There is no shortage of blame, to put it mildly, circulating around the failure to stop Prop 8. Many voices have described the failure to connect adequately with communities of color. LA Weekly reports demands for a generational shift in power, away from those who led No on 8 and to younger activists. It's easy to understand the raw anger and frustration, and it's a safe prediction that no future campaign will get community support unless it promises not to repeat the mistakes made in this one. I must also say that I know some CA folks who worked tirelessly in the No on 8 campaign, and whatever mistakes were made, they should be appreciated for that.
The article I'm excerpting here, from Rolling Stone, contains the best analysis of the No on 8 campaign that I've read so far. What's most interesting to me is the link between the Yes on 8 campaign director and his strategy, and the Bush 2004 ground campaign that blew out the Dems in Ohio:
From the start, the leaders of the No on
Prop 8 campaign and their high-priced consultants failed to realize
what they were up against. According to Geoff Kors, who headed the
campaign's executive committee, the No side anticipated needing no
more than $20 million to stop the gay-marriage ban. The Yes side,
by contrast, set out to change how initiative politics are played,
building a well-funded operation that rivaled a swing-state
presidential campaign in its scope and complexity. It also built a
powerful, faith-based coalition that included the Catholic Church,
Protestant evangelicals and the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. "The direct involvement of the Mormon church
— moving donors in a very short window to give early —
was stunning," says Patrick Guerriero, who was called in to take
over as campaign manager of No on Prop 8 in the final month. "It
was unprecedented — and probably impossible to predict."
In fact, as documented in an internal LDS memo leaked during the
campaign, proposals for such a coalition had been on the table for
more than a decade. In the memo, a high-ranking Mormon leader
discusses approaches for fighting gay marriage in California: "The
Church should be in a coalition and not out front by itself," the
memo advocates. "The public image of the Catholic Church is higher
than our Church. . . . If we get into this, they are the ones with
which to join."
... [O]nce the Mormons joined the effort, they quickly
established themselves as "the foundation of the campaign," says
Frank Schubert, the consultant who directed Yes on 8. "We could
count on their money and their people being there early."
Schubert put Mormon volunteers to work in an expansive field
campaign modeled on the effort his business partner, Jeff Flint,
worked on in 2004 for George Bush in Ohio. "This is the first time
in initiative history that it's ever been done" for a ballot
measure, says Schubert. Throughout the summer, Yes on 8 deployed an
army of more than 100,000 volunteers to knock on doors in every zip
code in the state.
"We had an enormous grass-roots advantage," Schubert says. "Our
core was people of faith, and we were able to organize through
churches." In the end, he says, the campaign visited 70 percent of
all California households in person, and contacted another 15
percent by phone.
The No on Prop 8 campaign, meanwhile, was oblivious to the
formidable field operation that the other side was mounting. Worse,
its executive committee refused to include leaders of top gay and
lesbian grass-roots organizations, which deprived them of an army
of willing foot soldiers. "We didn't have people going door to
door," admits Yvette Martinez, the campaign's political director.
The field operation consisted of volunteers phone-banking from 135
call centers across the state, an effort that didn't begin ramping
up until mid-October.
"They had no ground game," says a leading Democratic consultant.
"They thought they could win this thing by slapping some ads
together. It was the height of naiveté."
The Yes on 8 campaign's get-out-the-vote effort was equally
prodigious. The weekend before the vote, Schubert's religious
volunteers once again went door to door, speaking to supporters and
directing them to the right precinct locations. "On Election Day,"
he says, "we had 100,000 people — five per precinct —
checking voter rolls and contacting supporters who hadn't showed up
to vote."
By contrast, the No on Prop 8 campaign mobilized just 11,000
volunteers on Election Day, which they deployed to polling
locations to hold "Vote No on 8" signs. The campaign even turned
away volunteers who were unable to attend a sign-holding training
seminar. Terry Leftgoff, a veteran campaign consultant who was once
the highest-ranking gay officer in the California Democratic Party,
was one of those who was informed that his services weren't needed.
"I was told I could come by on November 5th and help clean up a
campaign office," Leftgoff says.
As terrible as the no on prop 8 campaign
did on the ground, it did even worse on the air....
[Continue reading at the link]
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