When the Obama campaign swept into Texas earlier this week, hundreds of its organizers spread all across the Lone Star State and announced an audacious goal - to have at least one precinct captain in every precinct in the State of Texas, and in some cases more than one. Texas Precinct Captains will encourage their neighbors to support Barack Obama in early voting from February 19th to 29th, on election day, and at precinct caucuses held at precinct voting locations all across Texas on March 4th at 7:15 PM (make sure you are there early - at least by 7:00 PM - to ensure that you are not locked out, as sometimes has happened in other caucuses in states like Nevada!)
Call me a cynic, but when I heard the Obama campaign saying it wanted precinct captains, I thought that this was just impossible rhetorical bluster. Sure, they might get a few precinct captains in a handful of precincts, but for the vast majority of precincts, I assumed that it would be impossible to find someone willing to be a precinct captain.
Today I am not so sure about that.
Yesterday I saw a partial list of some of the Obama campaigns' precinct captains who have already signed up in my area, and I was truly astonished by how many there already are. I have worked and volunteered for campaigns both in Texas and in other states, and never have I seen anything like this. I made phone calls yesterday to Obama supporters, and I would say that as many as 50% of the people I talked to agreed to become precinct captains. The response and the enthusiasm level was simply amazing. Obama events (even without Obama or any campaign surrogates at all!) have been drawing crowds of hundreds of people in major cities like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin. In smaller cities and rural areas, I have run into more than a few people who drove more than 100 miles just to attend a meeting to find out how they can get involved in the campaign.
Texas Democrats are energized to previously unimaginable levels by this primary. For so many years, our votes have not mattered in any national election. One voter who I spoke to who agreed to be a precinct captain simply did not imagine that the Texas primary would ever mean anything. While in other states more used to the national political limelight, voters complain that there are too many political TV ads, I hear people in Texas complaining that they don't see enough of the candidates on TV! Now that it is clear that finally Texas Democrats will shape a national election for the first time in memory, Texas voters and volunteers are fired up and ready to go.
Hillary Clinton needs to win both Ohio and Texas, and while she leads in the polls in both states, they are tightening, particularly in Texas. My own projections have Hillary Clinton ahead by about 5% in the popular vote, but losing the delegate race to Barack Obama 98 to 95.
Not sure you are up to being a precinct captain for Obama? It is easy; anyone can do it, you can even be 12 years old!
The Obama campaign has made a website, www.texasprecinctcaptains.com with all the information and tools that Obama's Texas Precinct captains will need to deliver Texas' 126 primary delegates and 67 caucus delegates. You will be able to do everything you need to do, to call voters in your precinct - similarly to the Obama campaign's online phonebanking tool, and get all the materials you need, over the internet. Here are some screenshots from www.texasprecinctcaptains.com, which is still a work in progress, that will show you some of the tools you will have available to you as an Obama precinct captain in Texas:
Names/numbers in this screen shot are made up.
Names/numbers in this screen shot are made up.
So if you live in Texas, sign up to become a Texas Precinct Captain today!
If you don't live in Texas, you can still help by using Obama's online phonebanking tool to make calls to Texas and other states, and by donating to the campaign.