Changing the Ground Wars
In 2004, liberals who wanted to elect John Kerry linked up with 527s or independent campaigns. This year, with pro-Obama liberals working directly for his campaign, the independent groups have scaled back.
HAROLD MEYERSON
American Prospect
October 31, 2009
It's October, time for political activists to walk all over Ohio. Four years ago, in the heyday of 527s and other independent political groups, roughly 18,000 staffers and volunteers for America Coming Together (ACT), the largest 527, crisscrossed the state on the campaign's final weekend to turn out the vote for John Kerry.
This year, Barack Obama's presidential campaign has more money, organizers, and volunteers than the 527s (or anyone else in American political history) could even dream of. (Newsweek's Howard Fineman recently estimated the national number of volunteers at a mind-boggling 5 million.) Within Ohio, says state campaign communications director Isaac Baker, Obama has 89 field offices, an unspecified number (but surely in excess of 450) of paid organizers, and thousands of volunteers, 10,000 of whom walked precincts on the weekend of Oct. 18-19. The revitalized Ohio Democratic Party, its fortunes bolstered by Gov. Ted Strickland and Sen. Sherrod Brown, both elected in 2006, now has 75 offices of its own around the state, and is campaigning hard in five currently Republican congressional districts.
So what has become of the parallel party of 2004? What has become of all those organizations that arose when Democrats feared the new campaign finance reform laws would leave them at a competitive disadvantage unless their allies in the labor, feminist, and environmental communities, funded directly by such mega-donors as George Soros, could field get-out-the-vote operations of their own? What's become of ACT, and of America Votes, which four years ago coordinated the activities of all those groups?
ACT is no more. America Votes, which helped unions, Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, and the NAACP's political action arm plan their campaigns and kept them from colliding with one another, is still around, in attenuated fashion. And the one state where it has maintained a constant presence since 2004 is Ohio, even if, at times, that presence was simply Scott Nunnery, its talented state director.
(More here.)
HAROLD MEYERSON
American Prospect
October 31, 2009
It's October, time for political activists to walk all over Ohio. Four years ago, in the heyday of 527s and other independent political groups, roughly 18,000 staffers and volunteers for America Coming Together (ACT), the largest 527, crisscrossed the state on the campaign's final weekend to turn out the vote for John Kerry.
This year, Barack Obama's presidential campaign has more money, organizers, and volunteers than the 527s (or anyone else in American political history) could even dream of. (Newsweek's Howard Fineman recently estimated the national number of volunteers at a mind-boggling 5 million.) Within Ohio, says state campaign communications director Isaac Baker, Obama has 89 field offices, an unspecified number (but surely in excess of 450) of paid organizers, and thousands of volunteers, 10,000 of whom walked precincts on the weekend of Oct. 18-19. The revitalized Ohio Democratic Party, its fortunes bolstered by Gov. Ted Strickland and Sen. Sherrod Brown, both elected in 2006, now has 75 offices of its own around the state, and is campaigning hard in five currently Republican congressional districts.
So what has become of the parallel party of 2004? What has become of all those organizations that arose when Democrats feared the new campaign finance reform laws would leave them at a competitive disadvantage unless their allies in the labor, feminist, and environmental communities, funded directly by such mega-donors as George Soros, could field get-out-the-vote operations of their own? What's become of ACT, and of America Votes, which four years ago coordinated the activities of all those groups?
ACT is no more. America Votes, which helped unions, Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, and the NAACP's political action arm plan their campaigns and kept them from colliding with one another, is still around, in attenuated fashion. And the one state where it has maintained a constant presence since 2004 is Ohio, even if, at times, that presence was simply Scott Nunnery, its talented state director.
(More here.)
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