This state is soooo jacked up right now, carved up in three parts or more by labor groups.

Some of the endorsements aren't even formal; the leader of a group "personally favors" someone and it's enough for the rest of the union.

Some of the endorsements are paybacks for other political back scratching rendered in the recent past.  If you're from Michigan, you know which ones I'm talking about.  I won't outline them.

What's this got to do with the local campaign work?  It changes the entire complexion of resources available for phone banks.  For Gore's campaign, two unions in particular were helpful.  They've not endorsed Dean, though.  Another two unions have endorsed Dean, but one local is in the middle of moving offices right now.  The other local of the same union is more challenging to reach; their folks are always on the go.

So here we are, a little over a week and a half away from the Caucus, still putting together the resources.  This will be a LOT of fun, trying to find a site to use that's amenable and configured in such a way that we can get a rotating handful of folks working on phones.

Thankfully, the other county that I am helping is in much better shape; they have more options now.  We may be able to leverage them to assist this county.

Another challenge is that my home county has increasingly become right over the last couple of decades.  That's an unfortunate fallout in the wake of General Motors' fat and sassy past.  Once all the downsizing, reengineering and the outsourcing was done, all that was left was a bunch of mid-management types.  Labor was going and gone from this former bedroom community of a automotive town.  This makes finding openly Democratic resources much more difficult to locate.  When I was in high school here, you couldn't wave a stick without hitting a union worker -- or a Democrat.  Now?  I don't mention I'm a Democrat very often; it raises too many middle class eyebrows.

I’d be more upset if I didn’t already know the other candidates will have the same issues here.  There’s still a number of UAW and Teamsters here – but they endorsed Gephardt and have not re-endorsed anyone else.  They’ll be neutral, probably through the Caucus.  We can’t ask for them for help in the mean time, and neither will the other candidates.

Frustrated?  Yup, a little; I wish this was a little smoother sailing in so many ways.  But wow, am I learning a LOT.  They just don’t teach this in business school!

10:28:57 PM    comment []

As I indicated Saturday in my main blog entries, I’m going to be a bit thin over the next two weeks on regular blogging.  8:00 am to 2:00 pm each day will be dedicated to the Dean campaign as they prepare for the Michigan Caucus; I'm setting up a new category to capture this work.

Phone bank didn’t pan out on Saturday, but I spent my time on prep work for the next Meetup on 04-FEB-07.  Today will be spent working on getting out public service announcements, community calendar announcements, a list of this county’s registered Democrat voters and starting to set up appointments for the Dean staffers to meet with local high school students.

At some point over the next several days we’ll be working on literature drops, too.  Probably some evening hours as well, but it really depends on whether the spouse is around or not and whether I have a sitter to back up.

It’s kind of fun, all the buzz and excitement; I really wish I’d done this in years past and not let this kind of stuff slide.  I’d be so much more effective at this if I’d had any experience at all doing this.  Thankfully the staffers have done this before and are youngsters (20-somethings) who cheerfully take the world by the tail and give it a shake.  I hope it rubs off – it’s been a while since I was so impervious and superhuman.

More later as work progresses.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for Howard Dean!

11:29:31 AM    comment []

Were all our National Guard members to serve as George W. Bush did during his “tour”, how strong would our homeland security be?

Hmmm.

8:36:34 AM    comment []