At least, I hope it is.
Sen. Wendy Davis
Addressing hundreds of volunteers on Saturday, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis highlighted her efforts to mobilize Texas voters and once again attacked her Republican opponent, Attorney General Greg Abbott, for being what she called a political “insider.”
Davis also talked gender equality in the workplace — which she’s made a centerpiece of her campaign — and reaffirmed her stance on making pre-K accessible to Texas children.
“The real priority of Texas is to make sure our kids, every child, gets an opportunity to be a part of 21st century education,” she said.
The crowd at Davis’ event on Saturday was made up of the campaign’s neighborhood team leaders — the top layer of her grassroots campaign. Polls show Abbott is leading Davis, who faces a steep uphill climb to win in a state that hasn’t seen a Democrat elected governor in decades.
The statewide volunteers had traveled to Austin Community College for an all-day summit on how to mobilize voters. The event was preparation for next Saturday, when Davis’ campaign officially kicks off its door-to-door canvassing. Davis campaign spokeswoman Rebecca Acuña said volunteers would head out in their own neighborhoods to provide a “local emphasis.”
“You’ve recruited an army the likes of which Texas has never seen,” Davis said to a boisterous crowd, many of whom she identified in her speech as being public school teachers.
The Davis campaign says it currently has 14,225 volunteers, and that the number is climbing. It has the sizeable support of Battleground Texas, a PAC founded by former Obama campaign field director Jeremy Bird and devoted to optimizing the blue vote in Texas by targeting eligible minority voters who are not registered.
This all sounds fantastic, and as with LVdP, I really want to believe. I want to believe it can and will make a difference this November. But what I need is the answer to some questions:
– How is the Wendy Davis campaign different than the Bill White campaign? White was well-funded and invested a lot in GOTV activities. For all the scorn he’s gotten in some quarters, he did draw hundreds of thousands of votes away from Rick Perry. In a less terrible year for Democrats overall, he could have won. How does Wendy’s campaign compare to his?
– That volunteer figure is awesome, but I’d like some context to it. How many volunteers did BGTX think they’d need for this campaign? How many voters do they think they can reach with this number?
– We all know BGTX is an outgrowth of Team Obama’s legendary organizing in states like Florida and Ohio. How does what BGTX is doing compare to what was done in those states, or any others? What learnings from Florida and Ohio were implemented here? What did they have to completely un-learn and do differently? What did they find here that was brand new to them?
I don’t expect to see these answers in my newspaper anytime soon, of course. Maybe someone will publish a memoir in 2015 or so, in time for the ramp-up to Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign, with some of the answers. Even without these answers, I don’t doubt we’re seeing something new, and that it has the potential to be transformative. The one thing I’d caution about is that we’re unlikely to see any effect of this in the polls, at least early on. If the goal is to bring out people that aren’t in the habit of voting in off-year elections, then by definition they’re going to be caught in pollsters’ “likely voter” screens. It will be noticed at some point if there is a real effect, but it may not be till late and it may only be one pollster. None of the public polls really captured the 2010 dynamic, after all. BOR has more.