Yoon ushers in new wave of volunteers
As an early morning crowd of more than 100 volunteers sipped coffee and eyed their “Change Boston: Yoon for Mayor’’ training manuals, City Councilor Sam Yoon spoke with rapid-fire urgency about the day’s strategy session, the weeks ahead, the moment in time for Boston.
“We cannot afford to wait,’’ Yoon said, introducing the first citywide training session for his core activists. Underscoring the exigency, he left for most of the session to campaign, turning it over to a strategy team that included a special guest, consultant Joe Trippi, best known for managing Howard Dean’s tech-savvy presidential campaign six years ago.
The session made no secret of the fact that Yoon, an at-large city councilor, lags in funding by multiples behind incumbent Mayor Thomas M. Menino, and fellow Councilor at Large Michael F. Flaherty Jr. Those gathered said the money shortfall inspired them to work harder in their self-described grass-roots effort to attract disinterested voters to a nontraditional candidate.
The crowd was an age-bridging, multiethnic, trans-neighborhood mix of first-time volunteers and reignited older activists, all clutching spiral-bound campaign manuals.
“This could be a watershed year,’’ said Jim Spencer, Yoon’s chief strategist, addressing a crowd that included veterans of Mel King’s 1983 bid for mayor. “Mel used to say every day, ‘Vote for what you want, not what you think you can get.’ ’’
Trippi, weighing in from the corner in a role that was part visiting lecturer, part Greek chorus, told the volunteers that they wielded considerable influence and should make the campaign personal.
“People no longer trust anybody but their peers. If five of your friends send you an e-mail saying the new movie really [stinks], it no longer matters how many millions the studios have spent,’’ said Trippi.
He told them to change their own Facebook and Twitter profile pictures to show Yoon’s face for a week, eliciting a few laughs.
“I’m serious,’’ Trippi said, describing a ripple effect. “You really have a lot of power to move this message virally.’’
Although not ultimately victorious, the Dean campaign succeeded in harnessing the Internet to mobilize and empower activists and raise millions of dollars in small donations.
“I just want to encourage everyone to read as much as they can about Sam Yoon. He is the change that we need in the city, desperately,’’ said Marie Marshall, a 55-year-old Fields Corner native involved in her first mayoral campaign. She said she is postponing knee surgery until after the election and relying on regular cortisone shots to continue making her way door to door.
Marshall said she was drawn to help after Yoon and his staff swiftly waded through what she described as a bureaucratic morass to help her granddaughter get a bus to elementary school, when she lived mere feet from the 1-mile bus cutoff. “I was so thrilled I almost cried,’’ she said.
Kosta Demos of Jamaica Plain said he was drawn by Yoon’s profile - the 39-year-old South Korea-born, Pennsyvlania-bred candidate is a former public school teacher, community organizer, and affordable-housing developer with two Ivy League degrees - and by his desire to oust Menino after 16 years.
“My choking point was the destruction of the Gaiety Theatre down the street,’’ said Demos, who runs an imaging and art-reproduction business. At 45, this is his first campaign since Mel King’s. “That taught me not to cry anymore.’’ 