Blue Mass Group

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Victory ’06 needs organization

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This evening I responded to a phone message to participate in some phone-banking for the Patrick-Murray Campaign. I assumed it was from the Lowell for Deval group that I have participated in since last Winter. Instead it turned out to be Victory ’06. Somehow MassDems/Victory ’06 got my name and number. During the last few weeks prior to the primary I had a packet literally dropped on my doorstep with instructions to distribute approximately 100 fliers throughout my precinct. Unfortunately they gave me less than 24 hours notice and I had already committed the time to the Deval campaign for the day the lit-drop for Victory ’06 was to happen.

The phone bank tonight was very similar to the Deval PB’s but was MUCH less well organized. I was the only one there. A local attorney, in whose office the phone-bank took place, told me he was given only 45 min notice that his office would be used! I managed to call 52 numbers during the one hour plus that I worked. Response was good. I only received one undecided and NO anti-Patrick/Murray responses.

At the end of the evening I offered to take home some of the lists to continue calling on my own time. The local attorney had been given no instructions except to call in the results this evening. So he called while I was there. At Victory ’06 HQ there was no one available to record his numbers so he had to leave a message. Also there was no one to answer whether I could continue phoning on my own.  I am beginning to *really* understand why the Democrats have not been able to win a Governor’s race in 16 years if this is typical of past campaigns! You would think after having 3 months to plan since the convention  that they would have had this totally organized! (Can you tell I’m a bit disgusted?) The attorney told me that the plan is to combine the Deval and Murray and MassDems campaign committees into one so that each can assist the other. Well with assistance like this I suspect Deval (and Murray for that matter) may want to consider running as anything BUT a Democrat!!

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  1. As I posted in response to Paul on my blog, I was impressed initially that they were starting to contact active Dems to work for this effort. Thanks Paul for being the guina pig anyway.

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    Rest assured, we won’t put up with disorganization for long…if things don’t shape up, we know how to take care of business. Maybe THEY can take their cues and directions from us?

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    This is of course the issue…some of us have gotten a lot of experience in the last few months. I certainly have no problem with first-time activists joining in – that’s half the point actually – but coordination requires a little finesse and certainly decent support from those doing the coordination…

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    Maybe this sort of lack of organization has been what has turned previous activists off (I’m thinking of people I’ve talked to who used to be active Dems in local/state realms but gave up in disgust – ran into some of those)…

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    I’m rambling, but I’m freaking exhausted, sorry!

  2. Paul: I know how hard you’ve been working up here for DP these last few months; more power to you!

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    Victory ’06 has ZERO excuse for such half-assed, amateurish operations, but if they need the Patrick and Murray grassroots to show ’em how its done, so be it.

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    Time is tight, let’s get our $#!+ together!

  3. Now that headline may be a little harsh, but I also received a message on my answering machine today to support Patrick/Murray. I was wondering why the Patrick campaign was calling me, given that they already know I support and have volunteered for him in the primary. But now it makes sense that it was the Victory ’06 people.

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    Calling me makes no sense for two reasons:

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    1) I’m already a committed supporter. Checking with the Patrick campaign or even logging on to the community tool would tell them that in a second.

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    2) The day after the election, I can tell you firsthand that people are a little tired of getting called on the phone. Let’s give them at least a day or two of peace. Sure, run TV ads and hold town halls, but lay off of the phones.

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    Perhaps they should leave the organizing to the Patrick campaign and just send over whatever money and people they have. John Walsh and his team seem to be doing fine so far.

  4. to tell me that I’m captaining a phone bank tomorrow night.

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    Uh, what?  First off, don’t freakin’ TELL me anything.  Try asking. Nicely.

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    Agree with all of the above.  I know that 7 weeks is not a long time, but lately I’ve put off family commitments to work on this campaign.  I don’t think having a day or two off is too much to ask.

  5. There has never been any true organization other than what has been put together by the activists who are now volunteering as coordinators in the Patrick and Murray campaigns.  Keep doing what your LOCAL people suggest.  They know what’s going on and they just proved it with GOTV and a fabulous turnout.  Give these local folks a day or two to get whatever marching orders they get from the campaign(s) and then find out what they want you to do as far as calls, visibility, canvassing, etc.  Everyone needs a break for a few.  Do not allow the party people to abuse you.  There is NO EXCUSE for treating volunteers poorly.  Do not agree to last minute, poorly organized phone banks.  They hurt far more than help.  Send a message to the party HQ telling them they need to get their act together.  You have the right to tell them what they are doing wrong.  Tell them in detail.  Tell the campaign too.  For some reason, Phil Johnston and company seem to think applying their old playbook is going to help.  It’s not.  Get them to stop the stupidity once and for all.  Hello, Deval Patrick activists just did what the party hasn’t been able to do in 20 years!!  Earth to Phil….

    • Questions about this confusion have been bouncing around the DP coordinators group as well. I think the most sage advice is above. Wait for marching orders from the local people you have already been working with. They’re coming, I’m sure…DONT agree to poorly organized or executed phonebanks/canvasses, they do hurt more than help. DO start culling contacts for volunteers who have worked for other candidates, but do it politely and be respectful of people who might just want a day or two to decompress. DO feel free to let the MV06 folks know why you’re holding off.

      • is what this is all about.  It was to be expected.  I’ve already heard from one person that after a year and a half of working non-stop for Deval, the party came in and basically ignored every single thing that had been accomplished and failed to acknowledge those contributions.  You’re all going to have to help them “get it”.  The resistance to change is so entrenched, they can’t seem to understand that  a) it is unacceptable to slap around the best volunteers this state has ever had and b) those volunteers already know how to win.  Together We Can doesn’t mean that you can suddenly ignore those who are the essence of “together”.  Duh.  Local communities have rallied to the cause.  Don’t fuck it up Phil!  Quit now and take credit for your “victory”.  We’ll all applaud you.

  6. I returned from a week-long business/vacation trip right before Labor Day to find that someone from Victory ’06 had stuffed a package I wasn’t expecting into my mailbox.  Since the mailbox was jammed full, the mailman stopped delivering.  Earth to paid staffer- you can’t put stuff in the mailbox!

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    I am the DTC chairman, so I can see why they sent stuff to me, but another woman in town got a similar package, designating her as a Precinct Captain, a role she was not expecting and had no intention of taking.

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    For now, I’m taking my cues from the campaign.  From the caucuses to the convention to the primary- you can’t argue with success.

  8. I completely understand why each of the missteps and impositions described above was–at best–frustrating.  I think, though, that the most positive response is also  the most practical:  join forces with the Victory 2006 folks, help shape their agenda and plans, and make sure the job gets done right.  The best knowledge is, as lolorb said, local; so those with local knowledge need to share it.  By comparing the situation in my provincial outpost in the Berkshires with the stories conveyed in the above posts, my conclusion is that Victory 2006 also varies a lot from place to place.  Our Victory 2006 people out here seem to be exceptionally together; they’re experienced local political people, and they’ve been getting ready for a long time.  Still, as a town coordinator for the DP campaign, I’m going to the next Victroy 2006 meeting to share in the planning.  I trust everyone else on this site can do something similar.  I think the right slogan for such an approach is–have I heard this before somewhere?–Together We Can.

    • I have a different take on the situation, which is, yes, organize — with the Deval Patrick campaign! I don’t understand what Victory 06’s mission is, nor their plan to execute, given that we already have targeted operations designed to win Democratic victories in November: they are called campaigns. My view, unfortunate as it may seem, is that Victory 06 is essentially in competition with the Deval campaign for volunteers and resources. A successful operation must be under a unified campaign, which in the case of the governor’s race is the Deval campaign under John Walsh. Anything that pulls volunteers away from that campaign is pulling them away from the place where they will be most effective, i.e. it is hurting the cause.

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      I’ll take back some of that. The role I can see Victory 06 playing is providing a neutral face to bring Reilly and Gabrielli supporters over to support the ticket. That is a valid, well-defined, and important role, and one for which Victory 06 is well positioned . It doesn’t appear from people’s stories that V-06 is in fact targeting that role. Once again, anything they do beyond that role is simply taking resources away from the campaign itself, which as we are seeing creates mostly confusion and wasted effort.

      • Target Gabrieli and Reilly supporters, not people who are already volunteering for Patrick. Furthermore, for heaven’s sake get the list of Patrick supporters!

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        Honestly, I highly doubt Walsh will allow V-06 to screw all this mess up. They’ll either learn to work with Deval or Deval will just have to give em the boot LOL. 

  10. Heard that the same thing happened in Cambridge – V06 wanted to call “independents” there.  They’re all Dems already and got killed with calls these last couple of days. 

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    I agree, let the Patrick campaign run things. 

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    The ineptitude of the Dem Party is finally showing through in light of the Patrick camp’s excellent organizing.

  11. Victory 06’s role should be different than if Reilly or, especially, Gabs had won. They would have needed more organizing help — the Patrick campaign just needs new people and money.

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    The field operation for this November needs to report up the line to one person — John Walsh. Victory 06 should be reaching out to Reilly and Gabs people and recruiting them to give their time, money and contacts to Walsh/Deval.

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    If Deval wins in November, he’ll have plenty of time to build up the party qua party. For now there should be no competing command structures or turfiness — we’ve got 6 1/2 weeks, people!

    • I think Victory ’06 was intended to supplement a candidate that really didn’t have much of a grassroots operation. With Walsh et al, it’s a bit redundant.

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      Victory ’06 should also be reaching out to the national party leaders and to the folks who can write big checks. All the “little people” stuff is now pretty much taken care of by Patrick’s campaign — that’s how they won. 🙂

      • This part of the race is so much larger than the primary – need to reach far more voters, etc. We do need more hands at the work, even those communities which have a lot of great volunteers already.

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        I was willing to give Vic06 a shot (that’s why I posted their call for volunteers in Lowell), and there still might be a roll for them to play with canvassing/phone banking, but after my best guinea pig Paul had his experience, I think you’re right – Vic 06 needs to stop being too eager to supplement the Patrick campaign ground game and shift to other things, or to sending people to us that they recruit.

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        In fact, recruitment is THE KEY right now. If Vic06 can FIND us new people, that would be the best. It was the hardest thing to do in the primary campaign, frankly, despite how many great core volunteers we had here.

      • If it ain’t broke, why fix it?

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        I particularly agree that Victory ’06 should be working on getting out of state support.  John “the man” Walsh is doing an awesome job inside the state, and there’s no reason to jump in and fudge things up when everything is going smoothly.

      • The Democratic organization, the folks that brought you, well, nothing.

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        In my view the ONLY thing Victory ’06 sould be doing is raising money and giving it to Deval’s operation. I don’t recall the last time the MA Dem Party did anything of significant value.

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        If they can raise money (as they appear to have done with Ted Kennedy’s strong-arming the delegation) then God-speed. Keep the focus there and leave the real organizing to Deval’s team.

      • Charley, you’re a little off the mark with your second point.  Victory ’06 is (or at least was) not the name for all efforts of the state party.  See shack’s post below.  It is (or at least was) an effort by the state party to do community organizing around the notion of supporting Democrats in general.

        • Should have been more specific. Insofar as Victory ’06 was a fundraising funnel for the eventual candidate, the point remains. But since Patrick won with his particular grassroots emphasis, there would seem to be some duplication of effort on the voter contact side.

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          Anyway, I love the approach — and it really seems to me like it’s working in Medford, which went Patrick 39%, Gabs 31%, Reilly 30%.

    • The Mass. Dems unveiled the Victory ’06 idea at a July 2005 meeting of the Dem. State Committee held in Pittsfield.  Jack Corrigan presented this rediscovered notion that knocking on doors and contacting your friends and co-workers with a one-on-one appeal for support would be a good way to run a campaign.  There should be a captain in every precinct – even the ones we knew would be voting Democratic.  Corrigan had used this strategy for Dukakis, and no one had done it since.

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      Meanwhile, this whole netroots-blogging /series of tubes campaign-thing had really taken off, and the Deval strategy was born.  (I am not privvy to the timeline or early planning of the campaign, but there were clearly some people paying attention to the Dean strategy.)  As far as I can tell, the Community Tool was new to the Deval campaign, and was invented by some MIT tech wizards as the campaign evolved.

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      In the Berkshires, Victory ’06 responsibilities were taken up by a countywide Democratic group that has strengthened its mission and outreach since the Kerry campaign.  They began signing up coordinators for each ward or town, but found that our contested State Senate race, on top of the Deval campaign, was absorbing all the available volunteer energy and time.  They did not want to compete with the campaigns, so they held back a little.

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      The ProgressiveDems also captured some of the activist support that had been energized in opposition to W.  They were willing to make pre-primary endorsements, so they coordinated with the Deval campaign right away. 

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      The MassDems called me in August and asked whether I could coordinate some Victory ’06/Kennedy stuff (although, actually, it sounded as if they had a third purpose in mind?).  I had to decline, telling them that any available political time I had would be focused on Deval until September 19.

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      I guess my purpose in relating this background and my experience thus far with Victory ’06 and other post-’04 political movements is to recognize that there are a lot of forces coming together at once, and that it is inevitable that there will be some snafus and maybe even turf battles as we begin to work together in earnest now that everyone is on the same post-primary page.  Some people won’t work together well, so it’s lucky that there will be more than one group helping our Democratic nominees to win in November.

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      Anyone who was in Keene, N.H. in October of ’04 can tell you that there are going to be people from different groups calling the same households and knocking on the same doors.  Campaigns have had to let newcomers into the big tent after each primary, and the best thing is to be open-minded and accept the best that each person or group has to offer.

  12. From here:

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    It seems like its not so much about elbows and turf so much as organization. The Patrick campaign got to where it is by being pretty organized in their mobilization effort. Now that others want to help out (a wonderful thing) there seems to be some “organizational dissonance” in how to be organized while integrating these new organization.

    I’m sure that each of these other organizations (other than the campaign I mean) has their own ideas and “institutional memory” about how to be organized. That is probably the source of the problem.

    Personally, I would hope that these other organizations will take notice that whatever the DP campaign did seemed to work brilliantly and these other organizations should, rather than re-invent the wheel or promote this dissonance by ‘clashing’ with the campaign over methods. They should rest assured that, overall, the campaign is a meritocracy and the best organizational ideas will rise to the top.

    Thus I’d think that the best way for these other groups to help would be to share their ideas and suggestions and not necessarily implement them right away. If their ideas are not implemented, nobody should take umbrage.

    Once methods have been discussed and considered with the campaign, they (and everyone) should then ask “What do you want us to do? Where do you want us?”

    Just my 2 cents.

  13. I was just composing an e-mail to all of Team Patrick to be sent out today when I noticed this thread.  Things have been so (wonderfully) hectic around here that I haven’t checked BMG for a day – I won’t make that mistake again.  I thought you’d all be sleeping for a day or two – I am learning every day and I guess even I underestimated the power of the grassroots – you guys are ready to rumble already.  Give MassDems a break – the lack of early communication with Team Patrick is my error and here is the e-mail that will be sent to remedy it.

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    John Walsh

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    Team Patrick –

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    Congratulate yourselves.

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    900,000 people voted on Tuesday.  Remarkable!

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    In just under seven weeks, at least anther million and half voters will arrive at the polls and we have lots of work to do. 

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    Your work – – one-volunteer-to-one-voter – – made all of the difference in getting more than 250,000 more people to the polls than was projected.  We know you worked your heart out and for that we are extremely grateful. 

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    As we look to this next phase of the campaign, we are excited to tell you that we will be partnering with some fantastic people who have been working with Victory ’06 – -many of you may have been lending a hand with them during the primary.  In the first days post-primary, the Victory ’06 folks have prepared – – and we have approved – – new phone scripts and we expanded the list of voters we need to reach out to.

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    Because it was not possible for us (or any of the campaigns) to incorporate this Victory ’06 work into our systems prior to the primary, the first round of phone lists will be delivered in person by a friendly person from V’06.  Please welcome the lists and the scripts as if they were posted on the Community Tool – – they will be within days. 

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    Instead of “our” phone banks, due to the efforts of Victory ’06, hundreds of phone lines have been identified AND STAFFED (151 phones statewide were working last night –almost 4200 dials and 1,500 contacts! – NICE JOB!).  They have been a huge help and we would encourage you to take these first steps with the full confidence that Victory ’06, the campaigns of Deval Patrick, Tim Murray and the rest of the Democratic ticket have been meeting and we will be full partners in this effort as we go forward. 

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    Victory ’06 Campaign Manager Tracey Lewis is a personal friend of ours (John worked with her on the Coordinated Campaign of 2002 and Nancy and Tracey were part of John Kerry’s NH team in 2004).  She and the staff she has assembled will be a huge asset for us.  Nancy and Tracey have been working together to finalize a plan as to how the two staffs will become one in this endeavor and you will hear more about that within 24 hours.  Give us a day or two to work out the systems kinks and I promise you’ll find this combined team will be even better than what we’ve had to date.

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    By the way, in addition to the phone banks, we are jointly sponsoring canvassing efforts this weekend.  Please plug into them as well. 

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    Special heads up – Patrick/Murray bumper stickers will be at HQ by the weekend.

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    John Walsh, Campaign Manager
    Nancy O’Connor Stolberg, Field Director
    Deval Patrick for Governor

  14. I never expected to get anything like the response above from my experience last night! Mainly I was just venting in the frustration of knowing how well the Patrick Campaign ran during the pre-primary and with the fear that all the good work done then was being taken over by people who “just didn’t get it.”

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    My thanks first to David for promoting my original post which stimulated some great discussion. Second, my thanks to you all who commented giving this issue the publicity. Third, thanks to Lynne from leftinlowell.com for promoting this issue on her blog too. And finally, and most importantly, thanks to John Walsh for noticing and taking action! Now, onward to Victory ’06 for Deval and Tim and the rest of the Democratic nominees!!!

  15. In Arlington, Victory ’06 is the Deval campaign.  All active Democratic party elected officials, andvirtually all of the Democratic establishment, were with Deval.  The problems are coming in places where the Reilly or Gabrieli folks were big in the local leadership.  It’s nice that they are now trying to do the right thing for Deval.

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    After months of working for Reich, I found myself doing vis for Shannon O’Brien the day after the primary.  Strange feeling all around.  Be kind to the new friends, and cheer them on, and teach them how its done.

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