Chapter 3: Up, up and Away

The original goal of Dan’s Delegation was to send as many people as possible to Colorado for “Get Out The Vote Weekend” (the weekend before the election) through Election Day. However, as the campaign rolled into its final month, the colors on the board began to change. Colorado was getting bluer by the day and our numbers were growing quickly.

Shortly after speaking with David Gall, I had contacted a student organizer in Berkeley who I had met in Denver. He got some of his friends on board. When our total number of volunteers reached one hundred, we decided it would be best to consider splitting our volunteers into two different teams in two different states. Aggressively seeking every volunteer they could muster, the folks we had been working with in Denver were not pleased when we informed them of this decision. This was all less than a week after I first spoke with David Gall.

Then, seemingly overnight, something fantastic happened: Through email, text messaging, cell phone conversations, blogs and Facebook, the concept of a free flight to a battleground state went viral to young volunteers around the country. Beyond UC Berkeley and beyond our control, young volunteers around the country began to fill out our online application in overwhelming numbers. The UC Berkeley students who I had begun working with planted a seed, and in the second week of October, that seed vibrantly exploded.

We welcomed everyone who wanted this opportunity. Whereas the original members of Dan’s Delegation were my family members and friends, now the vast majority of our volunteers were students who had never voted before. Our only prerequisites were that each volunteer was passionate and dedicated. They did not need to have any prior election experience.

I could no longer do this on my own. Organizing this was going to take an organization. As our numbers grew, I actively sought and received help from an incredible group of student leaders at UC Berkeley. Working with these students was an amazing experience. The energy that was generated from their enthusiasm, commitment and dedication was similar to what I experienced in Denver; however, this was different. This was proactive.

Our volunteer and leadership base didn’t just come from states that were solid blue (Massachusetts and California), but also from states that were solid red (Oklahoma and Texas). These leaders would be responsible for registering and corresponding with volunteers on an individual level. David worked to lock up resources and I began contacting and working with organizers who were already on the ground in the six “Battleground States” we had determined to target: North Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado and the 2nd Congressional District in Nebraska.

By the beginning of the second week of October we had surpassed seven hundred registered volunteers and were well on our way towards our goal of one thousand. It was at this point that David made it clear his resources were finite and asked us to stop enrolling volunteers.

Our next step was to take this massive grouping of names and organize them into hierarchical teams. This would be the hardest work of the campaign. Each group would have a State Director, City Captains and individual Team Leaders. As each of these positions would be important branches of our organization, individuals who were interested in this position were interviewed. These leaders would work closely with the organizers on the ground of the battleground state they were assigned to. Once the leaders were chosen, David and I held a series of conference calls to make sure these people were prepared and understood what their expectations were. This was a massive effort which involved finding housing, transportation and field training for nearly seven hundred volunteers.

This was my biggest responsibility. It began with phone interviews to each and every volunteer confirming that they were passionate, willing to physically walk onto an airplane, work long hours and live in a state unfamiliar to them for a couple of days. The Berkeley students were herculean in their time and effort in making confirmation phone calls and speaking with each volunteer. David began reserving flights and both of us worked to iron out every detail to make sure that all our volunteers would be taken care of and ready to accomplish the task at hand.

Soon thereafter, I wrote a letter to the entire group with directions and steps that would take place over the next week. Each volunteer would receive a flight confirmation via email. On the evening of Wednesday, October 22, David informed our leadership core that he was about one-third of the way through booking flights, was burning through donated frequent flyer miles and had already spent over $30,000 of his own money.

Our final number was six-hundred-and-eighty-four people. California college students from Stanford, USC, a variety of California State Schools and every single UC in the system made the bulk of our population. But there were also students from the University of Oklahoma, Texas, Tufts and over two hundred students from Harvard College. But it wasn’t just students. It was their friends and family. It was my friends and my family – and every single one of my original volunteers.

My goal had long been to put this thing in motion, provide leadership, then step away and fly to Colorado with my friends to knock on doors. I was now told I was bigger than that. On that same day, David told me he had a surprise and asked me to check my email. He had reserved my flight back to Denver, but instead of arriving from the San Francisco Bay Area, I would be departing from Nebraska. My arrival to Nebraska would be from Indiana. My arrival to Indiana would be from Georgia. My arrival to Georgia would be from North Carolina. He wanted me to stop in every single state we were sending volunteers in. He could not fit Missouri into the schedule, but I would cover five states in five days. I told him I thought this was excessive and that I would rather him use the flights fly a few more volunteers. David told me I was too important and that I was needed in these states to rally our volunteers. The student leaders agreed. I relented and I got excited.

David asked me to draft a “Mission Statement” to send to the entire group. I took a whole next day to come up with it and went through several different drafts and versions. I asked the Berkeley students to proofread it. I asked David to proofread it. I even asked my mother to proofread it. This was the final result.

The feedback I got from this letter was overwhelmingly positive. Immediately it became a rallying point. On Thursday, October 23, my work as an organizer was done. It was at this moment that I released myself to the structure we had created and the tasks we had delegated. After weeks of minimal sleep, more than a dozen conference calls to volunteers, a hell of a lot of work and a more than healthy amount of stress, I began to breathe again. Our state rosters were finalized. State Leaders were speaking daily with their respective organizers on the ground and had made arrangements for ground transportation, room and board for all of our volunteers. David provided each team captain with his personal home and cell phone number if they incurred any difficulty. All of our volunteers had been debriefed on the voter demographic they were to target. All of our volunteers had voted early.

The greatest, most important work was still to be done by our volunteers in the field, but the work we had done up to this point had both inspired and empowered people to participate in making change. Every responsibility was locked in and delegated to responsible people.

We were fired up and ready to go.

Continue To Chapter 4