Looking back, Thomas Jefferson politically changed America by expanding Democracy outside the Federalist concentrations in New York and Boston into rural America. Plus his Administration commenced the peaceful transfer of power never before seen in World History from one political power group to another. And finally he expanded by double the geography of the U.S. with the purchase of the Louisana Territory. Lincoln of course saved the Union during the Civil War, freed the slaves and began Reconstruction. FDR changed America by saving it from Fascism and Communism while bringing about american socialism, won WW II which placed America as an unmatched International world super power. Reagan's impact is more like Jackson's, big but not fundamental. I guess the order of magnitude is whether one's effigy is on our currency, I don't see any Reagan coins or images on any dollar bills. But there is the penny, the nickel, the dime and of course the quarter, plus of course the Kennedy half dollar. Jackson does have the twenty dollar bill, Lincoln again the $5.00 bill, (I know there was an atttempt to put Reagan on the $10.00 bill and replace Hamilton but that died a quiet death---funny thing that Iran-Contra item.)
Back to Tuesday night. I was invited to join over a thousand El Paso County Democratic Party members, supporters, revelers, party goers and basically the band wagon in experiencing Senator Barack Obama's Presidential Election victory at Colorado Springs Antler's Hilton Hotel Grand Ballroom. How does one properly express the hundreds of hugs and handshakes from many a fellow volunteer, activist, Democratic Party member or merely Independent/Republican supporter, many of which came up to me personally to congratulate me and other Obama volunteer leaders "on Obama's campaign victory? But then again, even Obama acknowledged this was not his victory but "the people's" victory----does that sound too socialistic? Well maybe to a conservative who has no conscience (meaning closet Fascist), or elitist Republican-Reptile who silently thinks America has nobles and peasants.
Those I saw and hugged were Jason DeGroot, Mike Maday, Lynn Young, Barb & Vinai Thummapolly, Renee Hartslief, Kathy McQuillan, Andy Nelson, Jay Ferguson and Cheryse Exline among many others including the Obama staff local candidates.
First, let me begin to discuss some revelations or items relating to political trends in El Paso County and the State of Colorado that have been learned from this election cycle and the final phase of the Obama campaign.
- First there is a now a strident, albeit still minority progressive movement in Colorado Springs that is a real local political force.
- On one hand it will take a lot more effort and continued demographic/political changes for this not to be still an almost futile political effort.
- But the Republican conservatives (actually the reactionary retrogressive right wing movement) is in a full retreat in Colorado, which in many ways because what is happening here in Colorado Springs.
- 2008 is the second election cycle in a row that the headliner garnished more than 39.6% followed closely by the other Federal candidates, this year Udall and Hal Bidlack who scored above 38%.
- That all said there is some strange numbers that don't make sense.
A casual observer might think that is still an overwhelming victory for the Republicans, (and it is) but not like years past when Republicans dropped 66% or almost 70% for their statewide candidates from El Paso County. Now remember Boulder and Denver Counties gave 74% and 75% to the Obama this year, where also Udall scored 73%, in both those counties. It used to be that El Paso and Denver Counties balanced each other out, but now that El Paso is contributing less than 60% to the cause the tipping point is going Democratic.
That is the 40,000 foot view so what is the detail? Over the final weekend the Obama campaign put well over 1000 volunteers on the ground throughout area. One local positive effect of all this effort can be seen in Dennis Apuan's surprising victory in House District 17 where he won a 380 vote victory. El Paso County, the home of the politically active Focus on the Family, birthplace of the Libertarian Movement and considered by most the 16th most conservative district in the U.S. now has three Democratic State Legislators; Merrifield HD-18, Apuan HD-17 and State Senator John Morse SD-11. Not reported is the fact that Ft. Carson's precinct in the base voted Obama by two votes. Think about that.
All this cannot be ignore or scoffed off. I only have personal inside knowledge of House District 21, (basically areas in Western Colorado Springs/El Paso County, without Old Colorado City and Manitou Springs), basically described as neighborhoods known as Mountain Shadows, Garden of the Gods, Mesa Hills, The Broadmoor, Skyway and outside of Fort Carson/Mt Cheyenne. This region is described as mostly white, college educated, professional middle class to affluent-investor class demographics with some areas of even above affluence middle class like Broadmoor, Kissing Camels and Cedar Heights. Our neighborhod team area of primary focus was the northern half of House District 21, we called it HD 21 Staging Location Teams 1&3. Led by Mike Maday, the former El Paso County Volunteer Coordinator for the Obama campaign for the caucus and county delegation chairman we put together what others described as one of the best neighborhood teams in the county. Similar descriptions were made about the team working exclusively in the southend of House District 21, known as Team Queso (team 2) where they worked the Skyway and Broadmoor neighborhoods.
To understand House District 21 one needs to have knowledge of the registered political landscape. 49% of the electorate is registered Republican, 29% are registered Independents and only 22% are registered Democrats. Now this is not a uniform distribution by precinct where my precinct (PCT 147) which borders HD-18 and an elected Democratic State Legislator (the border being one street to my south), has 27.75% Democrats, 35% Independents and 37.25% Republicans. Going north from our four boarding precincts the distribution goes deceivingly more Republican. Naturally this was a gerrymandered district for Keith King who was once one of the Republican House Leaders in 2000, now elected as a State Senator in a curious race with Pete Lee, (more on that on a later post). Our Team originally was assigned 10 precincts, called Pleasant Valley, Mesa Hills and Holland Park, quickly grew to 13 involving the south Rockrimmon areas and then eventually merging with the Mountain Shadows and Ute Pass groups to a coverage of 21 precincts.
As autumn turned into October the campaign went into the phase known as Get Out The Vote (GOTV). Our HD teams now fully organized began to rapidly increase recruiting volunteers to make the final pushes in phone banking and canvassing seeking out voters. Ultimately our target universe was roughly 12,000 voters, roughly one-third of the total 36,000 electorate of HD-21 and primarily all Democrats and most Unaffiliated (Independents) voters and some targeted Republicans who previously were identified as supporters of Obama. This contact universe would carry through to the final four days to Tuesday, November 4th, election day. Because of the month long MIB voting, two week long early poll voting and Tuesday voting GOTV strategies are rapidly evolving. MIB status voter now make up 39% of the entire electorate Of that number 43% are now registered Democrats up from 20% this year, while 32% are Independents with 42% are Republicans.
Now here is an interesting tidbit coming out of the cumulative result, Anna Lord; the Democratic candidate for State Legislator who received 57.7% of her votes from MIB cast before election day all told from early voting got 72.8% of her entire vote when you include early poll voting. Her 12,411 votes represents over 4487 votes over the entire Democratic registration or more than one-third of her vote came from Independents and Republican crossovers. Detail by precinct will not be available until November 22nd so we are just extrapolating but Anna Lord did receive 42% of the vote two percent above Obama's El Paso wide vote. Though something is strange that her vote only increased by one-half percent.
What is self evident is the turnout by MIB and Early Vote versus Tuesday day of the election voting. In El Paso County there were 374,399 registered voters but only 265,828 cast votes (71%). Comparably speaking in 2004, 68.60% voted (242,888 out of 354, 059) and in 2000, 59.40% voted (201,662 cast out of 339,445) so turnout was higher and continues to grow.
MIB's represented 137, 766 out of the 265, 828 cast or 51.8% of the entire vote! Merge that with early voters and it represents 65.76% of the entire vote cast did so before Tuesday. Meaning only 89,284 voted on election day Tuesday---which meant there were no long lines a sfeared where also only 44.5% of the remaining electorate came out to vote. Comparing to 2004, 61,303 voted MIB (25.23%) and 37,012 voted early totaling 38.58% voting before Tuesday November 2nd. Thus the trend is that MIB participation has doubled and therefore almost doubling the early turnout but it appears that still a significant number are not voting.
The implications are enormous for a campaign strategy here in Colorado Springs and Colorado in general. Decisions and votes cast are made far earlier than the final weekend as many assume and therefore, like this year where final weekend theyGOTV activity is feverish and en are fighting for an ever smaller pool of remaining voters, many of which are not still not participating. With more MIB participation however the overall turnout continues to grow from numbers in the 70's, 80's and '90's. Thus going forward I am predicting that GOTV efforts will begin far earlier in earnest, even as long as a month or more beforehand while parallel campaign persuasion and identification activities will continue on more targeted basis until the final week of the election cycle.
Now information from the front lines, ground game insights and weird stories. At our staging location, which essentially functioned as a satellite 5-day campaign office for the northend of House District 21's, and its twenty-one precincts where we had over 150 volunteers identified for direct campaign contact activities and poll watching. Over 80 persons signed up to make phone calls in what turned out to be 10 3-hour full time shifts over Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The canvass team had about 60 or so volunteers signed up for 11 shifts, plus we had about ten poll watchers, runners. Then there were the coordinating leaders; Mike Maday, John Atkinson, Julie Feuerback & Carol Duster as comfort captains and of course myself, as the Phone Bank Director. Our objectives were to contact up to 6,000 or more targeted voters who were identified as MIB voters who had not voted as of yet or Tuesday poll voters.
We reached an estimated 1253 persons by phone in a targeted universe of 3000, many more than once. The canvass team made great number of contacts as well over the weekend, but on weekdays the contacts went down greatly. Also we left message or left door hangers on all doors and messages on all working phones non contacted phones. The impact was mixed of course with Tuesday's turnout being 44.5% city wide. It is my estimation the biggest impact was chasing down the remaining MIB voters who had a surprising large number of problems.
On Saturday we found 13 persons whom we talked to (out of about 320 that day) who had requested a MIB and not receive one. One was Christine who was physically disabled and the other was Larry where he and his wife lived in Canada and where his wife had received hers and he not. Both were profiled on KOAA TV Sunday night and Monday morning. The following day, Sunday we found another 15 or so who had similar problems with MIB delivery, followed by about ten more on Monday bringing us to over 50 by the end of Tuesday's last phone canvass. This was roughly 50 out of 500 those who had MIB outstanding in the 21 precincts we covered or 10% of that universe.
We found many of these persons like Larry unable to make amends since the only remedy would be for individuals to go personally to the Clerk's office on Monday or Tuesday and get a replacement ballot. One person we talked to was in London, another at Columbia University. Many others were closer to Colorado Springs like Greeley or Fort Collins but still unable to make it down here in time!
The other problem we found was the erroneous database item of MIB requested (but not mailed) MIB's by the County Clerk's office. Again we started finding this problem on Saturday where we found another 50 or so by Tuesday who had this designation in the database, all coincidentally with a date of request of 9/27/2008. Confirming their status with the Secretary of State's online databaseoffice we found that they were registered to vote at their Tuesday polling place. This caused communication confusion to say the least, but also begged the next question: Why were they designated as MIB requested, and why all on that date?
Then we began discover another layer of suspicious data entry errors in our contact universe. Voter's purged recently where many had their birth dates strangely recorded as 01/01/YEAR. We started to find these persons from the final contact universe that we were working on Tuesday as they were voters out there that had not voted by Noon and identified as Obama supporters. In our database each had volunteered for the campaign as a canvasser or phone banker at one time or another, and high ranking supporter. These particular persons all had registered this year and yet they were removed from the voters roles in the last couple of weeks. Well naturally if their birth date didn't line up with a federal database that would make them suspect. But in our contacting we found the following situation:
One young voter had registered in May and had requested a MIB where it was mailed to her on October 22nd. She told her father that she had mailed it back in but in checking the Secretary of State's database it had not been received as of the final weekend. When we looked into the database we found that the Clerk's office had 01/01/YEAR as her birth date and of course that was erroneous. How did her birth date change? Well that is the data entry responsibility of the Clerk's office. But the strange thing is that her purging had to have happened between October 22nd and October 31st when the Secretary of State was ordered by the Federal Judge to stop. There was nothing she could do for we were talking to her father on Tuesday November 4th---because her MIB was still not in.
This is why there is a 90-day stay for any systemic purging of voter records for mistakes or manipulation by those in control of the databases cannot be corrected in time and advantage those in power of the lists. This is why there is a famous saying; "it is not how many votes it is how many votes are counted".
Of course this is not just the strange things that went on in El Paso County. Over the weekend in what was a contested local area that Dennis Apuan won, phone calls were made to Democratic and Obama campaign poll watchers from a mysterious telephoner saying they were not needed and not to show up to a meeting getting their credentials on Monday. Naturally this was erroneous and the campaigns had to scramble to recontact those but to some it was too late. How did anyone get those lists? All poll watchers are deputized and credentialed through their party or campaign and then submitted to the County Clerk's office who has the record. Naturally the lists came from either inside the campaigns or from the Clerk's office.
But that was not enough. Jason DeGroot told me briefly that the Security Widefield office was also subject to fire alarm calls and inspection officers for code violations among other disruptions like the electricity being shut off. This all in the final days! There is another report that I am tracking down that poll watchers came to another staging location but were then identified as Republican operatives where they quickly left as Democratic volunteers showed up. This of course on top of the lies sent via email, stated on TV and even news shows.
Now some conclusion a few days after the 4-day sprint to the finish line. Things have changed on the ground in El Paso County and in Colorado. Colorado now has a Democratic Governor, Lt Governor, Treasurer and soon to be Secretary of State for Coffman was elected as the other Republican Congressman from Colorado taking over Tancredo's seat in JeffCo. The Governor now gets to appoint a replacement and it is rumored to be former Secretary of State Candidate Gordan. At least for 2010 the shenanigans the Republicans have employed purging the voter databases will be curtailed.
But think about it in three election cycles Colorado has gone from a Republican Governor, two Republican US Senators and four of the seven Congresspersons, where now both US Senator's are Democratic, 5 out of seven are Democratic and only the Attorney General is Republican in the State Executive Branch. Both legislative houses are now Democratic majority and finally Colorado swung blue in voting for Obama. In this wake, Lynn Musgrave the anti abortionist was soundly defeated in what was a McCain leaning area of the state, and an openly Gay candidate Polis won handily in Boulder's based Congressional District-2.
In El Paso County the Democratic vote is now roughly 40% up from 32-33% in 2004 and 31% in 2000 and 35% in 1996. In Colorado Springs we have unearthed over 1000 active volunteers and probably created over 50 progressive activists. We have also begun to get a picture on Balink's voting corruption. Furthermore this puts a premium on getting more than 43% in MIB to where we need to move that number up to almost two-thirds. With that and early voting trends we then would have almost 90% in the house before election Tuesday. The final weekend we have to rethink the strategies for a 45% turnout on this kind of high turnout election cycle is not working. Anna Lord in HD-21 (it had a 81.2% turnout), and thus needed a 94% turnout where she would have had to get all the additional 4600 votes.
Overall though I think we need to make certain we keep HD-18 and HD-17 and State Senate D-11 in 2010 and then more fairly reapportion the boundaries in El Paso County. This might help in getting more representative reflection in the state legislative districts. That the Democratic Party is now on the hot seat for its elected officials must not do what the Rove oriented Republicans did over the last decade. It must prove itself to be practical and fair and earn the Independent vote each day.
For us in Colorado Springs we have to take the energy and knowledge and begin working on the El Paso County Democratic Party (AKA Peak Dems) as a viable and rich minority political movement. The Obama campaign activists and participates must organize and integrate into the party and both reform it, reformulate it and infuse it with capability, energy and purpose. Thus I am beginning the call to have a post election meeting before John Morris's meeting at the end of the month. In this I am looking to do what the Obama campaign taught us---organize a grass roots group---the one thing is we have formualate a consensus and vision and then take that to the regular Democratic Meeting. Since Mike Maday and I are on the Precinct Development Committee we can start by nominating certain individuals for open Precinct Co-Chair seats before the Febuary Organization Meeting that will elect officers for the next four years in the organization. This will include not only the Executive Officers of Chair, Vice-chair, 2nd Vice Chair, Secretary and Treasurer, but also Senate District Chairs and House District Chairs which all are on the Executive Committee. Also Committee Chairs will be chosen.
To move this grass roots movement forward progressively people will have to stay involved. Personally I am thinking we have to evaluate Precinct Co-Chairs as to whether they are there in name only. In active co-chairs need to be removed and active chairs installed. Decentralizing and organizing like the campaign did is also a must where each Senate and House District should be organizing while the Executive Committee should be strategic and not tactical. This way we can continue to turn and identify progressives in the neighborhoods and also continue to move more voters to MIB status.
We have a lot to do. Our community governments are broke. They are becoming dysfunctional and like McCain out of touch and out of reality. Many Republicans I have talked to blame the Democratic Party for allowing the right wing wingnuts to have taken over, those like Keith King, Bob Gardner and Doug Bruce. That negative high water mark was Christen in the District 11 School Board which prompted our recall effort, but those nuts are still here.
If you are interested email me. Party on....
