Project Wonderful

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Ask An Election Nerd: What Happens to OFA Now?


Okay nobody asked me that, but I asked myself because really, what does? So the answer is two things.

OFA big wigs Mitch Stewart (he'll always be the 2006 DFL State Director to me) and Jeremy Bird (who I can't believe I have never actually met) are starting their own consulting firm, 270 Strategies. Very little is known about the new firm but they did tweet, "We're building 270 Strategies to bring the empowering Obama grassroots model to your campaign. Follow us for updates in the coming weeks ..." As much as I am well-documentedly skeptical of applying OFA strategies to any candidate other Obama, even within the powerhouse that is OFA these are two of the guys I respect the most, plus they know better than anyone how to motivate people, so I am cautiously optimistic and really excited to see what they will do.

As for what will happen to OFA itself, after watching this video, I'm still not exactly sure.
I can tell you that Jon Carson is another one of the OFA pioneers that I greatly admire and have always wanted to meet. Based on his description, it sounds like Organizing for Action will be a lot like Organizing for American was in 2010, (remember the hot minute when I worked for OFA in Connecticut) the big question being whether OFA's new iteration will help campaign 2014 Democratic Congressional candidates as well as the President's issue agenda (which of course will round about help Democrats as well.) You can read more about that concern here.

And then of course there's all of you guys and your various grad school, legislative, military and non-profit plans. I can't wait to see what else we can do together!

-Nance

1 comment:

  1. I have high hopes of Organizing for Action. The gist I got from the introductory video that FLOTUS did was, "Shit gets done when you hound your Representatives about it, so let's keep that going." It's a very true statement. When Obama organizers have organized around an issue, it's tipped in our favor. I don't think we did as well in 2010 because there wasn't enough time given to organize. I think it will be all good things.

    ReplyDelete