CNN calls Ohio for Obama with 15% reported."E" Day
The parking lot at the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Cleveland was filled with the vans and the arching cranes of local TV affiliates there to transmit the celebration of two anticipated victories. The first and most personal to this crowd was the contest for Ohio's 20 electoral votes. The polls closed at 7:30pm. The second celebration would be at 11pm when the results from California and rest of the West Coast were reported, collectively deciding our next president.
Local TV reporter taking in the returns at Hilton.
Celebrants at Ohio Democrats' Victory Party at the Hilton in Cleveland.And of course it happened just like that. Ohio was called for Obama shortly after the polls closed to an eruption of screams and applause. The band struck up and people danced and embraced. We then watched contentious states like Virginia, Florida and Indiana report Obama victories. The room floated with confident optimism. As 11pm approached we refocused back to the CNN display on the wall. The network's digital display clocked ticked over to 11pm, 8pm PST, and suddenly the screen flashed: Barack Obama projected winner.
Round two of elation and this time tears of joy and relief. Happy disorientation. This was the immediate conclusion of months of hard work and pious dedication for many in this room.
Marathon Run on Pizza
Although I joined the Obama campaign only a month before, I was operating on a deficit of sleep weeks in the making and it felt like I had aged a decade. This was the end, whether I liked it or not; and I did, despite the the fact that working for Barack Obama had been the most inspiring experience of my life. What could top this?
The pace and energy within the campaign offices, particularly during the weeks preceding Election Day, were beyond frenetic and verged on punishing. The glaring finitude of days remaining before the polls closed forced everybody to re-imagine how much of everything could be crammed into each 24 hour day. Sleep of course was needed, but just how little one needed was tested. Meals were taken standing over tables in the back where generous supporters from the community had delivered lasagnas, wraps or twenty pizza pies.
The effect of all of this felt like one part refugee camp and one part college exam week. The scene within the offices appeared that way too. As Election Day approached staffers sported the disheveled look of skipped showers and yesterday's shirts. Field organizers could be seen cat-napping next to their desks in the middle of the day.
Facebook pauses for Freedom Marchers
The collegiate feel was most resonant in the simple fact that most of all staffers operating the ground campaign were kids in their 20’s. Some had just graduated college, and many had taken the semester off to join camp Obama. At 31 I was older than most people in greater positions of responsibility than myself.
After me the next age group was the full time volunteers, many of whom had taken sabbaticals from work or were retired. They became the anchor and historical perspective for the rest of the room, more familiar with activism from Facebook than the Freedom Marches.
The night before Election Day a volunteer old enough to know the Civil Rights Movement personally told the room with great emotion that what we were about to do, what the country was about to do, was unimaginable to him when he grew up. He asked us to pause for a moment so that we could all reflect on this important moment. We all had lumps in our throats.
Volunteers and staffers listening to Barack Obama on a conference call the weekend before election.Informal testimonies like this popped up frequently as Election Day became more imminent. The daily grind of knocking on doors, meeting voter contact goals, and building neighborhood teams narrowed our focus to just the mechanics of campaigning- a distraction from the deep implications and precedent of November 4th.
Legacy of Leadership
Since the election, Obama's campaign has earned a halo of lauded adjectives and phrases like: "disciplined", "organized", "efficient" and "always on message". More targeted praise has also been heaped specifically on the volunteer network that galvanized support and spread message from the primaries all the way through Election Day.
One component of this volunteer network not given its proper due is the role of the neighborhood leadership teams. As a campaign rule field organizers recruit from within their assigned community precincts. The idea being that volunteers can best communicate with their own neighbors.
Heading closer to the election certain community members stepped up to train for and then take on leadership roles for their respective Get Out The Vote teams. The teams were tasked with recruiting volunteers, maximizing voter turn out and facilitating smooth operations at the polls on Election Day.
I had the pleasure of working with some dedicated volunteers that had accepted these leadership positions for my precincts in the Woodhill section of Cleveland. The campaign trained these volunteers to be organizers for the important days before the election, but beyond that, to be the legacy of local leadership for when the campaign left town on the 5th of November.
In the three weeks preceding Election Day they took off their lunch hours, came into the office after work and on weekends to canvass, to make calls and to facilitate protocols on Election Day. In the two weekends before November 4th, the Woodhill team practiced two Election Day dry runs in order to be prepared for any complications.
November 4th began for us at 5:30am. The Woodhill team arrived at our staging location to make the final push to knock on doors, report polling numbers and in general, make sure that their neighborhood was going to represent big for Barack Obama. They did that and more. Some highlights of the day included team leaders rescuing votes by driving dissuaded voters back to the polls and in a different circumstance, improvising to fill in duties neglected by volunteer absence.
Fourteen hours later we all stood together in a banquet hall downtown looking at a map of Ohio gone blue. This was a victory in which we could all claim ownership. I imagine President-Elect Obama wanted it to end that way.
