"people are totally cynical about politics" -- inside the athens obama camgaign

On July 27, 2008 the Obama Campaign office officially opened its doors on Court Street, Athens, Ohio in the old GRID Lab. It serves about seven to ten counties; four full paid staff members run it helped by a handful of volunteers. One of them is physical therapy student Simon Hargus, 24, who works as student outreach coordinator 15 to 25 hours for the Athens Obama Campaign.

In this interview from August 4, 2008 he talks about the hard tasks of winning the trust of elderly cynical non-voters and students without interest in politics as well as the effect of the federal campaign and who might visit Athens during the final spurt -- a glimpse into the workings of the Athens Obama Campaign.

Stine Eckert: How does a day at the Obama campaign in Athens look like?

Simon Hargus: Lots of students are gone during summer. Most work at the moment is calling into rural area and Athens, which is the campaign’s headquarters for volunteers in the area who canvass [knocking on people’s doors] once or twice a week. Every evening we register freshmen arriving on campus. We are basically gearing up before students return and help full time staffers from out of state get used to the community and get them in touch with people they need to now. We are also opening new offices in smaller cities around; every weekend one new opening is planned.

S.E.: How many calls do you make every day?

S.H.: It depends on how many volunteers come in, on a low day 70, on a high day several hundred, 400 to 500 would be really good day.

S.E.: What goals do you have for registering?

S.H.: Yes, yes the Students for Obama goal are about 6,000 registered. But our’s is about 10.000 or more. The deadline is a month before the election, so essentially roughly four weeks after the students get back. I think we pick up about 900 to 1,000 over the summer and another 8,000 to 9,000 in four weeks.

S.E.: How does registration work? Do you have to go to the Board of Election’s office?
S.H.: No, you can fill out a registration form. It takes about a minute and a half and we turn that it in for them. A lot of registrations are people who have never voted or have never registered. It’s registering in this county versus where they are from that way they can use a regular ballot rather than a provisional or absentee ballot, which we want to avoid especially in Ohio.

S.E.: In how far are you convinced that people who register would vote especially if they are not used to it?
S.H.: A lot of them are students and it will be their first time to vote. It takes a lot of convincing. I think the high water mark for voter turnout on this campus is about 32%, which is low to some people, high to others, to me it’s strikingly low but we are hoping we can really blow that out of the water. This is a high water mark; usually it’s twenty-something percent.

It’s a combination of talking to them a lot and we have an advantage of a whole month of early voting. They get every weekday from October 4 to November 4 to vote, which is going to be a huge help. We will have tables on the sidewalks saying, hey you can vote here right now, it will only take a minute, and there are no lines.

There will even be a week of overlap when you can register and vote in the same office. It is exciting in terms of the potential. For example the 6,000 registrations goal that the Students for Obama have is even high for what’s been done in the past. We are setting goals that are double than in the past for registration and turn out.

S.E.: Why is it so hard to a) register and b) to vote?

S.H.: I don’t know which comes first but a lack of interest because there is a lack of knowledge. They if are not informed on a lot of these issues, so they are not interested.

S.E.: In how far does the federal campaign affect the local campaign?

S.H.: It was a strange experience in the primary we really put our nose to the grindstone during the last week and a half and you lose track of what’s going on in the national media. You focus on getting the people you’ve contacted to vote, which is called GOTV week, Get Out The Voter.
When we lost the primary in Ohio we came out of this bubble and we saw the negative campaign ads on the national level and remembered that it has a huge effect on the local campaign. Even though you talk about a national candidate you can really lose track of that. Yes, it has a big effect but not in our day-to-day activities as much as on the results at the end of the election.

For example at the Farmer’s Market I had to answer lots of questions about the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]. When we are calling we dispel a lot of myths. There is an e-mail campaign that’s telling rural voters that Barack Obama is Muslim or he swore on the Quran.
That affects us on a day-to-day basis; often they heard a rumor or have a vague idea and they know what they want and we help them understand what our platform is and how we can help them.

Usually it’s getting generally organized, getting new registrations, and getting older voters who are disenfranchised with the system, which is very, very common in the rust belt rural part of this country. People are totally cynical about politics.

S.E.: How do you counter that?

S.H.: It’s not easy. We’re fighting that a lot because it takes a long time with this kind of voter to gain trust. A lot of times we talk to local politicians do your best to find an office and invite them into the office. Then it takes very long conversations that mostly involve listening. That’s why phone calls are particularly hard and we like to open up a lot of small offices on Main Street and say come over and ask me questions, your neighbor is here volunteering, talk to him.

That’s why community teams and canvassing is most effective with this type of voter. Because they trust their neighbor than us which also makes the myth dispelling very difficult because it is a word of mouth type of thing. But with patience and the philosophy of building a community and have it talk to itself and reach out, it’s doable. It takes a lot of biography especially with our candidate Barack Obama. Reintroducing who he is, where he is from, his background.

S.E.: What are the most common myths you have to dispel?

S.H.: Again and again myths in this area would be unfortunately that He wouldn’t say the pledge of allegiance. It’s not always that he is a Muslim but that he was born or lived in a foreign country that is extreme and that he was exposed to extreme policy as a child, which is not true. He lived overseas but was by no means an extremist.

I think there are specific myths like that and there is a small group who thinks he is Muslim but there is a general unfamiliarity and discomfort with him. It is a lack of distrust through not knowing enough about him. The general myth we dispel is his biography: He was in the state senate for a long time, he was a constitutional law professor, he organized in the community and after leaving a top notch law school and work for civil rights instead of working for a six figure salary.

S.E.: Are there days when you go home and you feel you accomplished nothing because you had a bunch of stubborn people?

S.H.: Yes, but these are actually the days that motivate you for the next one; it is not discouraging. Athens campus and Athens city can be a liberal bubble so you think this is going really well, I don’t see how we cannot pull that of. Then you do an hour of rural phone calls and you’re motivated again. We have a lot of work to do.

Even the bad phone calls are beneficial to volunteer if you approach any phone call correctly and try not to be too presumptuous but merely say ‘I call to answer questions you have. Are they any issues you have?’ Often it is: ‘I don’t vote.’ And you try to slightly push them: ‘Why is this, Sir? Is there something we can talk about?’

This time at least the candidates have very different views that people might have an opinion about if they are educated enough. But try not to sound to didactic; you don’t want to be too pushy but at the same time you can’t let them say ‘No, thanks.’

That’s why calls are very hard. We’re doing them now because it’s very spread out and it’s hard to walk to places. This is another hard part of rural America. Door knocking is much easier for talking to people face-to-face.

Simon Hargus in the Athens Obama Campaign Office on Court Street. The 24 year old is an executive board member of the Students for Obama chapter at Ohio University. He also studies physical therapy in his 2nd year as a graduate student.

S.E.: Are there special events you plan to reach out?

S.H.: Yes, especially as the students return we have what we call surrogates or celebrities or other politicians come in. For example we had several actors, the governor and Arcade Fire, which is a band popular among college students, come in and sing and talk about Barack Obama and to vote for him.

The way surrogates work is usually we get about four days notice. We’ll have a big list and we’ll submit the ones we’ll love to have. So it’s; ‘Oh, in four days these guys show up, tell everybody you can.’ It’s not as much planning as we like to have but sometimes it’s more than that, a week or a week and a half.

I would be surprised if we wouldn’t get any big names here. For example in the 2004 presidential election the vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket, John Edwards, gave a big speech, Ralph Nader came and gave a big speech. The Clintons have been in and out of this part of the country. During the primary Bill Clinton and Chelsea were here. Barack Obama came to Hocking College.

We are a large university in South East Ohio. This is the place to pump up the numbers. Even though this county will probably go Democratic we need to have voter turner because it is so Democratic the voter turnout needs to be extremely high.

S.E.: What are the names on your list?
S.H.: Obviously, Barack Obama. Every day a volunteer comes and lays out the reasons why he should really come here.

In the background volunteer Vicky Mattson interrupts: “We only get spouses and vice presidential candidates. We never get the real deal.” [Laughs.]

Yes, we don’t have a lot of say on the schedule. College wise it was big disappointment that Dave Matthews Band didn’t happen during the primary because they wanted to come here and there was an issue with the school and we couldn’t pull it of although I personally like Arcade Fire better. But Dave Matthews Band is still in the back of the student’s minds and it would be great to say: ‘Here he is.’ That would be great specifically for the campus.

There are several actors. Kal Penn who is on the show House and Harold and Kumar movies and he went over very well during the primaries and did a lot of dorm canvassing with us and it was a lot of fun. You two basic different surrogates, one that appeals to students, which is more the celebrity type and one that appeals to community and rural voters. Hopefully Ted Strickland can be here as much as possible. He is immensely popular.

Besides that you get to political celebrities like vice presidential candidates. Michelle Obama was here during the primaries and that went over very well. But that appealed more to students and volunteers more than to the small percentage of undecided voters.

S.E.: Is she coming again?

S.H.: I would be surprised if it wouldn’t be her or the vice presidential candidate or maybe him [Delaware Sen. Joe Biden].

S.E.: What have you planned for Election Day?

S.H.: As being in charge of the student votes we get all our volunteers together and we spread them out on the hot spots of the campus – any sidewalk, any hill, any door in front of class rooms that has high foot traffic. They will stand they and go: ‘Have you voted? Do you know where to go to vote?’ A lot of the day in terms of students will be to make sure they know where to vote because if they show up at the wrong place voting a provisional ballot, something we want to avoid.

So then that person says: ‘Oh, I don’t know where to vote.’ Then we call back to the hub and we look it up for them. Calling just takes sixty seconds because it’s just calling my cell phone in the coffee shop. I look it up for them and if you can you walk them there. You go hand in hand and drag them there.

As the evening goes on and it gets closer and we get back numbers and we go into dorms, which is bending a few rules. But you know on as many doors and asked: ‘Have you voted yet?’ Because if you live in the dorm you know where the polling location is and you don’t need to call back and you just say: ‘Okay you guys need to go to this hall, you have thirty minutes left.’

After that we have one of the local bars reserved with a big TV and we wait for the results and try not to pass out from exhaustion. This idea of GOTV [Get Out The Voter] is that you recontact eighty, ninety, hundred percent of that list and you remind them as frequently as possible in the last three days to vote. The last week is just very, very busy; to recontact, to organize volunteers, to have rides ready for people in the rural area to the polls.

S.E.: What will you do on the day after?

S.H.: Besides sleeping you come back to the office to clean up. The staff moves out pretty quickly. That’s how it was after the primary. A lot of it is done for most of us, which will be good in a sense because this takes up a lot of time. I don’t get to do lot of other things like reading for leisure, relax, exercise on a regular basis. My friends understand; I have always been a political person and I just disappear for a couple of months. You don’t have much of a social life but you feel honored to be part of it.

S.E.: Thank you for the interview.

S.H.: No problem.