You Can’t Be Serious(56)

In general, people who have voted in past elections tend to support establishment candidates (Clinton, John Edwards, George Bush). First-time voters tend to vote for the newer outside candidates who motivated them to participate (Ron Paul, Obama, Obama’s successor). That’s why in 2007, the Obama campaign focused on what’s called “expanding the electorate”: encouraging people who had never voted before to caucus. A huge part of ensuring Obama’s victory was making sure these new voters showed up on January 3.



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Each morning of the All-Actor, All-Iowa, All-Star Voter Education Tour began with a briefing from Teal Baker over a continental breakfast (included in the price of the room) before piling into Colby’s college band van. We’d first make an appearance at a local field office to talk to supporters and give a special shout-out to the volunteers who had collected the most supporter cards that week. Next, we’d hit three or four colleges to make speeches and help collect new supporter cards, using the drive time to do interviews with local reporters. We’d wrap up each evening with a quick dinner at a local eatery, where we’d also shake hands and campaign, then stop at another field office before getting some sleep.

The short speech I wrote for these events opened with the Hummer story from the $2,500 fundraiser in Malibu (I left the Eddie Murphy part out). I then talked about Obama’s opposition to the Iraq War and how that related to an acquaintance named Brady in Texas. Brady was the friend of a coworker, and really wanted to go to college. He was working a minimum-wage job in the office of a trucking company hoping to eventually save up enough for tuition. One afternoon, Brady got a call from a huge corporation called Halliburton and was offered a salary of $90,000 if he agreed to move to Iraq to drive a truck. (Shout-out to the military-industrial complex!)

I was so bothered by the fact that this was Brady’s choice.4 In the richest, most powerful country in the world, you can go to college if you work for years in a minimum-wage job or earn $90,000 a year driving a truck in a war zone (presuming you made it back alive to enroll in school). What if we hadn’t started this bipartisan war in Iraq and instead allocated that money toward making higher education more affordable? What if we elected someone like Obama, who proposed a doubling of the Pell Grant?

My speech was always well received, and it opened up a lot of great conversations about other people’s experiences. The most common questions we and the staff got were about Obama’s plans for health care, the economy, equality, and climate change. Marijuana and Harold & Kumar rarely came up. Turns out, when given the opportunity to talk with representatives of a presidential campaign, young voters will overwhelmingly ask about real issues that affect them. This is not to say there weren’t disruptions. One speech at a high school event was interrupted by some kid who aggressively shouted, “Hey Kal! Will you suck my caucus?” His classmates shut him down quickly with boos and reprimands, and I ignored the whole thing and went on with the rest of my remarks. But as soon as that event ended and our van door shut, I burst out laughing. “That heckler was hilarious. He was so embarrassed after his buddies booed him. Get me his phone number, I want to make sure he signs a supporter card.”5

Each time we delivered our stump speeches to crowds of enthusiastic young people, a thought crept into the back of my mind: Yo, what if Obama actually becomes the first African American candidate to win the Iowa caucus? Could we really make history here? Everyone on his team was so positive about the work they were doing, and the energy was contagious. “We’re in this to win. And if we don’t, we’ll have registered so many new voters that they’ll be more likely to participate in future elections. That’s ultimately a really good thing.”

Our three-day tour was exhausting and exhilarating. When we helped out at campaign offices each evening after our surrogate stops, Megalyn and Olivia and I got to know the process of phone banking. I helped with data entry, punching the info from supporter cards we collected into a digital database. Until you’ve worked on a campaign, you have no idea the amount of effort that goes into connecting with voters—I certainly didn’t. The Obama campaign was filled with a conscientious, dedicated team, with no ego or arrogance about it. The senator’s staff—many of whom would go on to become some of my best friends—reinforced what appealed to me about Obama at those events in LA: integrity.



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In contrast to my interactions with Hollywood liberals (like Original Ideas McGee), Obama’s campaign world felt like a postracial, post-identity utopia. He was focused on hiring the most qualified people, irrespective of what they looked like. I think my first example of this was meeting the campaign’s head of rural and agricultural outreach—a guy named Rohan Patel. Spoiler in case you’ve never known one, Patels are brown. Obama hired a brown guy to head up outreach in the whitest pockets of a state that’s already ninety-two percent white? I thought to myself. Just because he’s… qualified? The campaign felt that Rohan was simply the best person for the job. They were willing to bet that voters overwhelmingly care about competence more than skin color and shouldn’t be pandered to.

Added to that was the rarity of a high number of women in leadership positions—interestingly, more than the Clinton campaign had at the time. Senior advisor Jackie Norris helped lead the team alongside deputy state director Marygrace Galston, field director Anne Filipic, Get Out the Vote director Paulette Aniskoff, political director Emily Parcell, and policy director Karen Richardson.