I knocked on doors, I made phone calls, and you can never really do enough of either, but I dropped by the Reshma 2010 headquarters earlier in the evening for about an hour - felt like in and out - and it felt like what I needed to do was make a shift in where I spend my volunteer hours.
I should make a shift towards digital volunteering. I have been doing some of it already. But what if I were to focus on digital volunteering as my primary thing for the campaign. I am going to work out the details over the next few days. I have a few ideas to start with. I hope to come up with a few more. I intend to flesh out the details. And I want to share with some of the staffers and interns and other volunteers to see if they want to do some of what I want to do.
This was 7:30 PM and the office was abuzz with all the phone calls being made.
Keep bugging Carolyn to engage in weekly debates. Every time she says no, cash that for media attention. In NYC, local and national media are not two things. Make it lose lose for Carolyn.
Don't concede Labor to Carolyn. Maloney lives in a mansion, a-l-l labor issues are abstract to her.
One politician more than any other in this town is on excellent terms with Labor: John Liu. We need to go talk to John. I will come along if I have to. "John, you are going to be Mayor, sooner than most people realize. Reshma is going to be president. Right now she needs your help. She attended public schools all her life. Labor issues are not abstract to her like they are for Maloney. You were on Wall Street before you were in politics. Help now and we will remember when it is time for you to run for Mayor."
Landlines are only one part of the pie. Then there are cellphones, largely out of reach. And there is social media. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.
The core of the organization needs to retweet everything tweeted by @reshma2010. We have to press that Like button on the Reshma 2010 Facebook page. We need to comment vigorously on articles shared by Reshma.
Raise as much money possible from the workers of Wall Street. Workers of Wall Street, unite! Unite behind Reshma. You need someone on the Hill who actually understands how Wall Street works. I happen to think Reshma's leadership - she is the national leader to the tech sector - to the tech sector and her leadership to Wall Street go hand in hand. You are trying to build a meritocracy in both those sectors.
Reshma Saujani has had three bumper quarters in a row. During Q4 of 2009 she raised twice as much as Maloney. Reshma has been raising money like she were an incumbent. The powers that be will have you believe she has raised her $1.2 million so far from maybe four or five Wall StreetPACs. That is the lie that is being circulated over and over again. She has not taken a dime in PAC money, either from Wall Street or from any other industry. Maloney on the other hand has taken a ton of Wall Street PAC money, including through some fundraisers that might have been ethics violations. All of Reshma's money has come from individual contributions. Some people working on Wall Street might have given the legal max, and their spouses might have given the legal max, but mostly Reshma has been riding on the strength of small donors spread across the district.
(Laxmi, by the way, would be the Hindu goddess for wealth.)
She did work on Wall Street. But she did not invent it. I wish she had. We would not have had the meltdown we just had. Maloney, on the other hand, was in Congress when Congress passed all those deregulatory laws that brought about the meltdown. Maloney is responsible for the Great Recession.
Reshma has been for Wall Street reform from day one. She has stood with Barack Obama on this one. Carolyn Maloney voted for the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. She used to be a Bush Democrat. Now suddenly I am to think she has become an Obama Democrat? I have my suspicions. I was one of Obama's earliest supporters in New York City. I know an Obama Democrat when I see one. Maloney is not one.
Carolyn Maloney has not been for Wall Street reform. She might have voted with the herd, but she has been responsible for some of the watering down of the reform efforts that has been going on behind the scenes.
To reform Wall Street, you have to understand how it works. Maloney does not understand how it works. Reshma does.
What Reshma has been opposed to is a wholescale demonization of Wall Street. That she has opposed. That she opposes. Carolyn Maloney on the other hand has exhibited multiple personalities on the issue. She has participated in a wholescale demonization of the bread and butter industry of the city she claims to represent, she has claimed she has been in some kind of a leadership role for Wall Street reform, she has worked behind the scenes to water down the reform efforts in exchange for campaign cash from Wall Street PACs. These conflicting tendencies come from political dishonesty, desperation in the face of a serious political challenge, and a fundamental lack of knowledge of an industry she does not really know what to make of. Heck, I don't know a whole lot about nano tech either. It's not just her.
raised nearly $400,000 in the last quarter, for the third straight period. ..... $373,333 is money for the primary, which is the strongest quarter she's had so far in terms of money for the pre-general matchup. She raised $394,000 overall this quarter, and $1.2 million for the race. ....... 7,250 signatures ..... only 25 percent of her donors are affiliated with the banking industry. ...... Sixty-eight percent of donations this quarter were $250 or less. .....the first time in 18 years that Maloney will have a challenger on the primary ballot, and Saujani did it with volunteers, and no political clubs. .... Saujani's cash-on-hand is $426,000
If this is the Reshma Saujani we are going to see on TV during her debates with Carolyn Maloney - i-f there are debates that is, and that is a big i-f, Maloney has been running scared, can you blame her? (Debating Is "Stunt" In A Maloney Democracy) - we win hands down. This woman is dynamo. This woman is brilliant. This woman is cutting edge. I have said this before and I will say this again, this woman is going to be hitting the national headlines on September 15.
Carolyn Maloney, dove, hawk or chicken? Dove on Wall Street reform. She has been taking all the Wall Street PAC money, has she not? Hawk on the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. I knew she was from North Jesse Helms Carolina, did you? Chicken on debating Reshma.
Carolyn Maloney, dove, hawk or chicken? All of the above.
Ugh, it's been a few weeks since my last Reshma event. There has been the World Cup. And there have been some stuff I have needed to work on. But I hope to stay in touch with the campaign, and I hope to keep volunteering.
My favored way of volunteering is digital. When people google up her name, I want them to come across my blog. So my blogging for Reshma 2010 is a gift that will keep giving. And I want to show up at the campaign office here and there, pick up some literature and go work the nearest subway stop. And, of course, I want to show up for all the key events. You got to party. When you are having fun is when you know you are winning.
The Democratic Party is on its way to an intellectual bankruptcy by the time Obama's eight years are over. Reshma Saujani is the party's insurance against that bankruptcy.
Carolyn Maloney is too "ordinary" - as described in the Washington Post article - to keep representing District 14. District 14 functions as the ATM for the entire Democratic Party, it is a solidly Democratic district. You need a Super Star Congressperson to represent this district. Reshma is that Super Star. She is dazzling. Check out the video above.
The idea that Reshma Saujani is Wall Street's candidate was a lie six months ago, and it is a lie today. She does recognize the fact that Wall Street is an integral part of the New York economy, and indeed the national and the global economy. Many people who work on Wall Street live in her district, many of them have made individual contributions to her. You have to wonder. She is the stronger between the two for Wall Street reform, and still so many people on Wall Street support her. Why? Because the truth is a lot of people on Wall Street themselves are for reform. They realize Wall Street needs to reinvent itself if it is going to see robust days ahead. And that is Reshma's point. Work for meaningful reform. But stop demonizing Wall Street wholescale. Reform the bad aspects, keep the good aspects, and let's see brighter days ahead. Carolyn Maloney is slow. She is thick. When Maloney talks Wall Street reform, she does not know what she is talking about. When Reshma talks Wall Street reform, that is like a doctor talking medical issues. She knows what she is talking about. She has the vocabulary.
Get the debates on, yo! I think Maloney should do it, a debate a week. It is like dipping your toe into cold water. It is daunting, but you can do it. Maloney, you can do it. Let's get the game on.
Carolyn Maloney has decided she is not going to debate Reshma. (Debating Is "Stunt" In A Maloney Democracy) I wish Maloney all the false confidence in the world. She is relying on a poll her campaign conducted before Reshma did her months of field work.
The most talked about race in the state of New York is not going to have any debates if Maloney will have her way.
Of all the races in all the state, why does this one have people so passionate?
Obama won Iowa. The polls did not show that he will win, and they did not show his eventual margin. Why? Because the pollsters kept calling up "likely voters," their name for people who voted four years ago. But what Obama had done was build an army of new, first time voters on the ground. And so the pollsters were left in the dust. And, mind you, these were not pollsters hired by the Edwards campaign.
And you have Maloney basking in the glory of early, internal polling. I wish her a ton of false self confidence. If this race were such a shoo-in for Maloney, why is it the most talked about race in the state? It is such a talked about race because it is a competitive race.
But asking Maloney to do two debates a month to election day is like asking the mullahs in Iran to hold a reelection: not gonna happen. (Iran: The World Has Wasted A Year)
So what do you do? While at the Reshma 2010 party last night, I thought about this a whole lot, at the party and after the party. (Reshma 2010 Party Tonight)
I think the answer is social media. The answer is new media.
There were about 100 people at the party, in and out. Victory lies at the 1,000 mark. Once the circle of core supporters expands from 100 to 1,000, we win. Because all we need is 30,000 votes to win.
There was so much positive energy in the room last night. You could feel the tremendous momentum.
Already the candidate is doing an average of three events per day, events big and small. That is a tremendous pace.
Why do we want debates? So we can air our views, and we can get media coverage. We get on local TV. Are there other ways of achieving the same goals? I believe there are. Social media does better what traditional media does pretty good.
I was at the party last night, so I saw what happened. What if I was not there but wanted to know what happened? If the campaign were to post 100 pictures from the event at its Facebook page, if the campaign were to post a five minute video clip from the party at its YouTube channel, I might get a feel for what happened at the party last night. The audience for that video might only be 500 strong right now, but that is what social media is all about: media for all audience sizes. Small audiences matter, small audiences are intimate.
I say do events and be your own media, cover all events. There should be at least one photo from each event, posted at the campaign's Facebook page. Short video clips are great. They are free to produce. Long live the Flip camera.
And we have to produce full length videos of Reshma giving speeches on all major issues. We asked for but did not get two debates per month with Maloney. But we could easily do one major speech per week on our own.
I am all about taking attendance with the camera. When you capture a candidate speech on camera, it is important to capture all faces in the room. It is not just about the candidate, but also the crowd.
Upload the full speech, and upload a shorter video of highlights. An apple a day keeps the doctor away, one speech a week keeps Maloney away.
Another strategy would be to keep going on TV and keep challenging Maloney to do the debates.
Social media is not an imitation of old media. Social media is more. Social media is much more than saying, okay, we are going to be our own C-Span.
Social media allows you to turn your organization into a jellyfish. I am using that metaphor to hint at transparency. There are things that are private, but then there are things that are not private. The private strategy session that decided on the new office space was not something that needed to stay private. A three minute video from that session would have been great. You do that for your core 1,000 supporters. You are not on the staff, you were not even in the office that day, but we want you to feel included.
How much of the internal operations can you video blog like that?
I am for uploading five minutes of video every single day. The whole exercise is free.
And then there are the giants: Facebook and Twitter. Most everyone on the East Side who will vote on September 14 is on Facebook. I am guessing that to be the case. The campaign Facebook page has to be taken to new heights.
For every event the candidate does, at least one photo with a brief description has to end up on the Facebook page. It should be super easy for our core supporters to follow the campaign, and the Facebook stream is perhaps the best way. The accompanying staffer, also armed with a Droid X, can perhaps take care of the social media part of events.
Post video clips on Facebook.
And this is key: retweeting and pressing that Like button. All staffers and interns need to do that. East tweet by the campaign has to start with 30 retweets right away. Each Facebook update has to be liked by 30 people within the hour. And for key articles shared by Reshma on Facebook, there have to be 30 comments by the end of the day. I don't know how you do this. Do you send out an internal email each time? But I do know this has to be done.
It has to feel like there is a lot of activity. And you soon enough get the snowball effect. This is not about faking it, this is about engaging the core of the organization.
And then there is going out there. Take the NYDailyNews.com for example. It is not like they push six Reshma articles per day. It is one every few weeks. But those articles generate a lot of comments. Well, we can make sure at least 30 of those comments come from Reshma supporters. And if we can do that, more supporters will come out of the woodworks. This digital engagement is important because it is free, and it is real. These are real people. Many more people read the comments than leave them. That is an interested crowd.
Maloney's perceived advantages from dodging debates can be neutralized through a thorough use of social media. If she opts for just one debate early in September, we have to turn that into a slam dunk. And we can do that if we make extensive use of social media in the weeks before that.
If a tree fell deep in the forest, and nobody heard it fall, did the tree fall? Social media is about making sure people hear the tree fall. One photo per event, I would think, is the absolute minimum. The goal has to be to capture every face that shows up for every event. This is as much about covering the candidate as the crowd.
The idea is to produce short, compelling video clips for the Facebook stream every other day, so compelling people go ahead and press the Share button. If we are not going to get the free media from debating, we have to fill up the gap by becoming our own media. New media is better media.
"While the Congresswoman is creating jobs and working to get our economy back on track, her opponent is engaged in yet another political stunt that deflects from the issues the constituents really care about," said Maloney spox Alix Anfang.
If Maloney is too busy creating jobs to engage Reshma Saujani - whose intellect she fears - in debates, very soon she is going to be the one looking for a job.
I don't think Maloney is too busy creating jobs - I don't see all that many jobs around - I think Maloney is too busy being scared of Reshma's intellect.
Reshma Saujani - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Saujani's parents lived in Uganda, prior to being expelled, along with other Indians, in the early 1970s by Idi Amin. The Saujanis settled in Chicago. ...... Saujani attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she graduated in 1997 with majors in Political Science and Speech Communications. She attended the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where she received a Masters of Public Policy in 1999, and Yale Law School, where she received her Juris Doctorate in 2002. ..... She worked at the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, where she handled asylum cases pro bono..... Saujani founded "South Asians for Kerry" during the 2004 presidential election. ..... Saujani served on the National Finance Board for Hillary Clinton during Clinton's campaign for president in 2008. Following the primaries, she was named Vice-Chair of the New York delegation at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. ...... Saujani has won the support of top entrepreneurs including Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chairman of Twitter; Randi Zuckerberg, director of market development for Facebook and sister of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg; Alexis Maybank, co-founder of Gilt Groupe; and Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook........ Saujani has raised a considerable amount of money for a challenger in a congressional race, outraising Maloney by almost a 2-to-1 margin in the last quarter of 2009...... Her candidacy has received the backing of prominent Upper East Side political fundraisers, including Cathy Lasry and Maureen White.
Carolyn B. Maloney - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia the Congresswoman for New York's 14th congressional district since 1993. .... most of Manhattan's East Side; Astoria and Long Island City in Queens; and Roosevelt Island. ...... In 1970, she visited New York City and decided to stay. ..... In 1992, Maloney was elected to the House of Representatives, narrowly defeating a 15-year incumbent, liberal Republican Bill Green, in a victory considered an upset. She is the first woman to ever represent the district, and has been re-elected eight times ....... Following Maloney's win, Republicans continued to hold most of the State Senate, Assembly, and City Council seats on Manhattan's East Side for nearly another decade. Since 2002, the Democrats have dominated the area, and now hold all of the area's seats in the state legislature and City Council. ....... among the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Maloney has the ninth-highest amount of investment in oil stocks. ........In the book, Maloney argues that progress for women has stalled and offers recommendations for resuming their advance toward full equality ...... In December 2008, Maloney hired a public relations firm to help bolster her efforts to be named by Governor David Paterson as Hillary Clinton's successor as a New York Senator. Maloney toured parts of the state, but was overshadowed by Caroline Kennedy's promotional tour for the same seat. Maloney interviewed with the governor for 55 minutes. Public opinion polls placed Maloney's support for the Senate seat in the single digits, trailing the front-runner ..... On July 20, 2009, Maloney apologized after using the word "nigger" in repeating a comment made by a third party about Gillibrand. ....... he married Clifton Maloney, an investment banker, in 1976.
Carolyn Maloney has a longer resume, but it is because she is older, twice as old. I say her resume is not long enough.
Issues in women's rights like equal pay, and reproductive rights are like a ceiling to Maloney. She tried the best she could, but she has done the best she can. Those same issues are a floor to Reshma Saujani. She will fight for equal pay, she will fight harder for reproductive rights. And she will build on all that to do much more. Maloney belongs to a generation that imagined equality. Reshma Saujani belongs to a generation that wants to be able to take equality for granted.
Obama has done so much for race without even talking about it. Reshma Saujani's focus on technology and innovation and the next generation of jobs, companies and industries is something similar. She dreams of things that a leader - man or woman - would dream of. That kind of confidence comes from wanting to take equality for granted.
This is not about okay let's just undo the good work Maloney has done for women's rights. This is about she has not done enough, although she tried, and let's build upon whatever she has been able to do. And let's also touch upon leadership issues in general. Let's also talk about creating the next generation of jobs, companies and industries.
Image via Wikipedia
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