Ardent backers of Obama's run head off to camp

ST. LOUIS -- On her final summer weekend before returning to college, 20-year-old Charli Cooksey passed up a resort vacation with her family to sit in a windowless basement room at the Missouri Historical Museum.

There, over 20 hours last Saturday and Sunday, she learned how to be a foot soldier for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

"[We] are just normal people who want change," said Cooksey, a political science major from St. Louis who attends Prairie View A&M University in Texas.

She was one of more than 60 Obama activists in St. Louis taking part in Camp Obama, a nationwide training program his campaign has launched for volunteers eager to play an active role in his presidential run. The intensive, two-day workshop was more boot camp than summer camp: The hours were long, the expectations were high, and participants received little more than Einstein's coffee, caramel cream can dies, and a hearty thank you.

But that was incentive enough for these ardent supporters, who came from Missouri, Illinois, and elsewhere for a crash course in political activism. They learned from veteran political hands how to throw a successful house party fund-raiser. They learned how to explain Obama's policy positions to skeptical voters. They learned the mundane details that make a neighborhood canvass work.

"Always make sure you supply your volunteers with pens," an Obama field staff member instructed at 8:15 p.m. the first day, almost 12 hours into that day's session.

Camp Obama, which came to New York this weekend, offers a window into how Obama is drawing on his community-organizing background to harness the grass-roots energy his candidacy has generated -- energy that gave him a record 258,000 contributors in the first six months of 2007. Obama's aides say that he may not have the establishment support or name recognition that rival Hillary Clinton does, but that his growing army of empowered ground-level supporters will prove a potent force.

"We're going to be pulled across the victory line by grass-roots support," Chris Miller, an Obama field operative who ran the St. Louis camp, told the group.

The camp strategy is not new -- Howard Dean ran Camp Dean in Iowa in the 2004 race, and Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana created a similar training program, Camp Bayh, before dropping out of the presidential contest late last year. And Obama is, of course, not the only candidate to mobilize volunteers for the 2008 campaign.

Former senator John Edwards of North Carolina started a nationwide volunteer network called One Corps that does community service projects along with political work. Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut is teaching volunteers to canvass and call voters in New Hampshire. And the Hillstars program of Senator Clinton of New York trains its most dedicated volunteers in many of the same tasks; her campaign's New Hampshire operation is also holding the first of several major volunteer training workshops early next month in the Manchester area.

But Obama's staff members say his training program is the most extensive in scope and ambition, in part because of the ways it taps into his broad base of passionate supporters. His campaign believes the initiative will pay huge dividends as the primary crush nears -- and beyond, if he wins the Democratic nomination.

"People are hungry," said Marshall Ganz, an organizer since the 1960s who teaches at Harvard and has been helping the campaign run Camp Obama. "They want to make a difference. They care about what Obama represents. They really are invested in trying to turn hope into reality. It takes work to do that."

The troops trained at Camp Obama have two responsibilities: recruit supporters from their home neighborhoods and flood Iowa and other early primary states at key points in the race. Yet Obama's advisers are determined not to repeat a mistake they believe Dean made in the 2004 race, when he imported into Iowa scores of out-of-state volunteers with no connection to the voters they were trying to mobilize.

Temo Figueroa, Obama's national field director, asked everyone in the St. Louis group to commit to at least three trips to Iowa before January. But he made clear they would be paired with Iowa activists, describing Dean's strategy as "everybody going to Des Moines and having 1,000 people there with little orange hats running around scaring the hell out of every farmer in Iowa."

For all the lofty rhetoric over the weekend about Obama's transformative message, the point of these camps is to glorify the plod -- the grunt work that feels small but adds up to something bigger. "Your measure of success is your ability to do the tasks day to day, day to day, day to day," said Darryl Piggee, chief of staff for US Representative William Lacy Clay. "There's glory in that."

The St. Louis campers were a diverse group of men and women of many ages. They wore slacks, skirts, jeans, and shorts. Some had Obama T-shirts, stickers, water bottles, or pins. A few brought laptops. Many had volunteered on a campaign before.

As the weekend wore on, they plotted how to recruit other donors and volunteers from churches, malls, fraternal groups, and children's sports teams. They were told to make their pitches not with campaign talking points, but with their own stories about why they believe in Obama. "If it's in your heart, it will shine through," said Kacie Starr Triplett, a young St. Louis alderwoman.

Campers, grouped with other Obama backers from their area, got tutorials in everything from voter registration to where to leave campaign literature if voters are not home (not in the mailbox -- it's against the law). They learned the finer points of planning a house party: avoid days when there is road construction; make sure neighbors know you're having people over, so they don't call the police; and don't schedule the party during major events. " 'Let's do it on Super Bowl Sunday' -- no, no, no!" said Vince Currao, the political director for US Representative Russ Carnahan. "Use your head."

But Camp Obama participants are expected to do more than just learn. They are expected to get to work -- immediately.

A table of five people from the St. Charles area, northwest of St. Louis, dived right in, devising a plan for a house party fund-raiser in mid-September. Brynn Palmer, a 45-year-old customer service director from St. Peters, took the lead, typing up a maroon-and-yellow invitation on her laptop. They decided on a fall theme.

"Everyone can put their donations in a pumpkin!" said Palmer, who supplied the table with wafer cookies, popcorn, Granny Smith apples, and other provisions from a cooler she wheeled in. "We meet, we eat. That's the rules," she said.

The St. Charles group soon settled on a title for the fund-raiser ("It's a season of change"); a financial goal (40 guests giving at least $25 each); festivities (political trivia with prizes); food (from Sam's Club); and a setting (the house of Amanda Kelley, a lab director from St. Charles, which is big enough to accommodate children).

"I'll put a ping-pong table out there and they'll have a blast," said Kelley, 48.

Camp Obama grew out of volunteer training sessions his campaign had run out of its Chicago headquarters since May. As the demand grew, his advisers decided to take the program national.

The volunteers from St. Charles at last weekend's training had never met one another before last weekend. But their bond, forged over many hours in the museum basement, is now set.

"This is the first time I've ever been involved in politics," said Rosalyn James, 40, a lab technician.