Technology aids Obama's outreach drive

Volunteers answer call on social networking site

Barack Obama addressed a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, last week. Obama's campaign used its social networking site to enlist volunteers in the state to help set up its ground operation in anticipation of the March 4 primary. (Mark A. Stahl/Associated Press)

COLUMBUS, Ohio - When George Goodburn of Upper Arlington got an e-mail 12 days ago announcing an organizational meeting for Barack Obama's presidential campaign the next night in nearby Columbus, he was fired up and ready to go.

Arriving at a plumbers' union hall to meet campaign officials, however, Goodburn was stunned. "Five hundred people showed up on 24 hours' notice," he said. "It was incredible."

More than any previous presidential campaign, Obama's effort is transforming politics with its use of technology. The astounding fund-raising figures are well documented - the campaign keeps a running tally on its website as it closes in on 1 million donors. But Obama's team has taken the use of the Internet to another level by allowing masses of volunteers to self-organize over the past year and communicate through their own social networking site, my.barackobama.com.

Created with help from Chris Hughes, one of three Harvard roommates who invented Facebook four years ago, MyBO, as campaign staffers call it, has about 500,000 members nationwide, a network of groups and individuals that the campaign ultimately harnesses for the old-fashioned nuts-and-bolts of electioneering - identifying supporters and getting them to vote in primaries and caucuses.

Still growing, the network helps explain why the Illinois Democrat's campaign easily bested Hillary Clinton in so many tightly organized caucus states and can produce rally turnouts of 15,000 in Democratic backwaters like Boise, Idaho.

The extent of Obama's online network is evident in Ohio. When the campaign began setting up its ground operation early this month in anticipation of the March 4 primary, a standing army was already awaiting its marching orders.

Clinton's campaign, relying more on traditional resources such as labor unions and elected officials, is also cobbling together an Ohio organization. Using its own e-mail list, the Clinton team recently received about 1,000 online replies statewide from people willing to help. The campaign was pleased with the response. The Obama camp, in contrast, drew 500 people from the Columbus area alone to the union hall of Plumbers & Pipefitters Local 189 on a Wednesday night in the middle of winter.

Many joining the Obama wave are young and fluent in technologies that are changing the world of communications. Goodburn, however, does not fit that mold. A 56-year-old grandfather and proprietor of a family-owned roofing business, he began communicating with several Obama online groups in the Columbus area last year.

"I'm a political junkie who watches Chris Matthews and C-Span," he said. "But instead of just sitting there . . . this allows me to become involved. It's real grass roots."

Goodburn is also one of those small-dollar donors who has given to the campaign online, about $150 total, he estimates, usually in $25 increments.

Like many MyBO members, he blogs occasionally on his page, which is a modified version of what is found on a commercial social networking site where users can put up photo galleries and talk about their cultural affinities. On MyBO, there's a limit of one photo, a brief description of why the person supports Obama, issues that are important to the person, and limited biographical information, such as hometown and birthday.

Goodburn's page says he supports Obama because, "Not since Bobby Kennedy in the spring of 1968 had there been such excitement about the possibilities for the future. Then it was my future. Today it is the future of my children and grandchildren. Fire up."

Valli Frausto, a 50-year-old mother of two from Columbus, was one of the first to open a MyBO account when Obama announced his candidacy a year ago. Several months earlier, she had seen Obama on Oprah Winfrey's show.

"I've never been involved in a political campaign before, but it was like a call to action for me," she said. "I said if he runs, I want to help, and with the way he put his campaign together, with all these tools available to us, it allowed me to get involved."

For the past year, Frausto estimates she has spent 20 hours a week as one of the administrators of Central Ohioans for Obama and a few others of the more than 300 groups established in Ohio through MyBO. Most merely refer to a geographical area - a city, town, or region. But there is also Obama Mamas, who were using the network to attract supporters to bring homemade signs to a "Honk and Wave" to motorists in Gahanna yesterday.

When Frausto attended her first meeting of Obama supporters from around Ohio's capital city about a year ago, about 40 people showed up. Today, groups she identifies with around Columbus have about 1,700 Obama backers.

The groups have put out information tables at perhaps 20 festivals and fairs around Columbus, and held a 5-kilometer road race and other fund-raisers. They also hold debate parties, phone bank events, and happy hour gatherings to socialize, brainstorm, and introduce new members.

"It was all done through my.barackobama.com," Frausto said. "We would not exist if not for that tool. It's phenomenal to me."

The activism extends beyond the campaign. "We adopted a local neighborhood and some of our people went over to help with a community cleanup," Frausto said.

On issues, Frausto's page lists her priorities as "peace & social justice, economic fairness/security, environment/conservation; good government/ethics; electoral reform; affordable healthcare."

Until recently, interaction with campaign staff was sporadic. The MyBO members had access to a resource center, where they could get information on Obama's policies, and an action center that would offer guidance on activities such as fund-raising. The campaign would also provide handout materials for local distribution.

Now, however, with the Ohio primary approaching, the campaign is much more actively coordinating the activists, most notably through phone banking. From a MyBO page, a member can click onto a list of 20 phone numbers with a series of prompts and scripts that the caller runs through, entering the responses of voters online. The information goes into the campaign database for its primary day get-out-the-vote operation.

In Ohio, MyBO has a phone-banking contest. The top 10 call makers will meet Obama. The site features the names and numbers of calls made by the leaders.

Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign broke new ground in the use of technology, particularly fund-raising and to a lesser extent organizing.

"The beginnings were in the Dean thing, but the tools were primitive," Joe Trippi, who managed the Dean campaign, recalled recently. Facebook was launched by Hughes and his roommates in Cambridge 16 days after the Dean campaign lost its altitude with a third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses that year.

Tech-savvy Trippi believes Obama's online organizational success may prove to be the difference in this campaign.

"He did it right, [Clinton] didn't, and it may win him the damn nomination," said Trippi, who, as chief strategist for John Edwards's unsuccessful campaign in this cycle, had a good vantage point to observe the results.

Hughes, who remains on leave from Facebook to serve as the Obama campaign's director of online organizing, explained the basic rationale behind the creation of the self-organizing tool and then integrating it with the traditional campaign machinery.

"People in the country are excited about change in general, and when you combine that with organizing tools that allow them to do stuff without someone looking over their shoulder, they can get a lot done," he said. "The thing that's important to remember is that at the end of the day, these are all grass-roots supporters. They're working directly with the campaign now, but in the past few months, they had zero or next to zero involvement with the campaign."

Some commentators have likened aspects of the Obama campaign to a cult, which causes true believers like Frausto to bristle.

"It's not a cult at all," she said. "I'm a professional person with two degrees." The purpose goes beyond Obama or this campaign to a larger issue of civic engagement, she said. "There are his policies, but he has also inspired Americans to become involved."

Or, as she wrote on her MyBO page: "With the organizational tools Barack's campaign is giving us, we, the people, can change history."