Obama Taps Youth to Help Make White House Run
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., taps youth for White House run.
May 14, 2007 — -- Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is poised to unleash an army of young supporters across New Hampshire Saturday, in the first major statewide canvassing event of his presidential candidacy — and the first attempt of the 2008 campaign to translate online popularity into on-the-ground political organizing.
The event's timing is no accident. It's designed to coincide with the end of the academic year for the legions of college students in Boston and throughout New England, as the Obama campaign seeks to turn the broad support it is enjoying among younger voters into an edge in the 2008 race.
"We need young people as part of our winning vote margin," said Hans Riemer, the Obama campaign's youth vote director and a former political director at Rock the Vote. "Our job is to leverage the entire campaign to effectively target young people, and get them out to vote. This is the campaign recognizing the realities on the ground."
Plenty of previous presidential campaigns have leaned on younger voters, but few such efforts have lived up to the hype.
Voters younger than 30 accounted for about 14 percent of voters in the 2004 Democratic primaries, down from 17 percent in 1992.
They were the one age group that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., won in his 2004 race against President Bush, but they didn't provide enough of a margin to overcome Bush's advantage among older voters.
And relying on politically naive college students and other young professionals to execute a campaign's ground game can be a risky proposition.
In one example that quickly became legendary in political circles, Howard Dean's 2004 campaign put droves of young volunteers to work canvassing Iowa. They turned voters off -- and drew widespread ridicule for their fluorescent orange hats.
Obama aides say they've learned lessons from Dean and other campaigns and are determined not to repeat past mistakes.
