The same Organizing For Action that sent out the 'tin foil hat' e-mail about global warming.President Obama's supporters are discovering that winning a national election is easier than winning over Congress.
Organizing for Action, an advocacy group born from the remnants of Obama's victorious 2012 reelection campaign, has struggled in its attempts to help the president push through legislation on the economy, guns and other issues central to his second-term agenda.
The fledgling nonprofit group has spent its first four months staging rallies and generating local news coverage in an unsuccessful effort to get the Senate to strengthen background checks for gun sales.
It deployed technological efforts familiar from the 2012 campaign, collecting 1.4 million signatures on a gun-control petition delivered to Capitol Hill last week and producing a widely viewed Internet video mocking congressional Republicans for questioning humans' contribution to climate change.
The group also raised $4.9 million through March and is awaiting an influx of cash from liberal donors connected to George Soros's Democracy Alliance to expand its staff beyond the few dozen now on its payroll.
Democracy must mean something different to Soros than the typical dictionary definition.
But despite its extensive voter-data files and White House connections, OFA has yet to make much of a mark on the nation's political landscape. Many of its efforts have been centered in liberal strongholds and Democratic-leaning swing states, with little impact on more conservative areas.
Preaching to the acolytes.
But OFA Executive Director Jon Carson said that while the group itself is young, many of its members are longtime political activists. "Our volunteers did not hatch out of an egg in 2008," he said. "They've been fighting on issue campaigns for their whole
OFA is focused on promoting the president's agenda to reform immigration, strengthen gun control, strike a budget deal and address climate change. Carson said the combination of OFA rallies and local news coverage is helping change voter attitudes, which in turn places pressure on lawmakers to back Obama's legislative goals.
The group's organizers say they are particularly focused on six states that Obama won last year but that are represented by at least one GOP senator: Illinois, Maine, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio and Nevada. It is also targeting the red states of Arizona and Georgia, whose senators could be persuaded to back parts of the president's agenda, group officials said. They plan to hold 500 events focused on immigration by the end of May, according to Carson.
"You drive local press attention, and the citizens out there hear about it," he said. "That's the combination that it takes."
You already have the media in the Fearless Leader's pocket. Can't you make a go of it?
OFA was formed in the wake of November's election as an independent nonprofit group able to raise unlimited funds, and it maintains control of Obama's massive campaign e-mail list. What's yet unclear is whether the group can transform support for Obama's reelection into activism on behalf of his policy agenda.
Some former Obama campaign volunteers said they've joined OFA to ensure the president succeeds, and now enjoy a greater sense of freedom. Penny North, a 64-year-old retired software consultant who worked on the president's reelection, said she used to have to read from a script when she went door to door on Obama's behalf. Now, she said, "we're telling our personal stories."
I'm 64, but I will work for another three years. What's it like, on the gubbamint dole, Penny?
In some instances, however, the group has alienated people who otherwise support the president. OFA's decision to target four conservative Democrats who opposed background checks, for example, has angered local party officials in their states.
Red on... No, waitaminute - Blue on Blue!
Alaska Democratic Party chair Michael Wenstrupwrote a letter to OFA last week asking the group to "cease its attacks on Democratic senators immediately." He said the decision to target Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), who is up for reelection next year, with phone calls and e-mails to state residents criticizing his no vote on background checks is counterproductive.
The group has also gone after Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), who opposed the bipartisan background checks bill, with similar calls. Chad Oban, executive director of North Dakota's Democratic-NPL Party, said he would have preferred if OFA had poured more resources into the state before the vote, rather than afterward.
Carson, for his part, said people shouldn't be surprised that OFA was unable to mobilize a major number of voters in red states represented by Democrats. "We've got supporters everywhere,