Netroots Rising

C. W. Dean is another of the “super volunteers” - citizens doing extraordinary things, selflessly devoting their time and energy to a great cause - in Jim Webb’s netroots army during 2006. C.W. may be reached through his website, where you can view a slideshow of some of his photographs from the Webb for Senate campaign. He is semi-retired now and spends - as he puts it - “a lot of time photographing his grandchildren and other wildlife.”

Feld: What attracted you to the Webb campaign?

Dean: I had never met Jim Webb until the day I volunteered to work with his Senate campaign in April, 2006. He introduced himself and I told him that I, too, was a Vietnam veteran and had followed his writing and advocacy of veterans issues since the 1970’s. Beginning with his first novel, Fields of Fire (1978), I had periodically read, reread, and shared his work with others. Sometime in late 2005, I read his non-fiction narrative of cultural history, Born Fighting, How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (2004), which also treats the reader to a number of his autobiographical family stories. I was thinking about volunteering for his campaign and Born Fighting sealed the deal.

Feld: What was your role on the campaign and who did you work with?

Dean: Early, I worked with Lee Diamond, Jim Franklin, Mary Detweiler, Warren Spaeth, Barbara Kreykenbaum, and Sarah John. I did most anything that was needed, answering phones, moving office equipment, errands, interviewing new volunteers, repairing the copy machine, carpentry, electrical, plumbing, computer wiring, baby-sitting, cleaning the kitchen, lock smithing, and mental health counseling. At first I worked 3 days a week in the Arlington headquarters and by the end, I was working more or less full-time.

I wrote a series of book reviews for Raising Kaine on Jim Webb’s novels and became more involved in my professional specialty, photography. By the last months of the campaign, I was sent to photograph most campaign events with access to areas that were restricted to the main stream media. I could quickly send the photos via the internet to the campaign communications office and to Lowell Feld at Raising Kaine. Many photos appeared on Raising Kaine before they were released to the main stream media and I was happy that Lowell got the early scoops.

Feld: What were the biggest grassroots successes and failures that you saw or knew about?

Dean: I only observed activity in the Arlington Headquarters Office, so I can’t report about the rest of state. Campaign funds were pretty low after the primary win over Harris Miller and I don’t think the campaign was prepared for the surge of grassroots activity across the state. The phones were jammed with requests for bumper stickers and paraphernalia that the campaign just didn’t have on hand until fund raising improved.

I heard but did not really observe that internet fund raising (meaning small to modest donations) took a big jump when George Allen performed his Macacca number.

Feld: What, in your opinion, drew most volunteers into the campaign? Specifically, what about the blogs?

Dean: I view the grassroots as those, like myself, who were first-time participants in a campaign and became encouraged to volunteer because of conditions in the nation. Jim Webb’s image and message energized a lot of these types but it took a while. There were certainly many who came not so much to work for Jim Webb but to work against George Allen and George W. Bush.

I was 62 years old and on many days I looked around and realized that I was the oldest person in the office including the candidate. I say this to lead into the fact that I had never seen a blog until Lee Diamond introduced me to Raising Kaine during my first week. When I talked with other older volunteers, I found that they were just as clueless. In 2006, I believe there was an age threshold above which blogging was a complete mystery.

I expect that if blogs drew substantial numbers to the campaign, those volunteers were a few decades younger than 62.

Feld: How well integrated, in your opinion, were the grassroots/netroots with the professional campaign staff?

Dean: There was a pretty dense barrier between the top professional hierarchy and the volunteers in the Arlington office. I can’t comment on the rest of the state. From time to time, I worked with everyone on the professional staff but only in short bursts. From the beginning there seemed to be an “us versus them” attitude that was unfortunate. This friction lost us some good people and almost lost some exceptionally good people. In one of my responses above I mentioned acting as mental health counselor, this was slightly tongue-in-cheek but I often listened while workers dumped their frustrations before going back to work. I believe that most any campaign organization will suffer similar symptoms. When a group of intelligent people are thrown into a pressurized hierarchy, restraint of ego can become a casualty.

Feld: What lessons can we learn from the Webb campaign, particularly with regard to the grassroots/netroots impact and relationship with the top-down campaign?

Dean: The best advice that I would pass along to newcomers is to volunteer and leave any and all expectations at the door. I saw too many people quit too soon because things were not as they had expected. In April 2006 I committed to stay until the end; at age 62 I needed no career boost or other tangible rewards. The professional staff, on the other hand, certainly had career- building motives, required an income, and knew their performance was crucial to their immediate futures. Their agendas did not blend with the more altruistic motives of the volunteers.

I believe it will more or less always be this way and volunteers who cannot adapt will be discouraged and disappointed.

Feld: Do you think that the Webb grassroots/netroots was unique (sui generis) or can be replicated?

Dean: I’ve only worked on one campaign so I can’t predict how other campaigns might use the Webb campaign as a model. I think that the level of success will always depend on the magnetism of the candidate. Challengers rather than incumbents have the most to gain from a populist grassroots movement but they need to be sharp, dynamic, and intelligent. (Jim Gilmore in Virginia will not be a netroots superstar). The internet as a political communication resource will reach more people as time goes on but I believe it is still largely a young person’s domain.

Feld: Anything funny, shocking, or otherwise interesting from your time as a member of Webb’s “ragtag army?”

Dean: First, I did not buy into the “ragtag” label. Most days when I left for the Arlington office, I wore a tie, fresh shirt, pressed slacks, and shined shoes or boots. I even gave a few unsolicited lessons in the office on mens’ fashion—no one was impressed. I liked Jim Webb’s appeal to wear work boots in contrast to George Allen’s tony cowboy boots. Not very many in Arlington wore the boots, however.

In the Arlington Headquarters Office, a lot of walk-in volunteers came to see what was going on and never really stayed to work. There were also Jim Webb “groupies” who only wanted to be pals with the candidate. Others were sure that they could walk in and be speech writers or policy wonks. Mary Detweiler and Sarah Johns were especially good at spotting the real workers and keeping them.

I have never told this story. A group of young men, both staff and volunteers, put together a clandestine closet with a cable TV where they could hide and watch the World Cup international soccer games. One day we needed some extra hands and I crashed the “game room” using some profanity to humiliate the malingerers. A few weeks later, one of the young men became world famous as George Allen’s target in the “Macacca” episode. Today, my unrestrained ego wants to believe that my abuse toughened him up for his celebrated showdown with George Allen where he was passively calm, cool, and unnerved.

An incident occurred which was widely reported on Raising Kaine where the George Allen campaign “pirated” one of my photographs of Jim Webb and used it in an ad attacking him. The photo of Jim Webb was quite good–the George Allen people ironically neglected to use any number of poor unflattering images. I believe the reports of this story are still in the Raising Kaine archives.