Campaign Field Organizer, Tom Wolf for Governor

Robert is a Field Organizer with the “Tom Wolf for Governor” campaign in Pittsburgh, PA. He works on the ground effort for the election of his candidate, Tom Wolf, through various means such community group outreach and volunteer recruitment.

Transcript

>> So, I'm the field organizer with the Tom Wolf campaign. And what that means is I really work on the ground level with Tom Wolfe's efforts to win election in Pennsylvania here in the City of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. More specifically, my role entails a lot of outreach to the various community groups, the democratic committee, as well as a lot of volunteer recruitment. The basic premise of our job and what we try to do as a field staff in Pittsburgh is to boost turn out making sure that we're getting in touch with as many voters as possible, making sure that people know where their polling location is, and then come election day, turning out all of those supporters to vote. A busy day is one where we have multiple volunteers coming into the office. They're coming into the morning shift to make sure that we're reaching out to as many folks as possible during that time of day. But, it also means that a lot of emails are coming in, establishing our precincts and targets for the coming weekend and making sure that we have all the materials coming up for a weekend of door knocking and day of action that we might have with the coordinating candidate. So, it means coordinating with the people coming into the office, making sure that the volunteers feel welcome and are being set up on their tasks for the day, but also, making sure that I'm keeping in touch with the people that I'm going to be working with for the coming weekend and making sure that any upcoming events are handled and kept on top of. It changes in every election cycle. Obviously, come election day, there's a new set of priorities, there's new targets, and, often times, there's a new boss. I was very fortunate that I was brought onto this campaign immediately when I graduated in April which meant that I served throughout the rest of the primary election cycle with the Tom Wolfe campaign and I'm now on the general election cycle. So, in that case, I've been with a campaign through multiple elections first the primary and I'll continue with them through the general. But, for folks that want to pursue campaigning as a full time career beyond just one cycle it means that you might be working with a new candidate. But, a lot of times you'll be working with people who you know before from previous campaigns. For example, in this case, it's a new candidate that we're working for, Tom Wolfe. But, many of the staff members on the campaign with me are folks that I've worked with on previous campaigns on the local level.

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