Obama Takes to the Streets

By Mike Melanson

AUSTIN – Call it Obama’s Texas turnabout. At the time of his first big political rally in Austin a year ago, Barak Obama’s name barely registered with the majority of voters across the state. As late as Feb. 15, with this Tuesday’s Democratic primary looming, the Illinois senator trailed archrival Hillary Clinton by 16 points in one respected statewide poll. But times have changed – and fast. In its follow-up survey on Feb. 28, Rasmussen Reports showed Obama at 48 percent, a four-point lead over Clinton – and today you can hardly walk down a street in Austin, Dallas or Houston without getting buttonholed by a zealous Obama supporter.

What accounts for the rapid reversal? Political observers agree part of it has to do with the 11 state primary wins Obama has rolled up since Super Tuesday on Feb. 5. Last week, in yet another sign of the cross-country groundswell, his campaign announced it had tapped a record one million rank-and-file voters for donations, many of them under $100. "A lot of this is … momentum," says Paul Steckler, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas. "[P]eople are looking for something that breaks with the Bush-Clinton years."

In Texas it’s also clear that Obama’s gift for organizing voters at the grassroots has been instrumental in the senator’s eleventh-hour surge. His strategists have mainly focused on energizing a base heavy on young voters and blacks in contrast to Sen. Clinton’s putatively stronger pull with older voters and Hispanics. "Senator Obama's background as a community organizer is in grassroots efforts," points out campaign spokesman Nick Kimball. "When we have Texans talking to other Texans, it's the most effective way to spread the message."

Vital to that approach, says Kimball, is Obama’s aggressive use of local precinct captains, whom he calls the "face of the campaign in their own neighborhoods." One such “face” is Elizabeth Dossman, precinct head for Austin’s UT neighborhood, who said she spends at least an hour each day calling voters, urging them to vote, describing how the Texas primaries work and emailing friends and acquaintances with articles she finds in hopes of swaying them to the Obama camp. "The idea of anyone caring about Texas Democrats was very exciting to me," Dossman said of her decision to volunteer.

Obama aides say their community reach has also helped make the most of a string of late-breaking political windfalls. For one thing, they contend, publicizing Obama’s “above-the-fray” response to barbs hurled at him by the Clinton campaign has helped woo voters who are tired of politics-as-usual. Then there are the "Obamacans," as a recent report in the Austin-American Statesman dubbed disenchanted Republican voters, who have gravitated toward Obama’s “message of hope” because they are fed up with the Bush administration.

To get students more deeply involved, the Obama campaign opened an office on the UT campus on Feb. 25. Brandon Chicotsky, a UT alumnus and office intern, says Obama student supporters are doing "aggressive networking on Facebook," sending text messages and offering a free daily barbecue lunch to students who volunteer to phone potential voters.

Kimball says he was pleasantly surprised when campaign workers opened the Obama’s Texas headquarters on Congress Avenue on Feb. 16 and were inundated with a crowd of 1,500 enthusiasts. He credits much of the excitement to groups like Texans For Obama, which local Austinite Ian Davis independently formed over a year ago. The group now helps to run the UT campaign office. "The presence of such a strong statewide organization is pretty unique," says Kimball. "We were expecting a good crowd, but the hallways were packed with people all day."

Out-of-staters like Larry Drake and his wife have also played a significant role. The Drakes followed Obama from New Hampshire, their home state, to Santa Barbara, California, where they greeted volunteers and answered phones in the campaign office. Now the couple is in Austin, volunteering at the UT office. Drake says he has worked for some previous campaigns, but never to this extent. "I'm 56 years old and this is the first time I'm really excited about a presidential candidate," he says. The couple has been on the road volunteering for five weeks now and may continue in Pennsylvania after Tuesday’s primary.

Drake is emblematic of the message the Obama campaign wants to project: a government united, run by the people, driven on hope for change. But it may be people like Chicotsky—unlikely voters, young or old, energized by the grassroots popularity of this campaign and heading out to the polls in Texas—who are really breathing life into Obama’s presidential bid.