Obama Campaign Mobilizes Volunteer Network for One-Year Mark
Just over one year before Election Day 2012, the Obama campaign is redoubling efforts to grow and energize its network of more than one million supporters with hundreds of organizing events scheduled this week nationwide.
Obama volunteers are fanning out across all 50 states ahead of Sunday’s official one-year mark, opening new Obama for America campaign offices, holding house parties to enlist new supporters, canvassing neighborhoods on foot and by phone to talk about the president’s record, and signing up voters at registration drives.
More than 1,500 events are planned, a campaign aide told ABC News.
“This year is going to fly by. We have to ramp up our work now to create the kind of campaign we need to win in 2012,” Obama national field director Jeremy Bird wrote in an email to supporters announcing the events. “If we get started now, we’ll have no regrets come next year. Let’s win this thing by organizing now.”
The campaign is also holding “small-scale” fundraisers in conjunction with the milestone. They will feature high-profile Obama surrogates in at least eight major cities around the country on Sunday, a campaign official said. Ticket prices start at $44.
The events will take place in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Nashville, and Washington, D.C., according to a campaign official. Battleground states director Mitch Stewart, deputy campaign manager Juliana Smoot, Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, and national finance committee chair Matthew Barzun are among the surrogates who will attend.