NVC Explanation
Scores of thousand so people, many of them paid (how else do you squander $200 million?), knocked on millions of doors during this campaign. The Democratic-leaning canvassers left information, repeated a canned sales pitch and moved along. They did not engage the people in real conversations. They did not listen to their concerns. They did not recruit real volunteers to work on their own blocks. They did not take the time to find out which pastor or rabbi was a leader in an area and which congregations people attended. They were progressive salespeople with a high quota of contracts and not time to relate, who disappeared from people’s towns and lives the very moment, on election night, that they learned the sale had not been made. It was as if they had never been there, and in a way, they never were.
I find five problems with this type of campaign:
- We see high turnover rate of volunteers. The volunteers usually do not return because they never formed any connections with the voters. They were not working in their own neighborhoods, so they have no continual personal connection. This means that with each new campaign, energy has to be used to train and recruit a new set of volunteers, instead of building on the volunteer experience and base of the last campaign.
- When we are starting from almost scratch with each election, we are not able to reach all the voters. When we only have a limited amount of volunteers to canvass, we put all our energy into the “targeted areas.” These target areas, the cities, are the areas that are going to turn out the most Democratic votes. However, the cities are not carrying the whole country, and if we continue with this campaign style, the cities will not carry Pennsylvania. We need to have enough volunteers to have all the areas covered.
- This campaign style is not converting voters. Our Democratic base is shrinking, so longer can we count on winning by just getting out the Democratic vote. We need to convert voters to change or come back to the Democratic Party. This must happen all across the country. The populations outside of the cities are getting redder and converting these voters is critical.
- A volunteer-voter relationship can never form and grow when new volunteers are contacting voters with each new campaign. An ongoing relationship is essential for the voters to trust the volunteers’ messages.
- The volunteers are not truly relating to voters on a personal level. They cannot relate on this level, because they have no personal connection to the voter. Often voters are left saying, "They only wanted my vote. They don’t really care about me."
The Neighborhood Volunteers Committee combats each of these problems with positive objectives:
- Increase volunteer retention.
- Increase the areas that are covered by volunteers.
- Convert voters to change or come back to the Democratic Party.
- Create volunteer-voter relationships.
- Insist that volunteers be personally connected to the voters that they campaign.
The committee does this by strengthening and supporting the existing Cumberland and Dauphin County Democratic Committee grassroots structure by creating projects that will increase the number of volunteers working in their own neighborhoods and by supplying support materials for precinct committee persons and their volunteers.
Let me use my personal precinct committee person experiences to show you how the grassroots structure combats the five problems and reaches our positive objectives. I will start with a little personal background. I am a complete novice to local politics. I am passionate about my causes, and the past election drove me to volunteer. I became a committee person of my New Cumberland precinct during the Kerry campaign, and dove right in without following any manual or rules of campaigning.
I start with volunteer retention. When I first said I would canvass voters in my precinct, I promised I would do about one hundred houses. Once I started, I realized what I was doing was too important. I felt all the voters in my precinct must be contacted. However, after many, many days of knocking on doors, I realized the precinct was too big for a one-woman show. This is when I decided to have a volunteer house party. I dropped invitations to all the voters that I had visited that seemed positive to the campaign and to anyone with a Kerry sign in their yard. I knew that not all the volunteers would want to go door-to-door, so I considered all the things that they could do: stuff campaign bags, drop campaign literature, cut and tie door hangers, research voters’ issues and print copies, work at the polls, etc. The party was a success. (The eight homemade desserts helped.) I netted fifteen new volunteers for my precinct, and they got to meet a local candidate and their Area Leader. These volunteers were passionate about the same issues and felt connected with a cause. These new relationships made us feel more connected as neighbors. I bought a piece of artwork from one of my volunteers for a Christmas present for my sister. I received a jar of blue jellybeans from one and a Bushisms Calendar from another. I send emails to all of them with current Democratic and neighborhood happenings. It is now the start of a new campaign. Are we starting from scratch? No. I just dropped invitations to all of those first volunteers, others that joined during the campaign, and others that are possible volunteers. We are already connected, and as we continue on, more will join us.
Next, I consider how making the grassroots structure stronger increases the area the campaign can cover. This almost seems obvious, but I want to point out a few things. It is the second campaign for me and I am already dreaming about whom I am going to assign to what streets. Last campaign, I had about six volunteers who wanted to go door-to-door. Our precinct is big, so we had to cover a lot of territory. However this time, I met so many Democrats that I feel I can recruit a volunteer for every major street. (The County Committees call them block captains.) They will come to own their street as I came to own this precinct. The voters on their streets will get a lot more personal attention than I could give them. They will know when new neighbors move onto their street, and they will be able to greet them as a neighbor and a Democratic block captain. This increase in volunteers can be happening in every precinct across the counties. Every voter could eventually know his/her Democratic volunteer as a neighbor on his/her own street or block.
I must admit, my stomach was in knots when I knocked on doors of Republican houses. However, I realize the importance of those knocks when I look at the results. One Republican was surprised he was registered Republican. This man definitely sided with Democrats’ beliefs, but obviously was not actively political since he must not have been voting in the primaries. He became one of my main door-to-door campaigners and worked all day as a poll watcher on Election Day. All he needed was someone to motivate him. I knocked on another door where only one Republican male was registered. A woman answered and was visibly upset when I asked if she was registered. She got her husband, and she stood behind him as we had a long and good discussion about politics. At the end of our conversation, I apologized for upsetting his wife. Their neighbor was helping me bag literature packets for the campaign and had two Kerry signs in her yard. He asked her where she got them. I delivered the sign that same day. This year I was collecting Democrats’ signatures for candidates’ petitions. The couple was sitting on their front porch as I walked by, so I kidded that I was not ignoring them but that they couldn’t sign my petition. We talked for a while, and I found out that the woman did not want to register because she did not want to be called for jury duty. I explained to her that the names are now taken from license information. The husband commented that he just should register as a Democrat. All of these voters listened to the media, but never got motivated. Converting these voters only happened because a neighbor knocked on their doors.
What happens when the Democratic volunteers are the same each year and are the voters’ neighbors? The fourth and fifth objectives are reached. The voter and Democratic volunteer form a real relationship and the volunteer relates to the voter on a personal level. My children, our dog, and I walk all over this neighborhood. We go to the local theater. We buy our food at the local grocery store. My children play with the local children. Now when I do all of these daily activities, I am constantly connecting to these voters that I first met by knocking on their doors. I saw Doris taking out the trash the week after I first contacted her. She saw me marching with my folder, and she told me to “Go get them!” I just saw her last week standing in her doorway. She had the flu, so I told her to feel better. There was the man whom I recognized because his dog loved to bark at my dog when they walked by my back fence. Now I walk out and talk dog and politics with Kurt and his dog, Piper, by the back gate. I get emails from these voters turned friends when I write letters to the editor about the tearing down of the row houses on Bridge Street and the tearing down of the Social Security. I sit and talk to one family of Democrats about their concern about the local skate board park. I know what they are talking about and can relate to them. It is in my neighborhood, too. I hug and cry with one man about the death of his wife. These are trusting and personal relationships that will grow.
I was a novice to the whole political grassroots structure, but what I found was that it is emotionally taxing and rewarding at the same time. It does not have to be as time consuming as it was for me. The committee people can be supported with materials, so they are not working from scratch. I would have loved it if someone gave me ideas for volunteer recruitment. I would have loved it if someone helped me recruit volunteers. I would have loved it if I got sample letters to drop to voters, agendas for house parties, door hangers, thank you for registering letters, etc. The mission of the Neighborhood Volunteers Committee will make the job a lot less time consuming, which might lessen the emotional drain. There still will be some emotional drain, but I can promise you the rewards will outweigh the drain.
I leave you with my favorite story. It first started when I was knocking on a door at the end of a street. Two teenage girls laughed at me for a good minute. Until they finally told me that it is just the main door of the apartment building. (I probably was being overly cautious since I already had opened a door that I thought was similar to this one only to find me opening directly into a family’s living room and looking directly at a family watching television.) Inside this apartment building I met a woman who had two children. She just was being moved into her boyfriend’s apartment by her boyfriend and her ex-husband. She looked tired, and you knew she was just trying to make it through life the best way she knew how. Her two young children proceeded to unpack my organized bag, as I sat on her floor to register the both of them. I had nothing that excited her children, so I made sure I dropped off lollipops when I dropped off my thank you note for registering. Then, I dropped off a door-hanger to remind them about the election. Their apartment door was open, so I gave it to them personally. They asked me where the polls were. This was written on the previous thank you note, and it was on the door-hanger. The day of the election, I thought about all the voters I expected to see. I reviewed names, so I could greet them. I did not expect to see Rose and Terry. Then they came. They parked their old jalopy in the parking lot and just sat there. They were scared and unsure of themselves. I walked over and knocked on the window. I reassured them. They walked out of the polling place proudly. On Christmas day I walked up some presents for Rose’s children. Rose was dressed for Christmas, and she smiled her shy smile. I would never have met these two. They would not ever have been in my circle of friends, but now we are connected. Honestly, I am hoping something in all these experiences will move you to contact your precinct committee person and offer to volunteer and/or become a committee person for your precinct.
Johanna Brown
Neighborhood Volunteers Committee Chair
VoteBluePA