 'boiler room' of the state operation. At the center of that room was Mary Jane Stevenson, a self-described stay-at-home mom, married to a judge appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. With no previous political experience, Stevenson would seem on paper an unlikely shepherd of a mass mobilization effort, but in real life, her drive was infectious. She reminded me of my own mother who helped spearhead a short-lived, but successful, grassroots idea called 'Home Headquarters' in Illinois in 1970, activating housewives on behalf of Adlai Stevenson III's (no relation) bid for Senate.

Mary Jane Stevenson's involvement in the Obama campaign began in July of 2007 when she had a bit of free time and decided to volunteer. She drove to Burbank to attend something called "Camp Obama", the campaign's then newly-minted community organizing boot-camp. Still in beta form, it was led by legendary community organizer, Marshall Ganz, himself. Three days later, Stevenson and a few hundred other trainees walked out of the session in organized groups, each with a volunteer title and a full-time volunteer job, primed to help organize for the California primary. Despite eventually losing in California, the strong network of volunteers, aided by the now-famous Obama web site, stayed alive, sending volunteers to later primary states, generating phone calls and waiting for the nominating process to be over.

Fast-forward to a few weeks before the Democratic National Convention, when Stevenson, now a respected organizer within the campaign, was tapped to run the California field operation, with Mitchell Schwartz, a former Clinton staffer with a field background, already in place as State Director. Assigned by Chicago to adopt Nevada as a sister state, it wasn't, perhaps, the highest priority mission, but it was treated with urgency: California was to call lists of Nevada voters as well as to send massive numbers of volunteers there to help with voter registration and canvassing.

Despite the time crunch, one of Stevenson's first decisions was to replicate her own formative Obama training experience. Starting on September 9th, her team brought back Camp Obama to California with a commitment that no other state would come close to duplicating -- scheduling a series of 30 sessions all over the state, even in unfriendly, rural areas. It was a gut-decision, and a controversial one, but it proved to have immeasurable impact. In the weeks leading up to the election, thousands of Californians attended the two-day, sixteen hour session, Trainees broke into mini-groups to learn such things as the art of talking to voters effectively, and the finer points of how to record voter responses. Interestingly, it was here that California solved the enormous data processing hurdle which has dogged campaigns forever: how to effectively capture the information volunteers gathered in the field each day from voters. The answer: decentralize. Each mini-group had volunteers who were taught to handle voter files directly, with unprecedented access, and to update the new information daily.

The centerpiece of the training session however, was learning to tell the 'story of self' -- a narrative tool that helps volunteers understand and mine their own personal motivations behind their support of Obama while trying persuading voters. It turns out, among a certain ilk of California Democratic, the exercise is akin to drinking a powerful elixir. Volunteers reported being so deeply moved by their experience at the training that they broke down crying. Originally a gamble because they drained pre-election resources and staff, the Camp Obama sessions ended up being a recruiting bonanza: hundreds of trainees were shipped out to battleground states, sometimes for five week stints.

But the true power of Camp Obama for the California operation was discovered almost accidentally. At the end of each session, the 200 or so trainees were asked to act as an impromptu phone bank, calling right there, together, into a battleground state. The very first weekend they logged 2500 calls. When the team reported that fact to Chicago, the penny dropped. With Camp Obama serving as a sort of activist talent search, the state's phone bank volume could be increased exponentially. Suddenly there was a new way to harness the energy of those volunteers who couldn't travel to battleground states: they would become leaders in a full-blown, state field operation, putting muscle on the skeletal structure than had hung together since the primary. Even in this non-battleground state, grassroots was back. All volunteers leaders, from baby-groups, to district coordinators were soon deputized with management-style responsibilities: setting and meeting call goals, reporting results using campaign designed metrics and solving data entry problems.

By late September, the nascent phone bank operation already had 100 locations and was outgrowing the available lists from Nevada. Burning through call sheets almost before they could be printed, the operation was confronted with its own worst nightmare, a willing army, staring at their own phones, and no voters to call. By early October, the boiler-room operation was 'going rogue', staying up all night cutting voter file lists from battleground states, obtained without the consent of Chicago, and divvying them up to idle phone banks around the state. (Those lists came by way of Obama state staffers, who had originally been trained in -- California).

In a matter of days, the national campaign field director, Jon Carson, took notice of the volume coming out of California. Two days later, the rogue operation was embraced -- and became the engine for a new national strategy designed by Stevenson and Carson, dubbed 'Last Call for Change.' Chicago would build targeted lists based on predictive data in all of the battleground states, and California would take the lead on calling through them, ultimately identifying voters who could be counted on to vote for Obama. As the lists expanded, the California phone bank volunteer recruitment expanded. New groups of volunteers flooded in. All over the country -- supporters felt similarly eager to do something, anything to help Barack Obama win the election. But it was the California operation that hit upon a simple community-based formula to ride that wave.

On Election Day the campaign put out a final recruitment push and opened dozens of phone banks simultaneously, including a few phone banks on steroids, or 'mega-phone banks' with 600 callers in one place. Here was could be found a striking scene -- a bright, noisy sea of people with say, a grandmother cheek by jowl with a tattooed teen, all on their own cell phones, talking in a very personal way about why they believed in Barack Obama's candidacy. Together, the room called selected battleground states one at a time, starting in the east, ending with Alaska, cheering every time each a state closed its polls.

I have seen it reported that the campaign's field success can be attributed to its vaunted email database of volunteers and donors. My experience tells me that would be inaccurate. While the campaign certainly generated heat by sending out mass emails, the real magic lay in the staff's ability to carry out one of the earliest promises of Barack Obama himself -- individual empowerment. Tapping key volunteers and asking them to reach out to their friends requires personal contact. Yes, that job was made infinitely easier by the advent of Facebook and email, and the campaigns remarkable use of its web site. However the real structure was not created by, nor can be reflected in, a database of names housed by a centralized campaign.

Yesterday, I heard that phone banks are forming in California to call voters in Georgia on behalf of Jim Martin, the Senate candidate who is in a tight run-off race there. I checked around, curious to see if the campaign was officially involved. The answer came back, no. Yet voter files are being sorted, lists are being cut, call sheets printed, data entered. Calls are being made. The idea that a muscle once flexed, can take on a life of its own has intriguing, almost science-fiction-like possibilities. Whether it signals something remarkable in the annals of grassroots politics, or is another false start, like my mother's idea of 'Home Headquarters' in 1970, remains to be seen.

Comments

[hankandted]

We also can't forget the primary. Obama came very close to winning the state, but, more importantly, he won lots of delegates ,almost as many as Clinton. (And this state has lots of delegates.) He won my congressional district and many others. The name of the game was winning the congressional districts or coming close. That is how the delegates were picked up. Who won the state was irrelevant. Getting so many delegates here made it possible for Obama to go on to all the subsequent states. And remember that California votes over a whole month. More and more Obama votes came in as the weeks in January went by. Thank you Iowa! Nothing like winning the Iowa caucus while a California voter is staring at a ballot sitting on their kitchen table.

And who can forget those fabulous convention delegate caucuses? By that time all the action was in the Obama caucuses.

Yes, I went to Nevada. Who didn't? Or Colorado or N.M. or some such. At our Democratic party headquarters phone canvassers were spilling out onto the street, there were so many.

And yes, I just got an email about getting the troops cranked up again to call Georgia.

[justbobness]

I'm one of the Californians who dialed, drove, and dialed some more. Two weekends before the election I made the "Drive for Change" and volunteered in Reno, Nevada knocking on doors and entering data. The Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Election Day weekend I took vacation days and phone banked in the San Jose local office. I must have placed 1,000's of calls over those days. Thank goodness for Unlimited Nights and Weekends!!!

[cacique88]

Jamie,
Kudos to you!!! A briiliant well written piece!!! I wish more folks here would write the stories of the many unsung heroes who helped Barack get elected.

I was a part of the vaunted California phone operation that you so aptly described in your piece. But I used the virtual calling capabilities built into the Obama website which i used to make calls to battleground states. This is a story within a story which shows how the Internet was used by the Obama campaign as an organizer's dream tool. Maybe you could cover this story in the future as a followup to this one.

[zobbie]

"The idea that a muscle once flexed, can take on a life of its own has intriguing, almost science-fiction-like possibilities". I really like this idea but don't forget the sinews - to quote Shakespeare -
"Stiffen the sinews - summon up the blood . . . . " (Henry V before Agincourt)
Alternatively I like this song from one of Barack's most grateful admirers - (Arnie it aint) . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNNHXCQA9sA

[toshea1]

Thank you! I cried again! I attended a Camp Obama in San Francisco in Sept 08. So many people applied for the training (over 900) that they changed the format from a 2 day training, to two 1 day trainings with 150 people in each training. I went to the Sunday training. It was a moving and empowering experience. Most of my cohort went to Nevada, but some of us went to New Mexico, Virginia, Ohio, and Colorado to work as Deputy Field Organizers. I was in New Mexico and I heard about the volunteers coming in from California, Arizona and Texas every weekend to help canvass and make phone calls.

If you give people the ground rules and the goals, and then empower them, Change is what you get! Yes We Did!

[pcjnyc]

Would have been a nice touch to put some of this ground force towards defeating Prop 8.

[Da Centrist]

Hey Jamie,
As a member of "the Fightin' 36th" So Cal's call bank I applaud your fantastic retrospective of what I felt was one of the most empowering moments of my life. I have for years been saying why can't we make a difference in our world, why do the lobbies with money always get their way and us regular folks get the shaft.
Then came (and I love typing this) PRESIDENT ELECT BARACK OBAMA who engaged us, asked us to be part of the process and be the change we wanted to see. It worked not just because the great candidate asked us but because a lot of Americans felt the the urgency of the moment, a world at the brink and leaders who were taking us down a horrible path.

So let's take this away from the election -
When we have to Americans always will say YES WE CAN.
And this is just the beginning, with a lot more work to be done.
May we all do our part for Peace,Justice, And The American way.

LET FREEDOM RING

[SeanGardner]

Hey Jamie...

Phone banking and door knocking worked beautifully for Obama.

But I decided to help him out another way: through e-mailing.

I was a volunteer web strategist for the Washington State Obama Campaign. I helped Obama out by launching my own "50 State E-mail Strategy" - essentially a massive web campaign where I micro-targeted voters. I sent out over 50,000 e-mails on Obama's behalf over the past 9 months to people in the 50 states. I sent 1,000 to each state, including California. I didn't e-mail them repeatedly because that would make me a bonafide spammer. So I only e-mailed them one time, and most of the 2,000 plus people who responded to me were positive.

It was a great deal of fun. I spent two hours mining the internet for e-mails specific to region, race, ethinicity, etc. And this worked perfectly. For example, when HUFFPOST Blogger Natasha Chen wrote this past summer that a near million member Asian-American PAC endorsed Obama, I sent an e-mail out that same day to e-mails of over 500 members of Asian-American fraternity and sorority members - most of whom were in California, Oregon, and Washington State. And when Obama had an surprisingly rocky start with a Latina member of Congress in June, I went into overdrive, e-mailing Latinos across the country for a whole week straight about Obama's commitment.

And the to see the end result was truly spirit-nurturing.

[laylahb]

Let's hear it for CD30W. Prior to the official GOTV (Get Out The Vote, started mid-October) California accounted for about 65% of all calls made throughout the U.S. The number moved up for GOTV, especially during those last four days, as we worked about a dozen states. Election Day, beginning at 6am, we moved east to west, hit Alaska at about 7:15pm, and stopped calling about five minutes before our polls closed at 8.

I'm so proud to be a Californian. Oh, yes, we are calling Georgia. We started a phone bank at one of our victory parties last Sunday. Guess what we're all doing tomorrow and Sunday..

[msblucow]

Thank you Jamie, for telling the "story of self" of the California campaign.

I attended the first Camp Obama in Los Angeles, which was held back in August (Camp O didn't go statewide until September). At the end of two days, myself and a fellow camper, with no national (or in my case, even local) campaign experience were tapped to become Regional Field Organizers for CD 36 (Jane Harman's district - which stretches from Venice to San Pedro)

We held our first phone bank in Venice on August 23. Twelve volunteers made about 1, 500 phone calls to Las Vegas that first weekend. Over the next six months, we organized dozens of phone banks from San Pedro to Mar Vista, making over 600,000 phone calls all over the country. In the last 4 days leading up to Election Day, we had over 1,500 volunteers who made 152,224 phone calls to the battleground states of New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Missouri.

CD36 made more phone calls to battleground states than Barack Obama's home state of Illinois.

I and the other volunteers we worked with are so very grateful we were given this opportunity to make a meaningful difference in this campaign. Much gratitude goes to Mary Jane, as well as two other unsung heroes - Amy Amsterdam and Aaron Schiller, who conspired with us to go "rogue" when our volunteers burned through the Nevada lists.

[msblucow]

Oh, and we will definitely be phone banking to Georgia this weekend. If you're in the LA area, and you're reading this, you're invited! Be sure to bring your cell phone!

Saturday, November 22
Pot Luck Phone Bank at Mary Jack's
1pm-4pm
913 Marco Place, Venice, CA 90291
Bring your cell phones, your chargers, and a dish!
We'll provide the drinks!

Sunday, November 23
BBQ Phone Bank and Hot Tub Extravaganza at Marta and Warren's
1pm-4pm
758 Palms Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Bring your cell phones, your chargers, your bathing suit and a side dish. We'll supply the drinks, burgers and hot water!

[margardner]

Pacifica, California in the house for Obama! I was amazed at the amount of "Coastsiders for Obama" envolved in the campaign, many first time campaigners.

My Latina friends and I made hundreds of phone calls to Latino voters in N.Mex, Nevada, and Colorado. It was invigorating and so rewarding for us. Viva Obama!

Que Dios te Bendiga.

[FACINGREALIT]

Thank You Margardner - and the fruits of your labor are twofold - we won ALL of the states you listed and Obama is now the president elect of the US. GREAT JOB indeed! You should be PROUD of your efforts - I AM!

[DeltaAdvocate]

Thank you, Jamie for this article. I am among the enormous California contingent that called for change. Many of us in the Conejo Valley team have been suffering from calling/data entry/canvassing withdrawal. It was beyond amazing to call from lists that were fresh off the press. I was talking to a grassroots comrade today and mentioned that much of our experience will go down as the work of unsung heroes. It's nice to see the community acknowledged"both in this article and with Obama as our new president!

[peacegurl48]

I'm 60 years old and had never volunteered for a campaign nor donated money until Obama's campaign. It was an amazing experience and most of the people I volunteered with were new to campaign work. The common ground was belief in Obama, Hope and Change.

I just got an email to call for the Martin campaign and I intend to do that as well. I have not felt so hopeful since I was marching against the Viet Nam War and trying to change the world :)

Yes We Did!

[CaptD]

I called from CA before and am still calling, BTW: Georgia's Senator's seat is still up for grabs...

Here are my stats for the last calling session I did:

81 calls
48 pro Martin not counting family members and friends...
18 No or "other"
06 Answering machines, I left a "pro message"
09 Wrong State, the folks moved since list was made(?), most like Martin!
+
It was inspiring to speak to so many folks that thanked me for reminding them to vote for Martin, after 8 PM their time, I talked to one woman that was over 85, that said she never had the chance to go to any schooling, ("too busy pickin' cotton for our food"). I asked her what she thought of Obama getting elected and she turned the question back to me asking what I thought, I told her, "I had tears in my eyes and I've never been more proud of America". She then said, "Bless You Child, I had tears in my eyes too, I never thought I would live this long, but I'm mighty glad I did..." America is lucky to have so many people with LOVE in their hearts...

It don't get any better than that...

[julia23]

Thanks for this amazing article. I attended my first Obama organizing meeting in Pasadena, California 3 days after he announced, and we met every week till June or so, when they had Camp Obama,and they organized us along Congressional District lines. I was the data organizer for a congressional district.

We had people coming from all over Los Angeles to our meeting, because we were one of the first regular ones. I met a lot of good friends, and it always seemed like a reunion when we volunteered for the large Obama events (like Michele & Oprah, Obama at Universal, Kennedy).

Our Obama group is meeting tomorrow to package food for Thanksgiving, at the Los Angeles Arboretum. We'll be wearing our Obama gear, and its the third year we've done it. We decided to keep it as a way to stay in touch, since we got so close on the campaign.