Monday, October 13, 2003

DaBait in Da Desert (Part 2)

Lunch with Bill was interesting. We talked about a few of the regular subjects, of course, sports, beer, and women, but the substance of the conversation was the campaign. It is an open secret that the Arizona campaign has no money. All the great work that Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff, Sierra Vista, Yuma, Green Valley, Oro Valley, and other communities are doing with only volunteer elbow grease and in-kind donations is astounding. Obviously, the Dean campaign is concentrating it's resources in NH and IA for the time being. Dean has made media buys in other states, such as TX, NM, OK, SC and WA, and also AZ, but they are not yet providing many resources to volunteers on the ground.

Bill is determined to change that. His strategy is to survey the needs of the campaign for infrastructure and materials and solicit in-kind donations to the Dean camapaign to meet those needs. So if you know of people who wish to support the Dean campaign and are interested in helping to deliver Southern AZ in particular, contact me and I'll pass in on to Bill.

We have lots of specific needs for materials and purchases for special projects and events, but the real challenge is infrastructure. Recurring fixed costs are difficult to cover with donations that are unpredictable by their nature, FEC laws which greatly limit how we handle money, and a fairly low limit on donations from each person.

Our first goal is an office. Some place for volunteers to meet and work, to store materials, receive interested voters in person and unify the campaign. It needs good drive-by visibility, a safe neighborhood, good parking, and ideally, ADA compliance. In short, it's prime real estate and we have to find it vacant (not terribly diffcult in this economy), and either for free or for way below market rent (not easy in any market).

Meetups have been serving some of the traditional function of campaign offices across the country and in AZ. This has significantly reduced costs to the campaigns, especially Dean's, and is one of the reasons for the acceleration of this Presidential primary season. Being able to create floating campaign offices to greet new supporters and orient them, to answer the questions of the curious, to court the undecided with the advocacy of supporters and rich media, and to get volunteers to work assisting with the campaign in substantive ways (such as the letter writing campaigns), all while expending hardly any resources has greatly benefitted the Dean campaign, and to a lesser extent those of Kucinich and Clark.

Other candidates failed to energetically support the Meetup movement, and at the same time, the Meetup phenomenon has highlighted the weaknesses of some candidate's campaigns. Meetups for Edwards, Graham, Kerry, Gephardt, and especially Lieberman, were repeatedly cancelled due to lack of participation. They generally had enough people registered to carry out Meetups, but with distressing regularity they failed to get enough people to attend. When people did attend there was little or no direction from the campaign and not much work was done.

I suspect that the main reason for the failure of Meetup for most other campaigns is that most of their supporters weren't interested in being advocates for their candidate. They would bet their chosen horse, but they weren't willing to ride it. Those campaigns are more focused on the traditional activities of campaigning; the private meetings with power brokers, and fundraising in private banquets and house parties. Lieberman and Edwards have been in AZ quite a good bit, but not many sees them because they schedule small talks with narrow interest groups, private discussions, and fundraising events where access to the candidate carries a hefty price tag. They simply don't regard the grassroots as a viable or useful part of the campaign. Thus they end up with ragweed or astroturf.

The second infastructural goal we set is a communication system worthy of the name. Right now, it is nearly impossible to contact volunteers unless you have a detailed knowledge of the people involved with the campaign. One needs a list of numbers the length of your arm, and even then you may find yourself waiting for a response for days or weeks because of vacations, sickness, family and work committments and random happenstance.

There is a number for the Phoenix HQ, but that hardly does someone in Benson or Nogales or Greenlee county any good. The volunteers at HQ haven't any better knowledge of the volunteers across the state than anyone else, even though they are talented and dedicated folks.

The solution is a single phone system, much like a big corporate PBX system, with an extension for each coordinator, forwardable to new personnel when jobs shift or people drop out. It must be capable of following a volunteer around the state or around the county, from number to number, with a extension and a single voicemail box. It should greet callers with a custom greeting and allow them to navigate to the exact extension they need. It must include customer service extensions with pre-recorded information which is most often requested to reduce call volume and conserve volunteer resources. It must offer fax back service for important information one might want a written record of, such as the locations of all the AZ Meetups or a volunteer list for one's home area.

Sound impossible or expensive? It's not. With Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) you can emulate a PBX costing hundreds of thousands for equipment, maintenence, and service charges, using volunteers existing phone numbers and with no equipment to purchase. The cost is generally less than $100.00 a month, including connection fees. Savvy businesses are increasingly migrating to such services, especially small and mid-sized business who want a big company image and automated telephony based customer service to augment their online presence. The moment I mentioned using such a system, Bill said he was not only familiar with such systems, he uses one for his own mortgage brokerage business.

Lunch consumed, Peter and I were ready to continue our business. Since we still had some time before the watching party, we decided to head over to the state campaign headquarters. We took leave of Bill and headed out to locate our Mecca.

Next time: DeanForAZ HQ, the watching party, Dean's post-debate appearance...

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