Burnt Orange Report

Live...from Arizona

By Karl-Thomas Musselman

The following is a report from the other day that I copied out of my regular journal, so it's not exactly written the same way I would write it for the BOR.

...The Phoenix State HQ was much smaller than I expected after the near gargantuan Des Moines and Manchester state offices. But this is Arizona and there are 6 other states voting on the same day as this one.

Things had just started up for the day. The first big task was one that I was prepared for after experience in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Putting labels, precinct specific, on door hangers which would be put in packets with other information. 60 per precinct, all bundled with literally hundreds of precincts for the Phoenix area. Things got a big boost once the Utah group came in, we were at full labeling capacity with about 20 on the job.

Once things were labeled in just over an hour, they all had to be put into larger bags with precinct names put on them. Of course that led to having to find space to put all those filling bags in alphabetical order. We filled once storage room with G-Z. A corner of the main room soon came to own all the S precincts. The Phoenix Dean Chair’s office became the placeholder for C-F and then A and B were placed near the bathrooms.

In between all of this was the continual bag shortage. So bags were scavenged from other packets which were holding old information. So there was this never ending shifting of location for bags as some were emptied from one store room to make way for the emptying of old bags to make room for new bags which were temporarily being put in some other random corner. Co-ordinated Chaos. But the job was done in a couple hours and all were happy.

We also were on a conference call with Rob Reiner and the California “Southwest Voter Express” people, hundreds of them on busses flowing out of the surrounding states to fill Arizona and New Mexico. Most of the Texas people were going to New Mexico and Oklahoma, I was the Texas delegation for Pheonix, if not Arizona! Lol.

Much of today was preparing for the next two days when we would be canvassing about 100 precincts here in Phoenix. I was really impressed with the organization here. It doesn’t seem like it on the surface, but statewide the operation is pretty much the same. The Dean campaign was the only campaign to file forms with the state party to get Democratic watchers for each precinct for election day, meaning we will be able to have access to the voter rolls throughout the day.

Each precinct will have a captain that will be able to cross check the IDed Dean supporters with those that have voted. There will also be the runners for each precinct that will then be directed to drag people to the polls that have not come in yet. This will all be preceded by walkers, dropping polling place info to those IDed Dean supporters and leaners who have not already voted early or by mail, a huge thing here in Arizona. All that will be preceded by the next two days last big undecideds canvassing and phoning. The database here is very well set up, similar to New Hampshire which was by far an improvement over the Iowa technique in my view.

Also, a few weeks ago, the Dean campaign sent out vote by mail applications to 120,000 people. Over 20,000 responded and voted which I found very impressive. There is a very organized, concerted effort to have outreach to the various constituencies here in Arizona by members of those constituencies.

Now the ground game is focused on one last ID and message spreading weekend of canvassing and then getting all those people to the polls. I am impressed, at least for an operation out here. The field office coordinator here is a 6 cycle veteran of this; I’m glad to see that experience on board.