Word: jeffs
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...convention” to rally more than 200 volunteers for the final phase of the campaign. At the same time, Carnahan hired a group called Grassroots Solutions to contact voters on behalf of his campaign. While voters were receiving phone calls, personal visits and postcards from neighbors who supported Jeff Smith, Grassroots Solutions sent paid employees (many of whom had never heard of Russ Carnahan before they got their jobs) to knock on doors and call voters...
From the beginning, Jeff had run his campaign a little bit differently. He raised money like every other politician, but he always focused on building support in the community. Over the course of the campaign, Jeff spoke with over a thousand voters in a series of small meetings (10-30 people) that we called “community coffees.” At these events, Jeff would answer questions for as long as three hours, and he always stuck around to schmooze (yes, Jeff is Jewish) with voters. And he believed, in a passionate way that bordered on fanaticism, that...
...commitment to grassroots action didn’t stop with Jeff. My job was to manage a team of 12-14 full-time organizers who were each responsible for a portion of the district. These organizers were mostly Jeff’s former students, and the average age of the organizing team was about 21. The organizers were responsible for finding supporters in their areas and turning those supporters into activists. By election day, they were managing a team of over 200 activists and responsible for finding more than 20,000 votes. They developed relationships with community leaders and neighborhood...
Early in the campaign, Jeff met with an influential Democrat who was known to control the Democratic machinery in his ward. The man claimed to sympathize with Jeff’s beliefs, but he explained that supporting Jeff would not be the prudent thing to do in a race where Russ Carnahan was widely expected to cruise to a massive victory. Jeff asked if the man knew of anybody else in the ward who might be worth talking to, and the man thought about it for a second before answering. “To tell you the truth...
...closer analysis of the election gives a very different message. First, Jeff did better than anybody expected. A week before the election, the Arch City Chronicle, one of the few papers that endorsed Jeff, predicted that Jeff would finish in fourth place, 7 points behind Carnahan. The Chronicle was probably more optimistic of Jeff’s chances than most media outlets...