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Something Just Clicked By Jose Antonio Vargas SACRAMENTO It all started last summer with a $10 online donation -- her very first political contribution. With another click of the mouse, 52-year-old Linnie Frank Bailey, a political neophyte, morphed into a campaign volunteer. By fall, she'd taken on the titles of "area coordinator" and "regional field organizer." And by winter, she'd become a field commander of sorts, organizing a 10,000-square-foot presidential campaign office in southern California. 
Now, nearly a year later, more than just the seasons have changed. Here inside Room 307 of the Sacramento Convention Center on a recent Sunday morning, a once unengaged but now thoroughly committed woman sits alongside seasoned political activists and big-money donors at the only meeting of the state delegation to the Democratic National Convention. The mother of two, the middle-class homemaker, the self-described "blogger-on-training-wheels" is now one of California's 166 pledged delegates for Sen. Barack Obama. "Imagine that!" Bailey says. "Without the Internet, I don't know if I could have gotten this involved." Bailey is a prime example of the still evolving story of this campaign -- how the Web has enabled everyday people to become engaged in ways that have changed the dynamic of a presidential campaign. And Bailey's just one drop in the ocean of politics. More than half of the $264 million that Obama has raised so far, in fact, has mostly come from online donations of less than $100. In other words, from supporters like Bailey. She's one of more than 1.5 million donors -- the most in the history of primaries -- who have given to the first-term Illinois senator. But it's less about a specific party or a particular candidate and more about the process and how technology has opened it up. "It's been totally unexpected, the depth of the grass-roots enthusiasm that's bubbled up from the Internet," says Art Torres, head of the California Democratic Party. Adds Democratic pollster Peter Hart: "This is a big transformation in how campaigns operate, and it boils down to the power of one, the feeling that one individual can make a difference." And Bailey did it with only $10.
The Online Beginning "You might need a shot of something before you step in here," says Bailey as she walks into her "war room," the cramped, cluttered home office she shares with her husband, Greg Bailey. Friends, relatives and neighbors know her as a quick-witted, deeply religious African American woman who's got an infectious laugh and looks much younger than her 52 years. But on the Internet, where she spends much of her day blogging, commenting on news articles and checking her social networking profiles, she goes by "linnie1" or "LinnieFB." If she's not trying to land a freelance writing gig or tending to her 9-year-old daughter Kyra and 18-year-old son Gregory, she's online. She wasn't much into politics growing up. A graduate of UCLA, she first worked as a computer programmer, then as a consultant and writer, later co-writing a book about God and faith. She married a software designer in 1989 and settled into a two-story, five-bedroom house in Corona, a conservative, middle-class town of 150,000, less than an hour's drive south of Los Angeles. When she got pregnant, she left her corporate job and decided to work from home. Life was good. But the past eight years have been tough, especially financially. What was happening outside of her home affected what was happening inside. The war in Iraq. "A war," she says, "that never should have been waged." The federal response to Hurricane Katrina. "I was ashamed to be an American," she continues, "and ashamed that I didn't know that pockets of New Orleans are that poor." The rising cost of electricity, health care, college tuition -- you name it. At Ralph's, her local supermarket, two gallons of milk used to go for $4.39 and "then it went up to $5 something and recently it was up to $6." "It's not just about Iraq, it's not just about the economy, it's not just about one thing," Bailey says. "The question I asked myself a few years ago was: 'If you're not going to get involved now, then when?' " She adds: "And I'm [ticked] off. A lot of Americans, most Americans, are angry and frustrated and dissatisfied at the direction of the country." There's always been a wall between politicians and their constituents, she says, and climbing that wall to get involved -- writing letters, making donations, etc. -- wasn't too easy and convenient. Until the Web. "These days, there's no excuse for not participating. It doesn't mean you'll always get heard. But at least you've expressed yourself." It was online where she sent her first letter to a politician -- an e-mail to Sen. Ted Kennedy in the fall of 2002 thanking him for his opposition to the war in Iraq. She thought mostly everyone -- the press, Congress, Washington -- was reading the situation wrong. "I did not think it was going to be a cakewalk. I did not think Iraqis wanted us there. I did not think they were going to hug us. I just couldn't believe that people were jumping on the bandwagon."
'If Not Now . . . When?' It was also online, on BarackObama.com, that she learned more about the first-term Illinois senator. She repeatedly watched his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention. "He spoke of unity: red and blue, white and black. That's what attracted me," says Bailey, who a few years ago left a black Methodist church where she's worshiped since she was 9 in favor of an integrated evangelical megachurch. Sunday mornings are the most segregated hours in America, she says, and she wanted to move past it. She looked at her friends, her neighborhood, her kids' friends -- all from different races and ethnicities -- and decided it was time to give an integrated church a try. The more she read about Obama, the more she liked him and his policies. She cites his racially mixed background as an asset. "Remember that speech in Philadelphia? When he said he could no more disown his black pastor than he could his white grandmother? He's the only person who could have given that kind of speech." And she specifically mentions his early opposition to the Iraq war and what she views as his "less isolationist and more globalized" view of foreign policy. "Everyone looks at black voters who've supported Obama and says, 'Oh, they're voting for him because he's black.' Well, yeah, we're proud. But there are a lot of black politicians that black people don't support," she says. When Bailey saw that Obama had a profile on Eons.com, a MySpace for baby boomers, she "friended" him. (She's one of his 290 friends on the site.) To help fight the false online rumors that Obama is a Muslim, she signed up on FaithBase.com, a Facebook for Christians, and created a group called Mustard Seeds. Even a mustard seed, the popular parable goes, can move mountains. The group has 97 members. And months ago, when pundits declared Sen. Hillary Clinton the front-runner and she was dismayed that her black friends preferred Clinton to Obama because they believed she had a better chance of winning, she fired off an e-mail with this subject line: "If not now . . . when?" "Maybe you think he can't win, or that the race is already decided," she wrote. "But the real question is -- does Barack Obama deserve our support?" On June 25, around the time of the month when money is tight, she decided to give $10 to Obama online. Five months later, she gave $5.20; she made $520 that month and donated 1 percent of it. Then came another $10 donation. Ten, she says, is a reasonable figure -- not too little, not too much -- and all she could afford. In total, she's given $55.20. "I'm not rich. I'm just a working mom. I knew from the beginning that my contribution wouldn't be financial."
Into the 'Whirlwind' One Saturday morning in early November, she drove 30 minutes north to attend a Camp Obama meeting at a storefront church. She had read about the event online. Organized by Obama staffers, Camp Obama is Politics 101 for volunteers, where they learn the value of phone-banking, the goals of precinct captains and how to register new voters. About 25 people attended -- young and old, black, white and Latino. When she introduced herself to the group, "Hi, I'm Linnie," a few recognized her name. She left the meeting tasked by Obama staffers as the "area coordinator" in charge of Corona. Working with Jose Medina, 55, the area coordinator in nearby Riverside, she scheduled an informal meeting of those from the two cities at a Barnes & Noble the following Wednesday. She posted it on BarackObama.com. They expected 10 people. About 20 showed up. After the meeting, Medina, a fixture in the local political scene who teaches Chicano studies at Riverside Polytechnic High School, suggested they run as Obama delegates for the convention. She agreed. Outside the bookstore, they shook hands on it. The period between December and February was, in Bailey's words, "a complete whirlwind." She was so effective in organizing meetings, attending rallies and networking that Jocelyn Anderson, an Obama staffer overseeing southern California, asked Bailey to be a "regional field organizer." "Here's the thing about Linnie," Anderson says. "She was always on overdrive and she never said no." Suddenly, Bailey wasn't just responsible for Corona but for all of Congressional District 44, which stretches from San Clemente to Riverside. And, at the urging of the campaign, Medina and Bailey started looking for office space in Riverside. Medina spotted a site: a small, drab, 500-square-foot building in downtown Riverside with working phones but no bathroom. The price: $500 for about a month. But with Medina leaving for Iowa to volunteer for Obama, Bailey was left to raise the money. She worked the phones, which led to a call on New Year's Day to Louis Davis, a regional manager for an electrical company. Davis gave her $500. When Bailey met the building's landlord, Ian Davidson, an Obama supporter who is part of a prominent Republican family in town, he ended up donating the use of a larger but long-unused 10,000-square-foot building on the same lot. A few days later, Obama Riverside, as the office was called, opened its doors. "It was just one thing after another, and everyone was so helpful," Bailey says. "I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I didn't know what an area coordinator did, or what a regional field organizer did, or how to open a campaign office, or what it even means to be a delegate. I've seen the conventions on TV, but I didn't know what delegates did or how they even got there." Her family wasn't sure exactly what to make of it all. She was so preoccupied with Obama that she didn't realize that her son, Gregory, was a Ron Paul supporter. (He's for Obama now.) Her husband, Greg, a registered independent and usually the quiet, reserved type, says he's not worried about his wife's intensity. "She's on to something, and when Linnie's on to something, she cannot be stopped." He supports Obama, too, though he's nowhere near as politically active as his wife. When her younger brother Carlton, who lives in Denver and supports McCain, asked her how far she'll go, Bailey responded with a joke. "I'm like Hillary," she told him. "I have no endgame." But she does. Though Obama lost to Clinton in Riverside County 59 to 34 on the night of Super Tuesday, Obama, like Clinton, earned two delegates from the 44th District. Being a delegate, in a way, is an insider's game. You run a mini-campaign in your voting precinct. Two months ago, after running for office for the first time, Bailey was elected as a delegate.
On to November "Most of you know me. I'm one of the delegates," Bailey is saying, standing in front of about 35 Obama supporters gathered inside La Sierra Library on a recent weeknight. "We know what this election will be about. It will be about faith versus fear, division versus unity, lies versus truth, rhetoric versus reality -- and that's just the primary." The room explodes in laughter. It's mid-May. Five primaries are still left, but Bailey is already focusing on November: not just on the presidential race but also on the local congressional seat long held by a Republican. She arranges this two-hour meeting at La Sierra to update her fellow volunteers on where the campaign is headed.
"This isn't about Hillary anymore," she tells the crowd. "This is about McCain. "Our big emphasis right now is voter registration. How many of you have been on BarackObama.com recently? A few days ago, the campaign kicked off 'Vote for Change,' a national voter registration drive. . . . They're asking us, each and every one of us, to get out in our communities . . . and bring new people in," she continues. "Now I don't know about you, but in Corona, I've been seeing all these signs, all these politicians running as a quote-unquote 'Conservative Republican.' And you know they're running as anti-immigrant, in areas that are, what, 40 to 50 percent Latino? Again, here's the bottom line: We have to bring new voters in." Later that night, after reading an article on the failure of the Riverside Community College District to hire a new chancellor, she makes a decision that she's been thinking about for months: She'll run for one of two open seats on the district's board of trustees this fall. The district has gone without a chancellor for a year. Two searches costing more than $150,000 have failed. A third is underway. Taxpayers' money is being wasted as drop-out rates, especially among Latino and black students, remain high. It's time, she says, to get involved. She didn't foresee any of this activism. There was "no grand plan," she says. She never thought politics would define her life; she had spent more time watching HGTV and the Food Network than reading news articles. But gone are those apathetic days. The Web, she says, has "awakened" her. After the initial $10 online donation, after hours and hours of volunteering, then opening Obama Riverside, then winning a delegate spot to the national convention and, later, deciding to run for local office, Bailey, politically, has been born anew. Though she's talking about Obama Riverside, she could well be talking about herself when she says, "To think, we went from nothing to something." |