"I'm going to try to bring you on board as an RFD." So read the July 30 e-mail from the woman newly hired as the California Field Director. At the time, I had only vague notions of what that role might be like, but I knew I wanted to work in field and I wanted to have a lot of responsibility. So I was very excited at the prospect.
From where I stand now, having lived that job more profoundly than any professional role I ever held, I understand that e-mail as a demarcation. The woman who received it doesn't really exist anymore. This was the beginning of 96 unforgettable days that literally changed my life.
On August 7, I prepared to go officially on staff with the Obama campaign, and I put femlaw on hiatus. This community gave me a rather overwhelming send-off, and asked me to come back and tell my story. So here is August - the first installment, my account of the first month on the job. I am planning to write next about September, then October, then GOTV, then the Aftermath.
There are some things I feel I can't share, either because they are other people's stories to tell, or because they really belong to the campaign. But what I can give you is a sense of what it felt like to me having a front row seat to history. And it will help me make sense of it too.
August began with a rapid-fire introduction to campaign life, and ended with the entrance of Sarah Palin. In between I had to build a structure and start running a field plan, while learning my new job at the same time. And August was probably the least intense month I experienced.
What have I gotten myself into?
When I was hired on, I had already been volunteering for the campaign for over a year. I knew most of the active key organizers in my territory and we had just opened a volunteer office that would become an official field office and my base of operations. Because the senior field staff in CA was largely home grown, we already had a running start on organizing. Many of us had started as volunteers, others had been on staff during the primary.
We were ready, but had no idea what role we in California would play. A relatively minor one, I thought. I had watched as other experienced organizers from the primary took off for the "real" action in Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Missouri. With two small kids, I felt I had to stay close to home, and was sad to miss the experience of field work in a battleground state. As it turned out, within a few short weeks I was living a full-on, no holds barred campaign experience. California, famous as the campaign ATM of the nation, would play another part this time. Having built an incredible volunteer organization in California, we would use it to help Obama win everywhere.
I began to understand just how little of my life was my own now. A statewide conference call every morning, and a reporting deadline every night. It took almost no time for me to lose almost complete control of my voicemail and e-mail. And we quickly moved to farm out my mother job - a new babysitter two nights a week, grocery delivery service, and frequent visits from my Mom to keep the home front functional.
Building the Team
My first job was to assemble my core team. I needed RFO's, Regional Field Organizers, to make the workload manageable. They would be the primary people working with the organizing teams from each Congressional District. I needed to build volunteer teams in some areas that were weaker. I needed a data team, led by a Regional Data Manager, to handle the incredible volume of electronic information. I needed folks to manage the field offices, everything from answering phones to training phonebankers to figuring out how to keep the place clean.
All of these people who stepped up to take on these roles were volunteers - many had serious other commitments to jobs, families, and school. By the end of the campaign I would be astounded by what they sacrificed to do, and how well they performed work that would normally be done by paid staff.
The Field Plan
Job one - write a field plan. Set goals for each team for each week, for phone calls, interns, and general volunteer recruitment. And figure out how to meet them. I still have that first plan, and it still says "draft" at the top. These plans became obsolete as quickly as I generated them. But as one of the best Obama organizers I ever met explained, we are a "people-centered, numbers-driven organization." Numbers would drive me, relentlessly, invading even my sleep. I was constantly thinking and re-thinking the field plan, the structure and the goals.
I was given three major tasks at the outset: (1) identify interns - strong volunteers ready to give up three months of their life to work in a battleground state; (2) get phonebanks up and running in as many places as possible; (3) set up at least 3 "Camp Obama" organizer trainings. The first two seemed to reflect core electoral priorities. The third one was a little odd. Why spend so much energy on training volunteer leaders with so little time remaining? Shouldn't we just put everyone to work immediately making calls and knocking doors in Nevada and elsewhere? By September 7, after the first Camp Obama concluded, I would know the answer.
But I wasn't doing this alone. In California during the primary, we had basically pilot-tested the Obama organizing team model, one that would later be used successfully in a number of state primaries and throughout the nation in the general election. The basic idea was quite simple: take a discrete geographic unit, like a neighborhood, a county, a Congressional District. Identify a small group of volunteer leaders, and carve out discrete roles and responsibilities. Then turn over significant aspects of the organizing and voter contact work to them.
After the primaries in California, many of these teams stayed active and more or less together. These teams formed the core of my field plan, and sustained an incredible outpouring of work. Each time I set goals, I had to trust my teams to deliver what I committed to the campaign we could do.
The Convention
As August drew to a close, many people took off for Denver. I actually was happy to stay behind and get a better grip on my job. On the job training was literally true here, and I felt constantly behind. I didn't want to go to parties, I wanted to work.
I did stop for one thing, though. I watched the nomination roll call live online from my unusually empty office. This was a history-making moment, and I savored it. Finally, I could see evidence of real party unity. We were ready for the final fight.
Watching Barack's speech the next night, I felt amazingly proud of getting to this moment. I was thrilled by the rave reviews. We were riding high. It lasted less than 24 hours.
Enter Sarah Palin
As Palin made her VP debut, I had a hard time understanding the McCain campaign's strategy. It seemed to me they had just conceded that this election should be about change, and not experience. I thought they were vastly overestimating female disaffection with Obama. And I could not see how she could stand up to national media scrutiny. I wasn't really worried myself about Sarah Palin, in fact I told people at the time that she would "implode" before it was all over.
But boy, did I have to hear a lot of pained handwringing and fear mongering about Palin. Everyone wanted to talk to me about how worried they were. I just wanted to find out when they were planning to do something about it. I had some empty phonebank seats waiting for anyone ready to take constructive action.
Leading up to the Convention, I thought Obama's speech would be my great recruitment opportunity. We prepared lots of materials and organized ourselves to sign up as many highly committed volunteers as we could. By early September, I would find out istead that Sarah Palin was the best thing that ever happened to my volunteer base.
Next - September - The Palin Effect - The Office Opening - Camp Obama