Monday, July 7, 2008

Now hiring: grass-roots "volunteers"

Is anyone else as sick about this as I am? The Other Paper (Columbus) included this full-page ad on page 39 of the July 3 edition: "Activist Campaign Jobs. Elect Barack Obama." The body copy stated that the individual would be working for a contractor "to help elect Senator Obama and Democrats Everywhere." for a salary of $4,800-$8,000 over the summer.

This is not a partisan attack on Sen. Obama. For all I know, John McCain and any number of governors, senators, congressmen, etc., may do the same thing. What makes me sick is that the people are so far removed from their political process that people have to be hired to do grass-roots campaigning! This suggests that there are too few people who are passionate enough about politics to volunteer.

Just another example of how America has the best government money can buy...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I understand what you are saying- and it sucks that modern campaigns are so expensive.

But it's a fact: all campaigns need paid staff. You just can't get by on volunteers.

You can use unpaid volunteers for certain unskilled tasks like phone banking and canvassing, but even then, you can't always be sure people will show up or stay around long enough to finish the tasks you need them for.

Contracting some of this stuff out seems like a pretty good idea, actually, if they can afford it.

Harold Thomas said...

Joseph:

I understand that campaigns need some paid staff. In this piece, I was not writing about the press people, the advance people, or state coordinators.

I also understand that takes some professional knowledge to organize a phone bank or set up a literature drop (and I did that kind of work years ago).

I can also see where hiring people for grass-roots work can seem like a good idea from the campaign's point of view (and I've been there, too), as you have well expressed.

In a healthy society, where people live in communities where neighbors know their neighbors, the idea of hiring a contracting firm to pay people to get the word out at the grass roots would seem ridiculous and extravagant.

I suppose however, that a reasonable response to the preceding paragraph is, we're not "a healthy society, where people live in communities where neighbors know their neighbors."

Which is my point.

Ben said...

One reason Kerry lost in 2004 was that he relied too much on paid people and not volunteers who cared so much they would give up their own time.

Anonymous said...

Those are great points, Ben and Harold. It's not only sad that there are not enough passionate people about the elections.
It's also less effective for the candidate, since the most respected voice for most Ohioans is their neighbor.
I'll take the pizza-box campaigning days again anytime! :)