Voter Outreach, Door by Door

By Christopher Hayes, In These Times. Posted January 27, 2004.

Election Day is a year away and the Democrats don't yet have a presidential nominee. But for labor activists, environmentalists, pro-choice advocates and other progressives, the battle for the White House is well under way.

About a dozen groups -- backed by the likes of Emily's List, the AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club and MoveOn.org -- are quietly building an infrastructure to undertake the most extensive door-to-door grassroots voter contact operation in U.S. history. Its potential to turn the election already is well understood on both sides: Veteran activists say they haven't felt this energized in decades while Republicans are using congressional hearings to shut down the operation or steal directly from its playbook.

"It's never been done before on this level," says Steve Rosenthal, the former political director of the AFL-CIO and current president of America Coming Together, a voter outreach group funded by Emily's List, organized labor and private donors such as George Soros. "It's something that the parties should have been doing but were neglecting."

Cecile Richards, former chief of staff to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, is director of America Votes, a coalition of 24 progressive organizations that will be coordinating field efforts. She echoes Rosenthal and adds, "For me, personally, that's the best kind of politics, direct retail, engaging voters about issues. I think it's a really welcome change and emphasis."

These field operations will be supervised, coordinated and executed by these same dozen so-called 527s, such as Americans Coming Together and America Votes, created after McCain-Feingold to circumvent the ban on soft money. Named for the section of the tax code that regulates them, these progressive 527s -- nearly all funded and organized by traditional Democratic allies such as labor, environmental and reproductive rights groups -- can raise huge sums of unregulated money for voter education and registration so long as they do not advocate for a specific candidate.

The party that sticks together

Issue advocacy and voter contact in an election year is nothing new, but never before have progressive groups come together to coordinate their efforts, pool their resources and collectively execute the program. Although the organizational structure binding the half-dozen largest 527s is to a certain extent ad hoc, most of the groups are staffed by the same pool of veteran political organizers and headquartered in the same office building at 888 16th St. -- across the street from the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C.

Each 527 has a specific geographic or demographic niche. America Coming Together, which with a projected budget of $98 million is the largest, is looking to register and educate Democratic-leaning voters in 17 battleground states. Partnership for America's Families is focusing on registering minority voters in swing state urban centers like Cleveland and St. Louis. And Voices for Working Families is working on registering and contacting black, Latino and women voters in other hotly contested areas such as Dade and Broward counties in Florida.

Alongside groups that will manage and execute the field operations are a few 527s, like America Votes, dedicated solely to coordinating these efforts. "We want to make sure everyone isn't knocking over each other in the same neighborhoods," Richards says. "It's a big country and there are a lot of voters."

Nearly all 20 organizations within the America Votes coalition routinely meet to share ideas and strategies. Richards says that groups with more experience, such as organized labor, have been mentoring units newer to the field: "It's an opportunity for those who are established to work with groups that are newer, that have more flexibility." A few of the 527s plan to use their funds for media and advertising, but most will focus on getting out into people's neighborhoods and knocking on doors.

"Everyone's learned their lesson from the 2000 election," says Aimee Christensen, executive director of Environment 2004, a 527 put together by a coalition of environmental groups. "A lot of money went into media and not into peer-to-peer contact and it wasn't effective because [TV] markets were overwhelmed. It increases the credibility of the information when it comes from someone in their community." Turning away from TV since the '70s, presidential campaigns have traditionally focused on raising the massive funds needed to buy expensive television airtime. This emphasis on big media and big money meant that the grassroots, person-to-person campaigning traditionally at the core of the Democratic Party's strategy fell by the wayside.

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