It was clear that the field organizers knew that they were always being evaluated, and so we were always knocking doors and placing phone calls. Some of the problem was management by metric. (Someday soon, someone will push gently on the Malden Democratic City Committee and it will simply fall over.) Patrick’s Day crowd is the way it’s always been done. The city has changed we still have lots of new immigrants, but they’re from China and South Asia and Eastern Europe and Haiti, and we have lots of young folks too, but working the St. The big events have dinner at 5:30 and lots of walkers and guys singing Irish songs. Some of this is a matter of local politics: the Malden Democrats still inhabit a world where the big social issue is getting the Irish and Italian immigrants into the mainstream of society. I tried to get information on speeches for the Malden For Warren web site, and was told by the Volunteer Coordinator that they were secret, lest Republicans show up. I never saw Mindy Myers, the campaign manager. We printed our own brochures on or own ink jet printers.Īnd, in all this time, I never saw Elizabeth, never heard her stump speech. Getting a lawn sign was a mark of great favor with headquarters. This was an extraordinarily well funded campaign, but until the end we never had sufficient collateral. In July, I asked that leadership meeting, “How many volunteers will we need on November 6?” We didn’t have an answer then, nobody seems to have thought about it until October, and then we found ourselves scrambling to get bodies to cover the bare necessities at the polls. We never found out who could help and how the field organizers were being evaluated on doors knocked and phone calls made, and pumping those numbers for this week was what mattered. Lots of people have special skills or talents – lawyers can litigate and negotiate, writers can write, programmers can code, chefs can cook, and people who happen to have a van or a pickup can haul stuff. I don’t think anyone got around to using it.
#Tinderbox eastgate manual#
Linda came in for phone bank training, went home, and wrote a manual for new phone bank people. Let me help you.” She told me to make phone calls. “I can write training documents so you don’t have to spend 40 minutes with every new volunteer. “I can manage, I can organize, I can screen your emails.” I told her. I begged the 20-something who was running Volunteers for the summer. “Knock on doors, make phone calls.” But I’m lousy at canvassing, and I have a terrible time hearing the phone, and I’m rather good at a bunch of other things. I begged the North Shore Field Director for work. I tried to convince someone to let me do blogger outreach, inside or outside the campaign. I tried to convince someone to do blogger outreach. That’s 100,000 impressions right there, and mine is a very niche blog. What’s the font? What are the PMS colors? No one knew, or knew anyone who knew. I asked everyone, all the time, for the campaign graphic standards. The logo you see above? I photoshopped it. She was encouraging in lots of directions, and never wrote back. In July, I launched a miniature campaign inside the campaign, calling in favors from colleagues and politically-connected former employees, just to get the new media director to respond to my email. I begged the campaign’s new media director for work of any sort. At the last minute, one volunteer decided to replace all the copy with pabulum and threatened to quit and start a rival organization. We went through something like four drafts. I was asked to design a four-sentence handout for the city’s July 4 celebration. Starting in June, we had “leadership” meetings in a pizzeria to plan the campaign for our 50,000-person city. Want it non-disclosed to be sure I’m not a snake-oil charlatan? Fine. I think that Tinderbox would be a terrific tool for field organizers. And I got a few friendly emails, but nobody gave me work. Need a web site? Need collaborative writing tools? Need something written? Need lunch? I was your guy.
In Malden, we went from an 1800 vote margin in the special election to a 6200 vote margin in this one.īut, man, was it hard to help these people.īack in February, I started sending out offers of assistance.
But back in July I wrapped up a house party that was descending into maudlin strategic wrangling with an impromptu claim that it looked really close at the moment but by election day we’d be ten points ahead. The campaign was a tremendous effort, and I was shaking in my boots right to the end.
That was Paul Krugman at 2AM on the morning after the election, and he was right.
But in the end, discipline and being on the right side of the issues prevailed. So, for a while there during the campaign it seemed very iffy.
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