Doing It Retail

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I spent most of today working on the HQ database. We are changing over from a simple Excel spreadsheet with a parallel QuickBooks file for contributions to an internet-based, integrated database that will combine all the information – and more – into one file that can be accessed by anyone at any time from anywhere you can connect to the internet. What I’m doing is looking at each record, trying to fill in any blanks on it, and linking it to other records so that we don’t send two postcards to the same house when one would do. It’s painstaking and somewhat boring but fascinating, too, because I know a lot of these people, and seeing their names reminds me that, in Sedgwick County, Democrats are not alone.

The work also reminds me that 21st-century politics is returning to its 19th-century roots as a retail business, selling our issues, our Party, our candidates to one voter at a time. That doesn’t mean that there is no room for 20th-century mass marketing, but Obama has proven that that is not nearly as important as it was once thought. In other words, campaigns are no longer won with TV commercials and mass mailings but rather with neighbors talking to neighbors and helping the right ones get out to vote.

But to do that, you actually have to talk to your neighbors. That means walking door-to-door with clipboard in hand, knocking on doors and talking with whoever answers. It’s a long, slow process, but done the right way it can be a lot of fun. The right way is to get together with some friends (or at least acquaintances) and do it as a group. The right way also is to have a good database from which you can pull information about the people in each house so you know what to expect – or whether to approach that door at all – and into which you can record the salient information you learn.

Three years ago, the Kansas Democratic Party invested in such a database and they made it available to the local parties and local candidates. It’s called VoteBuilder. It’s not the database I was working on today, but Votebuilder is there, waiting for us to pull it up and use it again, once the weather gets good enough. In it are recorded the names, addresses, and phone numbers of every registered voter in the state, along with their ages, voting records (when they voted, not how), party affiliations, etc., etc. Some of them will even have info that was picked up by candidates during the past year.

But having that big database isn’t any good without those neighbors willing to talk to one another. That’s where my smaller database comes in. Over the course of the next few weeks, I hope to recruit some people who will recruit some other people who will start reaching out to the current precinct committee members and other active Democrats to sound them out about attending a training session where they will learn how to canvass – to walk door-to-door with the purpose of feeling people out about their politics. I’m hoping we can then divide the precinct committee people up into teams that will actually do exactly that.

Just like door-to-door salesmen, making their pitch, selling it retail.
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