One of the great benefits of Democrats having such a crowded presidential field is that we’re building an incredible army of experienced field organizers. Organizers are the linchpins of successful campaigns, as are the volunteers these organizers enlist to help their respective candidates and causes.
The Washington Post has a long story up by reporter Holly Bailey about a day in the life of an Elizabeth Warren field organizer in rural Iowa. It’s a terrific, interesting and inspiring read and the photography by Daniel Acker is beautiful, as well:
Organizing for Warren in one of Iowa’s most rural counties
The story opens like this:
EAST AMANA, Iowa — Anna Navin stepped out of her Honda, grabbed a large pink backpack from the passenger seat of her car and knocked on the door of Glenn Goetz, a 68-year-old retiree.
Navin, a 28-year-old organizer for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was meeting with Goetz to see if he would take on more duties as a precinct captain, including knocking on doors in other nearby communities and helping recruit volunteers.
As she stepped inside, Navin and Goetz greeted each other like old friends, and after a few months of running into each other at county parades and at volunteer events she had hosted on Warren’s behalf, they were. He offered her a cup of tea and a plate of freshly baked cookies as they sat down at his kitchen table to strategize about an area he was planning to canvass.
That organizer is our daughter, Anna.
Anna has always done meaningful, purposeful work in her life, and this is no exception. After college, she rode her bike from New Haven, Connecticut to Half Moon Bay, California as part of Bike & Build, an organization that raises money for affordable housing initiatives. As part of that program, her cycling group stopped in communities along the way, helping to build affordable homes. She also raised $5,000 for the cause.
The Post piece recounts her journey to the Warren campaign:
An English major in college, Navin got involved in politics three years ago, after Trump’s election. Back then, she was living in the Bay Area, working for the Oakland chapter of Habitat for Humanity. She quit her job and moved to Arizona, where she worked as a field organizer for a few Democratic campaigns, including Kyrsten Sinema’s successful U.S. Senate bid.
After that, she thought she had retired from organizing —“I’m old for this job,” she said, pointing out that many of her colleagues are in their early 20s. But earlier this spring, Navin heard Warren speak about affordable housing, the issue she cared about most, describing it as a human right. “I just fell in love right there,” Navin said. “I thought, we have to elect a woman like that. … And that is what got me out to Iowa.”
We love Anna and are exceptionally proud of her commitment and dedication to the things she cares passionately about.
You can (and should) go read the story for yourself, but, in truth, the story is not just about Anna. It’s about every organizer for every candidate who is out there working her or his tail off to make the world a better place.
While the campaign has declined to release exact numbers, the Massachusetts senator is believed to have more than 100 field staff fanned out across the state, including some who have been on the ground for the better part of a year. Warren staffers have become deeply embedded, showing up at high school sports games, book clubs, bingo nights and potluck dinners dressed in the campaign’s signature liberty green attire. In Fairfield, Iowa, a family recently named their newborn goat Herb, after the Warren field organizer who has prolifically canvassed that town for months. In Mason City, an organizer who was in the hospital for emergency surgery used his recovery time to pitch the ER staff on Warren’s candidacy.
The stories about Warren staffers in Iowa and how far they go to sell her candidacy regularly circulate among rival campaigns, eliciting both eye rolls but also grudging admiration. “It’s like, where did they find these kids?” marveled a longtime Iowa Democratic activist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she endorsed another candidate in the race.
It’s a hard job. The hours are grueling, the pay is relatively meager (though the Warren team is organized under the IBEW so the pay and benefits are better than most), the weather can be brutal, and talking to dozens of people every day with the hopes that you can persuade them to support your candidate can be both exhilarating and crushing.
Whether Iowa should retain its “first-in-the-nation” status is a topic for another piece, but having worked on a presidential campaign in Iowa myself for Howard Dean, I can say it is an experience unlike any other I have had in my life. When Anna was deciding whether to go to Iowa, I told her that there is probably nothing else quite like working on a presidential campaign in Iowa. It is a thing unto itself, a unique experience that truly cannot be replicated. I told her she would never regret going. (After it was over, of course! There are many tough days while you’re there.)
The life lessons learned are deeply felt — the small victories enormous and the frequent rejections humbling.
Navin is often decades younger than the voters she meets. Still, in a sparsely populated rural area where a few votes could determine a candidate’s viability in what many here expect to be one of the most competitive caucuses ever, Navin takes every chance she gets to talk to people about Warren.
She ran a 5k race in July, huffing and puffing through the hilly countryside of tiny Toledo alongside a pair of Trump supporters who jogged with her because they worried she might pass out. More recently, she pulled her car off the road to wave down a farmer driving his tractor in a field to talk to him about the election. He signed a card committing to caucus for Warren.
Anna has learned so much in her time in Iowa. There have been good times and very difficult times. She perseveres because she believes.
Navin makes about $700 a week, about the same amount she was earning in California. But the money goes much further here, especially since she is doing little besides working. She regularly pulls 12-hour days on Warren’s behalf, seeking out undecided voters, holding supporter meetups and doing whatever else she can do. She lives off gas station pizza or bags of cheddar-flavored Chex Mix, her go-to snack. “I have bags in my trunk,” she said.
For fun, she and her roommate — a fellow Warren organizer — will sometimes watch videos of Warren’s events from that day. “I wake up thinking about Elizabeth Warren,” Navin said. “And I go to bed thinking about Elizabeth Warren.”
These young people care. A lot. No one is in organizing for the money. Anna is all in. And, regardless of who wins the nomination, she’s all in for the Dem nominee, too.
Early on in Iowa, Anna became friends with the Kamala Harris organizer in one of her counties. They would run into one another at county Democratic Party meetings and local events, from 5k runs to pancake breakfasts.
On occasion, they would schedule meetings with key local Democrats together, wanting to be respectful of their prospects’ time. One such meeting was with a small group of farmers who have been having breakfast together every Thursday for decades. Not all of the men were Democrats, and at one point in a wide-ranging discussion about social issues, one man who happened to be a Republican said, “I don’t understand why the Confederate flag is such a big deal. It’s just a flag.”
The Harris organizer, a young white woman from South Carolina, paused and said, “I’m from South Carolina, and I can assure you that it is much more than ‘just a flag.’ You have to understand what it means, but to do that, you have to be able to put yourself in the shoes of a black person in the south. That flag meant slavery. So if you can imagine looking at that flag and understanding what it means, slavery and all of the horrible things that went along with it, then you can understand why the Confederate flag is such a big deal.”
Anna said the table went silent, just the sounds of the silverware clinking on plates filling the gap.
When Harris announced her withdrawal from the race, Anna called her boss and told him, “You have to hire her. She’s great!” The Warren campaign, always on the lookout for good organizers, hired her.
Anna was having a low point in September. She was burned out and stressed out. She had a couple of days off to attend a cousin’s wedding in California. Her birthday was coming up and she was questioning whether she had made the right choice, as she watched so many of her friends move into careers that earned them more money and more stable lifestyles.
Her birthday was just a few days after she had returned to Iowa from California. I’ll let you read what happens. It’s how the Post story ends. Give it a read.
I cried. I love her. She’s a great kid. And so are all the other kids out there, busting their butts to make our world a better place.
Hope.