On Sunday, I learned from listing to the Kudzu Vine that our good friend Steve Deak (currently working a freelance job in Green Bay), has been traveling to Iowa on weekends to canvass for his man Obama. We all know I'm a Hillary fan, but I'm also a Steve Deak fan, so I asked him to tell us more about his experience at political ground zero. Below is Steve's first report:
When I arrived in Green Bay, Wisconsin to start a 6 month consulting gig I was wondering what the heck was I going to do with any free weekends I would have since I would only be going home about once a month. Being a political junkie and all, I decided I would spend some time in Iowa. I drove up here so I had wheels. I figured it wasn't too far. So I headed down to Dubuque early one Saturday morning last month to check it out.
I spent about 2 hours talking to the field organizer, Nick Meyer, about how things were going and trying to gather info to send to the Gwinnett County Obama supporters. The pictures are from the Dubuque HQ visit. They seemed to be very well organized but lacked a lot of slick mailers or flashy lit. They had plenty of issue related 'white papers' to hand out though. Nick had said they just plain ran out from all the canvassing and giving stuff to walk-ins asking about Obama. A group of about 10 volunteers from the Chicago area were there that day canvassing. It's a smart move, these folks all lived in Obama's old state senate district and could really talk about his community activism as well as his record in the state senate. I left that day committing to come back and doing some canvassing in the next few weeks.
The next day I got a call from the field organizer in Clayton County, Orrin Evans. Clayton county is the northeastern most county in Iowa, right on the Mississippi river. He wanted to know when I could come down and help. Dubuque had plenty of volunteers so they were moving people around within the northeast district. Which brings me to this past Saturday, the day I went down to do some canvassing. I didn't even bring my camera because I wanted to focus on talking to the people of Iowa.
When I got to the HQ in Elkader, I noticed that it was pretty much set up just like Dubuque. When we started talking about the tasks, Orrin explained it just as Nick had in Dubuque. The Obama field operation has done a really good job of creating a standard process across the state. This allows them to move staff and volunteers rapidly around the state without have to retrain them on 'How we do things here'. Good for them. I hear they have the same setup for every state which will allow them to quickly move their folks into other early states with no ramp-up time needed.
They are also using VAN, as all the candidates are. They have some private tags but general voter info such as bad phone numbers, party id and such are being shared with the local Democratic parties. It's about freakin' time. Kudo's go to DNC Chair Howard Dean for that!
Now on to what you really want to know, what are the caucus goers in Iowa like. I canvassed in McGregor and Strawberry Point. The hardcore caucus goers know their precinct captains and expect you to take a few minutes to talk to them about your candidate. It usually went something like this...They would come to the door and see the Obama sticker and either smile or give you a poker face. After the introduction I would ask if they planned on attending the upcoming caucus on Jan 3rd. By this point I kinda got a feel for how they felt about Obama by their body language. I had one elderly lady that said NO! Not Obama! as soon as she saw my sticker and shut the door in my face. That was one of about 40 people I talked to. I found out one hazard of cavassing in Iowa is that you never get through as many houses as you would expect to because people wanted to talk about the candidates. More than once I spent 15 - 20 minutes at one house.
Who was the favorite in the neighborhoods I canvassed in? Most of the previous caucus goers were either already committed to or leaning towards either Obama or Edwards. Very few were really excited about Hillary except the elderly lady I mentioned previously. Democratic voters who had never participated in the caucus were just starting to listen. My personal feeling is that if these folks that have never participated decide to go to the caucus Jan 3rd, Obama will win by a fair amount, maybe 6 or 8 percent. If just the hardcore, experienced caucus goers attend, it could be a very, very close race. Which is why I plan on going back at least a few more weekends to continue canvassing. I also am looking into helping organize a precinct on caucus day.
On the Republican side, only 2 names came up at all....Romney and Huckabee.
Comments (2)
South Carolina rules!
It is good to read about your experience. Keep up the good work!