Over the weekend over 60 grassroots activists attended the Camp Bayh campaign training in South Bend, IN. Camp Bayh featured three tracks: party leaders, future campaign professionals, and future candidates.
Many of the graduates of last weekend's Camp Bayh will go on to the Camp Bayh Immersion Program in August, which will then place 50 graduates with paid positions on campaign staffs around the country, with funding coming from the All America PAC donor base.
Several of the participants of Camp Bayh-South Bend wrote about their experiences at Camp Bayh on the All America PAC Blog:
Caitlin Worm, a 18 year old freshman at IUSB, gave two interviews about her experiences at Camp Bayh. In her
final interview she notes the influence that the graduates of the Camp will have on the fall elections:
Caitlin: The combination of the camp here this weekend and the camp recently in Indy will without a doubt have a major impact on the November elections. Everyone was incredibly pumped up to go out and get every Democrat or Independent to vote for our candidate this November.
I cannot describe the energy and enthusiasm that everyone had during every minute of the three days.
Indiana State Senator Tim Lanane attended the camp, despite the fact he has already run successfully for public office, after hearing his daughter rave about the previous Camp Bayh:
I came to Camp Bayh even though I have successfully run for elected office several times now because my daughter and several of her friends in the Madison County Young Democrats could not say enough about the last training and how much they learned. I can tell you I have taken several legal pages worth of notes and I cannot tell you how much I have learned from this, despite the fact I have successfully run for office before.
The most impressive thing was how much I have learned from the sixteen other candidates that are in the candidate track, many of whom have never run for office before. The future of the Democratic Party in Indiana is very bright if we can get all of these future candidates to run and win elections in our state.
Our state party is also going to be hiring many of the young people in the future paid professionals track and I have been so impressed with everything that they have done here and I when we look to hire people for campaigns here in Indiana, the graduates of Camp Bayh is where we will start first.
In addition, future candidate Torey Collins commented on the skills he gained at Camp Bayh and future young professional Richard Luchette, a sophomore college student, noted the importance of gaining "hands on" experience at Camp Bayh on the All America PAC Blog.
For more information about the Camp Bayh Immersion Program please click here. You can also read more about Camp Bayh-South Bend on the All America PAC Blog and view photos of the camp at flickr.com.