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a peek in the life of an organizing fellow in iowa

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Kim Weaver for Congress

Hillary Clinton. Patty Judge. Kim Weaver. Sharon Steckman. These are the four amazing women on the ticket in Mason City, IA. Last week, I sat down with Kim Weaver and got the ask her about some of the issues that are important to her and what it’s like to run for office while having a full-time job and being a single mom. ‘I am running because we can really make a difference in the lives of people.’

Kim announced in August of last year that she is running for Congress in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District as the Democratic challenger. As a long-term care ombudsman in Iowa, she protects seniors in nursing homes, assisted livings and residential care facilities. Her opponent, Steve King, has voted to basically cut Medicare by turning it into a voucher system. She decided that we could not have more of these decisions that would be financially devastating not only for people in Iowa, but in the entire country. Kim wants to expand Medicare to cover nursing homes and assisted livings. ‘I’ve had four different residents that I worked with that had to sell portions of their family’s farms just to pay for nursing home care.’

As a graduate student, the issue of student loan debt is very important to me. It also is to Kim. She’s a single mom of three kids, so definitely knows how expensive school can be. ‘Steve King voted to decrease Pell Grants and increase interest rates on student loan debt. There are very few people in Iowa who can actually afford to go to college without these supports.’ That’s why Kim is proposing i-Give, a program that generates investment through volunteer engagement. After a person graduates, they can volunteer four hours a week in the community and have their interest and payments deferred. At the end of the year, a portion of their loan will be forgiven.’ To me, this sounds like an great way to get young people engaged in their communities, help those who need it and offer them some relieve on their student loan debt. Congressman Erik Swalwell from California praised Kim for actually proposing solutions, instead of just agreeing of disagreeing with issues already out there. 

Kim is a also proponent of campaign finance reform, so more people like herself could run for office. At this point, you have to be basically independently wealthy so you can quit your job and campaign. Kim also offered some advice for people who want to run for office in the future. ‘I think it’s a really good to start when you’re young, so you can become involved in the party. So you know how things work, you know the activists, you know the people who volunteer, you know what that side is like. I appreciate all the hard work you’re doing, because I’ve done it. A lot of politicians don’t do that. They don’t know what it’s like to knock doors. And I think it’s important to understand that.’

When the days are long, Kim keeps in mind ‘that we can really make a difference in the lives of people.’ Kim, you are an amazing woman and an amazing candidate. And I really hope you will get to make that difference here in Iowa.

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Finally found a skyline in Iowa

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Campaign Surrogates Pt. 1: Sophia Bush & Dana Delany

Presidential candidates do not have the time and resources to travel across the entire country every day. Campaign surrogates help them on the trail by appearing at public events and making their case for the candidate. You will find many celebrities and popular politicians travelling through swing states (North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and also Iowa) during election season. And I got to hear from some of them.

Surrogates travel to local field offices, college campuses and coffee shops to rally the base and get out the vote. Campaigns match the surrogate to a place where they can bolster the image of the candidate in a certain demographic, so they are likely to get a good turnout and perhaps recruit some new volunteers. For example, actress and activist Sophia Bush (Chicago PD and One Tree Hill) visited several college-towns in Iowa a few weeks ago, as she is very popular among millennial voters.

The first surrogate event I attended took place on my second day in the field on September 12th. Actress Dana Delany (Desperate Housewives, China Beach) visited our Mason City office to make her case for Hillary Clinton. She gave a brief pitch and sat down to chat with local Democrats about the state of the race. My favorite quote made it into the Globe Gazette article published later that day. When told of how well-organized the campaigns are going, she laughed and said, “Don’t you think the Democrats have finally gotten their s—- together?”. Local television station KIMT shot this item about the event.

Personally, I was very excited about the Early Vote Phone Bank Kick-off with Sophia Bush. She visited Iowa State University in Ames on October 9th and talked to a room full of college students about the importance of this election, voting early and volunteering. She gave a persuasive pitch for Clinton and gave many examples of how our candidate will move this country forward. As the event followed Donald Trump’s harassment remarks, Bush wasn’t shy to use harsh language about the Republican nominee and the manner in which he treats women. She used hard facts to address several issues on students’ minds instead of mere sentiment. I wish I would have recorded her pitch, because it was one of the most honest and strongest I had heard.

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De Vries, Hoekstra and Balkenende: Dutch names in Iowa?

In 1602, the Dutch East India Company set out to find an alternative route to Asia. Instead, they sailed to America’s east coast and built several different Dutch settlements, most of them along the Hudson River. In 1664, the English seized New Netherlands and renamed the colony New York. During the following hundred years of British rule, Dutch immigration to the United States declined.

High taxes and low wages motivated many Dutch farmers to immigrate to America in the early nineteenth century. Instead of settling in the former colony on the east coast, this wave of immigrants settled down in the Midwest, in states such as Michigan, Illinois and Iowa. Even though political pressures favored the emigration of Catholics in the early nineteenth century, many protestant farmers settled in Michigan and Iowa. They were mostly drawn from the Dutch provinces Groningen, Friesland, and Zeeland.

When I tell people here in Iowa that I’m Dutch, they all start talking about ‘their’ Dutch city Pella. It was founded almost 200 years ago by Hendrik Scholte, a dutch vicar who led some 800 immigrants to Southern Iowa. They named the city Pella, as the group was seeking religious freedom (Pella refers to Perea, where the Christians of Jerusalem had found refuge during the Roman-Jewish war). The residents of Pella encouraged their friends and family to come to Iowa, which resulted in the founding of Orange City in north-west Iowa. Many Dutch families followed, until the Great Depression and immigration quotas put a stop to it.

Ever since, you can find many Dutch (and German) names here in Iowa. As we call many people every day, I come along many Dutch names. I wanted to share some of them with you: Velthoff, Deboer, Lief, Janssen, Hoekstra, Wessels, Wolters, De Vries, Kramer, Schmidt, Dorenkamp, Balkenende, Hofstrand, Krominga, Weiland, Hartema en Steenhard.

For my Dutchies: Wouter Zwart (NOS) visited Pella before the Iowa caucus in January and shot this item.

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“Hi! Is Chris available?”

Ask any field organizer or fellow to describe their day, and the majority of their time will be spent on the phones. Political campaigns use two major tools on the ground to reach out to voters: phonebanking and canvassing. Today, I’ll introduce you to the world of phonebanking.

According to this NPR item, campaigns started using the phones as a serious tool in the 1950s and 60s. Available voter information served as data for phone lists and scripts were created and improved. 

Every phase of the campaign calls for a different ask (see what I did there). The conversations we have can be divided into two categories: those with voters and those with (potential) volunteers. If you’re a registered voter and you live in a battleground state, you can expect several phone calls during the campaign. 

We obviously start by asking people if they are still planning on supporting the Democrats this year. Because we are the Coordinated Campaign of the Iowa Democratic Party, we also work for other Democratic candidates on the ticket. If you walk into a field office, you will probably hear this question: ‘Can we count on your support for Hillary Clinton and Democrats up and down the ticket this year?’. I’ll introduce you to the other amazing Democrats on the ticket later.

We also ask voters if they want to vote by mail and need help signing up for an absentee ballot. When they have received their ballot, we check in with them and remind them to send it to the auditor’s office before the deadline or we offer to pick up it and bring it to the auditor’s office ourselves. During the last phase of the campaign, the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) phase, the campaign mostly focuses on getting people to the polls.

People who have participated in the political process before are more likely to volunteer in the future. We reach out to them to see if they might be interested in joining the campaign. People who have been a precinct campaign in the past or have volunteered during the caucus, have already engaged political process earlier. We reach out to those people, and longtime supporters, to let them know we could use their help.

But how do we know who to call? The data team takes care of that and provides us with fresh lists every day. They combine voter registration and party membership data with national trends and other voter data, so we can reach people with a targeted ask. Unfrequent voters might need an extra nudge or reminder to go to the polls on Election Day, and we want to make sure we offer people the option to vote by mail.

When you get someone on the phone, you want the conversation to count. The campaign provides us with scripts to use, which are tested for optimal result. But just a good script won’t get you supporters or volunteers. You have to make sure your ask is on point. During training, we practice our ask to make sure every conversation is a meaningful conversation. But in my opinion, working in the field teaches you much more. When you practice and practice, and actually get to know the people you call, you will be able to have a real conversation with them (and hopefully, get them to volunteer). 

While I’m finishing this blog, an amazing volunteer sitting next to me at my table is making some of the best asks. “You want to tell you grandkids you voted for the first woman president of the United States.”

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A beautiful fall weekend to knock some doors!

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Voting in September. From your kitchen table.

Voting in Iowa has started on September 29. Yes, that’s right. People in Iowa can cast their ballot 40 days prior to Election Day. It is amazing and extremely democratic, and I will tell you why.

Donald Trump’s claims about a rigged election have sparked a national debate about election fraud. Many people agree that the electoral system is rigged, but not in the way Trump states. Voting fraud on election day has proven to be a very small, negligible problem. Many states however have adopted policies that can definitely be interpreted as discriminatory, such as early voter registration deadlines, voter ID laws and no early voting. 

Voting on Election Day sounds like the normal thing to do, right? But what if you’re elderly and cannot leave your home? What if you have to work when the polls are open and your employer won’t let you leave for an hour? What if you don’t have the means of transportation to go to the polls? Or don’t have the money to get there? Voting early in person or by mail is the answer many states have offered as a solution to these questions. Many states, not all. And that’s a shame. Luckily, Iowa offers it’s citizens the opportunity to vote early in person and by mail starting September 29. And you do not need an excuse, everyone can vote early if they want to.

This picture was taken on September 29th. You see Dean, Vice Chair of the Cerro Gordo County Democrats casting the first vote in the county, his vote for Democrats up and down the tickets. Yay!

In the past, more Democrats than Republicans in Iowa have cast their ballot before Election Day. Therefore, one of our priorities these past few weeks has been to reach out to the community about early voting. Many people still do not know that it is an option in their state, and many are very thankful for the opportunity. I visited an elderly home last weekend, were I helped a 96-year-old woman fill out an Absentee Ballot Request Form so she can vote by mail. If she would not have had the option, she would not have been able to cast her vote. 

So ever since September 29, it’s Election Day here in Iowa. You can vote now! Download your a vote-by-mail request form here, request one with us, or go vote at your county auditor’s office!

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Welcome to Iowa, fellows!

Fired up! Ready to go! Fired up! Ready to go! Obama’s 2008 campaign chant kicks of this year’s fall fellow training in Des Moines. We’re gathered at the campaign’s headquarters, where Iowa’s Training Director Pav (who’s more fired up than anyone else in the room) sets out what the day is going to look like.

All across the country, new fall fellows are being trained by the campaign today. By searching for the hashtag #FellowsFTW (for nana, that means for the win) on Twitter, we see groups of young and enthousiast people in Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina, New Hampshire and many other states getting ready to join the campaign.

After a round of introductions and icebreakers, we get down to business. We’re introduced to the campaign’s organizational structure, the campaign’s vision and the Democratic candidates up and down the ballot in Iowa. As we’re part of the Coordinated Campaign, we’ll be out on the doors for Hillary Clinton and Democratic candidates for the U.S. and Iowa House and Senate. Throughout the day, we get the chance to hear from other HQ staffers, who almost all started out as fellows themselves. Iowa’s Press Secretary Kate explains how we should deal with the media and Digital Organizer Emma sets out the campaign’s online strategy and how we’re apart of it as the online generation.

We’re also focusing on the day-to-day skills we’re going to need as fellows. We learn what the best way is to ask people to volunteer and practice our hard asks, how to tell our personal story and give a field pitch, and answer questions people might have about the candidates. We also focus on voter registration and absentee ballot request forms, how voters should fill them out correctly and how we handle these legal documents. 

After today, every fellow will go their own way across the entire state. Some high school students will be making phone calls and knocking doors during their free hours after school, others, like me, will be joining the campaign staff full time. However, training won’t stop after today. The Democratic Party and the Clinton Campaign put a lot of resources and attention towards empowering and training their people. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, we’ll be having national weekly online training sessions with all the fellows across the country. I can’t wait to start!

Good luck everyone and let’s #ioWIN!

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See you in three months, love

It’s a very early Thursday morning at the airport in Amsterdam. It’s September 8th, and my second big adventure in the United States is about to start. Two years ago I travelled to the United States to study at the University of South Carolina, this time it’s the presidential election that tempts me to fly across the Atlantic. 

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I will be working as an organizing fellow on the Clinton campaign in Iowa. Why Iowa? As one of the key battleground states, Iowa does not have a clear frontrunner yet. The state’s electoral votes can still go to either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. The campaign thus needs all the help it can get in the Hawkeye State. I will be working in Mason City, a small town in Northern Iowa. From what I’ve read online, I can expect a lot of corn and politics. What’s not to like?

All that’s left for now is to say goodbye to mom, dad and the boyfriend. See you in three months, loves.