Tuesday, September 16, 2008
I wouldn’t have expected to find a DNC-sanctioned operation near a Quinzos. That isn’t to knock Quiznos – their subs sandwiches are tolerable, and their chili is better than expected. But adjacent to them, through glass doors and up a flight of stairs, is Grassroots Campaigns, Inc., Portland’s bleeding heart of fundraising for the Democratic National Committee. GCI’s core seems hectic, yet as I stand in the office, order emerges; they’re pulling in young, mostly white workers in blue DNC shirts and pumping them out to busy street corners and quiet neighborhoods. I ask the man closest to me – he can’t be more than 20 – where I can find the woman I talked to on the phone, after responding to a flier left in a SE cafe. He doesn’t know… much of anything, really. Names and positions escape him. It’s his first full day as a canvasser for the Democratic Party in a city that has made no secret of its love for Barack Obama.
The fresh-faced young man may have been no help, but soon enough I’m directed to Sarah, the woman connected to the voice. She’s in her late twenties, pretty with black hair, and she hands me off to Lily, the hiring manager, a blond woman with frizzy hair of roughly the same age, who leads me across the hall into a room empty except for chairs and expertly designed Democratic propaganda. I’m given forms to fill out and instructed to wait for the others to arrive.
They trickle in over the next few minutes: A woman in her sixties with short white-gray hair, a heavyset middle-aged woman who repeatedly tries to entice the rest of us to listen to Air America, and a skinny, thirtysomething black man who gives African drumming classes at Lewis and Clark College. I can’t decide whether they’re motivated more by all-consuming passion for the cause or the need for a little money on the side. Truth be told, I’m not so sure about that myself.
Lily returns to the room and closes the door. Things are not looking good, she informs us, with the gravity of ideology weighing down her voice. With only 49 days left until the general election, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are in a statistical dead heat. After eight years of George W. Bush’s disastrous foreign and domestic policies, the country is staggered by the twenty-first century’s Woodrow Wilson. But if we can get Obama into office to enact the Democratic platform (“The new New Deal,” she calls it), there may be a Hope for Change yet.
Because Barack Obama is a different kind of politician, he’s restructured the campaign mechanisms to accompany that. The DNC isn’t accepting donations for Washington lobbyists, Political Action Committees or corporations. It falls to grassroots fundraisers to appeal to everyday people’s better ideological angels for money, because this election season, we’re all they’ve got. This motley assortment of individuals is all that’s standing between John McCain and the White House.
If we’re welcomed into the Change Brigade, we’ll be tasked with canvassing for small and medium-sized donations in the Portland Metro area. There will be some degree of training every day when we get to the office, then we’ll hit the streets or go door-to-door for five hours before returning to do paperwork. It sounds menial, and to an extent, it is – we’ll receive minimum wage work if we’re sub-par at selling the brand. But if we can meet quota, or above, we could be pulling in some serious Unity Cash for the next six weeks.
I later recognize a large portion of her speech as our “rap,” an eight paragraph appeal to the wallets of PDX liberals that every employee must memorize if they hope to stay with GCI. Lily ends her rousing speech and asks if we have any questions. Most of us as concerned about the logistics of the operation or the size of their paycheck, but Air America’s number one fan hits Lily with a question that I wish I’d thought of: When we’re in the field, what are we supposed to say if we’re asked about Obama’s FISA capitulation?
Lily breaths deeply and rolls her tongue towards the roof of her mouth as if searching for an answer. Finally, she confides, “That was a tough one for a lot of us. But the best thing you can say is it really was a compromise. Obama knew that if some deal wasn’t reached, the Bush administration would continue their illegal wiretapping unchecked. The deal was far from perfect, but as least this way there was some sort of legal framework in place.” The answer is unsatisfactory for all involved. Lily empathizes. “I wish I knew what he was thinking. But I don’t. Any other questions?”
When no one speaks up, our keeper leaves the room, allowing the latecomers to finish filling out their forms. Mrs. Air America woman fills the void of silence with what could be mistaken for a pledge drive. We humor her, which only encourages her more. Lily returns and ask who among us arrived in the room first – it’s time for individual interviews. I quickly volunteer and follow her back through the hallway into the main office, veering into a previously unseen room in the South end of the premises. We take grab cheap, uncomfortable seats. I hand her the clipboard that came with the paperwork, to which I have attached an addendum: the resume I drafted a few hours before. It immediately sets me apart from the rabble, the same way my semi-formal button up shirt and dress pants did. I might as well be wearing a custom-tailored Armani suit.
This is perhaps the easiest job interview I have ever undergone. During her speech, Lily planted all the seeds I needed to make my pitch. I bring them to fruition, taking her themes and injecting my own voice into them. I’m amazed how eagerly she responds to the regurgitation of her own opinions and passing references to current events. She’s especially impressed by the three years I spent working for the Editorial Department at a newspaper.
“We were called a right-wing mouthpiece one day and agents of the left the next,” I tell her. “But in my experience we didn’t have a right- or left-wing bias. What the media is really beholden to is money and power.” Lily makes a sound that could be a coo. “You’re very qualified. When can you start? We need to you to start, like, yesterday. How does tomorrow sound?” I’m to report back at the office at 1:30 p.m. tomorrow for what GCI calls “Observation Day,” wherein the mettle of new recruits is tested in the field. Lily gives me copies of the rap I’ll need to memorize and a job description. I’m a gainfully employed tool of the DNC, at least for the next twenty-two hours. Bullshitting my way into the job was easy. The difficult part, as I will soon find out, will be keeping it.
Read “I was a tool of the DNC, part II: Eloquence under a threadbare cloak”
Read “I was a tool of the DNC, part III: The Have’s and Have-more’s”
