Dean's Tech Approach Changes Campaign Structure

Austin, TX, American-Statesman ^ | 12-04-03 | McNeely, Dave

[Theodore R.]

Dean's tech approach changes campaign structure

Thursday, December 4, 2003

"This is a radically different operation, because the use of technology can be completely decentralized and bring a presidential campaign all the way back to the precinct level," said former state Rep. Glen Maxey of Austin, Texas coordinator for the former Vermont governor's campaign.

That approach is new, said Maxey, a veteran political organizer.

The Internet was critical to the third-party election victory of former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura in 1998, and other presidential campaigns employ the same tools, but the Dean campaign has pushed the creative use of e-mail and cell phones.

"Voters now are organized not in the vertical way of traditional political groups, but horizontally, where senior citizens and young people and others are organizing their own programs," Maxey said.

In 1990, in Democrat Ann Richards' gubernatorial campaign, "an organizer like me would give a hard copy of a precinct list out to a person in Abilene. And you never knew if (the assignment) happened. There was no way to follow up.

"But with the technology of this time, I have very few county organizers as such. I am not counting on a particular person to make things happen because the communication is now direct," Maxey said. "When I talk to the 35,000 people that are lined up to work, everybody gets the same message at the same time. So it empowers a college student at Abilene Christian to be as much in the loop as a state senator."

Now, Maxey said, he can have volunteers contacting people all over the state using their free cell phone minutes on nights and weekends.

And because the system is tied into Dean's national campaign database, the people at national headquarters in Vermont know who's been contacted and where the volunteers and voters are.

It's a stark departure from the tactics of the past, depending on television ads and targeted direct mail aimed at known voters. And it's attracting new people. Of the 15,000 signed up for Dean in Travis County, for instance, 52 percent did not vote in the last three Democratic primary elections.

Eighty percent attending a Dallas meeting said they had never been political organizers before because they'd never been asked.

"The candidate is motivating people by saying, 'You've got the power to do it, voter by voter and precinct by precinct,' " Maxey said.

"I don't know where you go with all this, whether you can actually get people involved in politics again. But it's a grand experiment, and we're having a great time doing it."

[Theodore R.]

Of the 15,000 signed up for Dean in Travis County (Austin), for instance, 52 percent did not vote in the last three Democratic primary elections. Travis is historically among the most Democrat parts of TX, along with the Rio Grande country, where there are close cultural ties with Mexico.