Life as a Political Professional

Why am I writing?

Just looking back at my older posts, it’s clear that I haven’t written in two years.  Primarily, this has been due to my current employment.  I always intended to go back to this blog after my employment ended.  I was signed into a 6-month contract, which was extended, then extended, then extended… and now I’ve been given a 2-year commitment within my organization. 

At this point, I may well never leave, which is practically unheard of these days.  So if I want to write, my employment is no longer an excuse. 

Today, I have the perfect excuse to write.  It’s my 30^th birthday, so I want to reflect (rant) on what my life has been like as a political professional. 

Who is a political professional?

When I say life, I really mean life after college, which ended in 2010.  I’ve been working in and out of politics ever since then (more in than out at this point), which is really not what I expected.  That’s typical among most of my colleagues.  None of us really planned a career in politics, and even fewer of us majored in anything remotely like political science. 

Though we didn’t plan politics as a career, neither did we fall into it by accident.  The common theme among my colleagues is an intense interest in people, and finding ways to help them.  We all want to save the world. 

We’re the people who followed the news closely and didn’t like what we saw.  We didn’t t take the status quo as given.  What makes us the same is that we always knew, inherently, that saving the world is possible. 

We drove the vehicle of hope and change, and we succeeded.  What the world didn’t realize is that change can look very much the same… it seems subtle, but only because while the world changes and policy with it, the old institutions don’t go away, and they fight change with every fiber of their existence. 

The truth is, if we aren’t changing the world as people and as professionals, the institutions will change the world.  Their version of change often looks and feels nostalgic, but it’s far worse than what we remember the old days to be[1].  

 How did I get here?

I had always figured myself for a career in government service, like my father and brothers before me.  I tried the private sector and hated it.  Government service is loveable work, but the pace is so excruciatingly slow.  Only politics has the blend of excitement and worthiness that keeps me interested.

Many of my colleagues will tell you the same story.  Working as a field organizer is one of the most stressful jobs.  So many of us have ended up in emergency rooms from panic attacks. Many more of us ended up with shattered relationships.  We’ve quit and tried other things… but we’re not made for the rest of the world.  Maybe we’re addicted to stress.

Whatever it is, we come back.  I don’t know why.  If you want to really know what it’s like to be a field organizer, pick up a phone book, dial 150 people, and ask them all to vote, then spend the rest of your day driving to everything resembling a political meeting in your town that you can find.  Once you’re home, look up every social group in the area and call their officers to see if they’ll sit down and talk with you.  In your spare time, read as much news as possible.  That’s an easy day. 

Truthfully, I lied when I said I don’t know why we come back.  Despite the panic attacks, despite being horrible, horrible friends, despite the despicable hours and inadequate pay, we come back because nothing is more fulfilling than fighting and winning for an important cause. 

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[1] I recommend The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin for more reading on this point.

News & Opinion: OFA 4.0 and Gun Control

This past Friday, I was invited to attend a rally hosted by Organizing for Action in Harrisburg to support universal background checks.  Anyone who knows me well knows that I have mixed feelings about gun control.  On one hand, I distrust the idea of guns being exclusively in the hands of an increasingly militarized police force, and on the other hand, I don't want America to be the wild west, either.  The answer is obviously not at either polar end, and is somewhere in-between.  Background checks, however, are clearly within that in-between.

Ralliers support background checks in Harrisburg

The reason I was most excited to attend the rally on Friday, however, was my interest in seeing how OFA 4.0's first real event would go.  Ever since Organizing for Action was announced, I've been extremely curious to see what would come of it. Its statement of purpose is vague enough to basically mean whatever President Obama wants it to mean, so I thought seeing OFA in person would make things a little more concrete.

About two dozen people showed up for Friday's rally.

Although I'd like to say the attendees came from all walks of life (and in some respects they did), they were all united in the fact that they were 2012 Obama supporters.  Their opinions on gun control differed incredibly.  One thing they all agreed upon was background checks made sense, and it's silly to say otherwise.  More impressive to me was their enthusiasm to support their cause on such a cold day with practically no notice on a Friday afternoon.  I had been contacted about this rally on Thursday night, and I assume most of the attendees had as well.  Considering the short turnaround, the attendance was actually fairly impressive.

Home-made signs by supporters coming from Lancaster, PA

This is fairly telling on what OFA 4.0 is and isn't going to be.  It won't be an especially dogmatic organization.  Just like Obama is willing to compromise to get action, OFA 4.0 isn't going to advocate for hand gun bans.  It will seek to gain grassroots support for low-hanging fruit ideas such as universal background checks.  It won't necessarily go out and create huge rallies, but it will keep Obama supporters who were left on the sidelines the past four years engaged.

OFA organizer Julia Cusick checks the early gatherers in.

After going to the rally, I'm still not exactly sure where OFA 4.0 is going, but I do see an organization capable of directing the conversation and tone around the gun control debate.  They can catch the attention of the 24-hour media cycle and at least get talking heads to acknowledge their stance.  While that may not be the marching in the streets Obama supporters imagined in 2008, this grassroots organization could be the moderate-left version of the 2010 tea party.  Here's hoping.

Elections 101: Why You Should Pay for a Field Program

Elections 101: Why You Should Pay for a Field Program

Being a field organizer for Organizing for America is a much bigger project than the title suggests. When I was first hired, I was responsible for running the entire field operation for Mercer, Lawrence, Venango, Clarion, and Forest counties. A few months into the campaign, Lawrence county was switched into another region, and I was given the east half of Crawford county and Warren counties to compensate. My junior staff consisted entirely of unpaid fellows and volunteers that I personally recruited, and I couldn't have done it without them.

My turf had two congressional districts (PA 3rd and 5th), a strong republican majority, and I don't even know how many PA Assembly seats. It was big. Even for GOTV (campaign lingo for "Get Out the Vote" - the final phase of an electoral campaign), when my turf shrank enormously due to hiring 3 new staffers, I still had 4 counties to manage, no paid junior staff, and no budget.

Let me repeat that again: I had no budget. I wasn't permitted to spend a single dime.

Fortunately, I didn't need to. That's not to say I didn't have resources. I did, but the costs are much lower than you'd expect for a field program. My overall GOTV operation for the final 4 days of the campaign included over 400 volunteer shifts recruited and 5 zero-cost staging locations for the volunteers to meet. The only expenses to the campaign were printing, phones, my (very low) salary, and internet.

If you're a candidate interested in running for office, consider how you can run an identical operation yourself:

Costs for a one-month GOTV field program

The costs for cell phone plans are getting increasingly low. The best method is to use an unlimited, prepaid service from a smaller carrier that uses a larger carrier's network. Such plans fall in the range of $30-$50/month. You can get by with 10 phones, especially since more and more volunteers are willing to put their own to use to help you out.

If you have your own printer, all you need is toner and paper. If you really, really want to distribute palm cards or leaflets, you can do so, but it's going to increase your costs, and the evidence I've read from Get Out the Vote (pgs 51-52 kindle edition), suggests that leaflets in general have a low effect on voter turnout. If you forgo your leaflets, your biggest cost will be printing out walk lists, which can actually get fairly expensive as your campaign scales upward. If you absolutely must have leaflets, I'd suggest printing them in-house over third-party.

Under both the low-cost estimate and the high-cost estimate, the largest cost is your field staff. Spending more on your field staff is a wise move. We have a tendency to work very long hours for fairly low pay. If you put in a $2,000-$5,000/month investment in a staffer, you can get one to work full-time to recruit and train your volunteers to be your entire field program. As the only paid staffer, I recruited over 400 volunteer shifts for a 4-day GOTV program. 

This type of program is entirely worth it. The best alternative to an organized volunteer canvass is to pay canvassers, who go at the rate of $10-$16/hour. When Green and Gerber calculated the cost-effectiveness of canvassing operations at $16/hour, the cost came down to $29 of labor for 1 additional vote (page 43 - kindle edition). While that may seem high, it beat out knockless leafletting $34/ 1 vote (pg 53 - kindle edition) or direct mail pieces $67/ 1 vote (pg 71), and was more cost-effective than hiring telemarketers or direct advertising (just read the book). 

If you can forgo the costs of hiring paid canvassers through recruiting volunteers, that's certainly the way you should go. No matter how you run your canvassing operation, you will have to invest in some overhead costs  in materials necessary for a canvass operation. As a single staff member, however, I recruited a large volunteer army. If you're looking to win an election, hire an organizer to do it for you. There are plenty of ex-OFA staff who did exactly the same thing as I did, and they'll do it for you, too.

Gerrymandering the Electoral College: Republicans Risk Much

Gerrymandering the Electoral College

There's a (bit more than a) rumor going about that the GOP is trying to rig the electoral college by assigning electoral votes based on congressional districts. It's serious enough that MSNBC did a story on it and Think Progress is up in arms about it. 

There is currently such a proposal being considered in Pennsylvania, and the initial thoughts about the severity of PA's gerrymandering are alarming; PA's 20 electoral college votes, if broken down in the 2012 election, would have resulted in 7 electoral college votes for Obama, and 13 for Romney, despite Obama winning the state by a comfortable 5% margin (current proposal giving remaining 2 electoral votes to popular vote winner). 

The problem with the assumption being made here is that if the electoral college had been gerrymandered for 2012, the election results wouldn't have gone the same way, and for one reason alone: resources. 

The 2012 OFA PA campaign was very heavily centered on Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Northwest PA for instance, encompassing Erie, Warren, Forest, Crawford, Venango, Claron, and Mercer counties were given less field staff than any one of the counties surrounding Philadelphia, and far less than any of the Philadelphia cross-section regions. For a good majority of the campaign (2011-2012), we only had 3 field staff for all of Northwest PA.

Under the winner-take-all electoral college system that we currently have, this breakdown absolutely makes sense. Obama carried over 85% of the vote in Philadelphia county alone, so it was essential to get as much turnout as possible in Philly and its suburbs to drum up popular vote support. If we had a congressional district break-down, however, our strategy would have been very different, and this is why Republicans would be very short-sighted to pass the gerrymandering bill.

If Republicans make the mistake of gerrymandering the electoral college, Democrats will make them pay by challenging every single one of their congressional districts. As it currently stands, the only truly lopsided victories in the 2012 congressional races were won by Democrats, who were gerrymandered into noncompetitive districts. A closer look at the 2012 congressional results reveals to me that the Pennsylvania Democratic Party actually has a lot of opportunities to make gains in congressional seats.

If Democrats somehow got a 5-7% swing in electoral results in some of the outlier congressional districts that had fewer resources, they would gain 5 more congressional seats, switching the results to 12 electoral votes for Obama, and 8 for Romney. This isn't even considering the fact that Obama outperformed many democratic congressional candidates in their home districts. In Venango County, for instance, Charles Dumas carried only 31.8% of the vote, while Barack Obama had 35.8%. 

Resources were certainly an issue in the 2012 elections for Democratic congressional hopefuls. Broken down in order by congressional district from FEC disclosures:

For the most part, the candidate who spent the most, won, and victories closely represented money spent. The the largest outlier appears to be the 12th congressional district, but it should be noted that Mark Critz spent over $1 million on a contested primary, whereas Keith Rothfus did not have a contested primary. I should also note that this chart represents only the money spent by the candidates themselves: third-party PAC expenditures are not represented.

There are a few districts that I find especially competitive on the face: the 3rd, 7th, 8th, 12th, 15th, and the 16th. With more resources, democrats could put up a larger challenge against Republicans, and possibly gain valuable seats in the house. Should Republicans actually make the mistake of gerrymandering the electoral college, any race within a 15% margin will see a surge of Democratic resources, including ads, ground staffers, and off-season coalition building. Seeing the large amount of resources spent by democrats in completely uncompetitive elections, it's clear that the resources are available for a shift in strategy. If republicans successfully change the rules in multiple states, we'll see a similar story in each of them, resulting in fewer congressional seats for Republicans, and maybe even enough turnover for Republicans to lose the House of Representatives entirely.

If Republicans really want to put these seats up for grabs, they're welcome to do so. Democrats would love the challenge, and they would make the Republican party pay - one way or another.