GRINNELL COLLEGE

Organizing for Action

Barbara Trish

Prepared for delivery at the State of the Parties Conference, The Bliss Institute, November 7 and 8, 2013.

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The aftermath of the 2012 election ushered in yet another party organizational innovation: Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action (OFA), now firmly implanted as a 501(c)(4). This extension of the Obama re-election campaign with a focus on domestic politics is just the latest iteration of the “OFA” brand, but one that stakes out new ground with non-profit, 501(c)(4) status. As such, OFA prompts a host of questions about U.S. parties, including whether this new “dark money” organization is fundamentally friend or foe of the traditional party structures. But OFA is also a reminder of perennial questions regarding the president’s role as party leader – especially the inherent challenges in that position, challenges that may be exacerbated by the presence of OFA, which is for all intents and purposes the president’s personal organization.

Since its January 2013 launch, OFA has built a structure and undertaken activities that – at least from a distance – resemble those of any number of advocacy operations in modern U.S. politics. It raises significant sums of money and spends on staff and broadcast advertising. It has a grassroots presence, but also relies on professional direction. And it works with a massive e-mail list as well as a sophisticated web presence to organize and mobilize supporters for policy campaigns. But at a closer angle, OFA has some notable features. By self-generated metrics, it is a large organization; OFA itself claims to be a “grassroots movement built by millions.” OFA encompasses considerable political experience, including many paid staff and volunteers who had cut their teeth on the Obama 2008 and 2012 campaigns. It has substantial financial resources, not as much as the national Democratic Party, but enough – with 2013 receipts (through September) at close to $21M – to be a player in the policy world. But two factors stand out as especially striking: the Obama imprimatur and non-profit status. OFA is the vessel anointed to extend the reach of the Obama for America campaign effort into the policy debates of the second term, and it acts under limited IRS scrutiny and largely outside of the FEC’s regulatory reach. Taken as a whole, these factors mark OFA as a unique organization and one that begs the question of how it functions in the broader party environment and as a tool for presidential leadership.

Organizational Lineage

OFA is a fourth generation Obama structure, with a somewhat complicated lineage starting with the 2008 Obama presidential campaign and extending through 2013, when it took shape in the early months of the second term. The details of this evolution are important to understand. In many respects, they demonstrate that despite significant changes over time – especially changes in structure and environment – the same patterns and dynamics persist.

The 2008 Obama campaign organization, widely credited with the November win, was marked by a diffused field organization, fueled by what would eventually be labeled “Big Data” and microtargeting practices, as well as a state-of-the art digital operation, including web, e-mail and early social networking capacity.1 The campaign was also flush with cash. As the election

1 See for example Kreiss (2013).

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approached with a promising outlook on the horizon, Obama insiders began to contemplate ways to permanently capture the strengths of the campaign. It was an exhilarating time for staff and volunteers, and the idea of marshaling the capacity of the campaign into the governing phase seemed more than just desirable; to lose the momentum of the campaign would be a tragedy. And so after the 2008 election, the Obama for America campaign transformed itself into a policy-focused grassroots entity, Organizing for America, housed at the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The added allure of Organizing for America – beyond its policy potential – was that it kept alive the shell of what could become a reelection campaign about three years down the road.

In structural terms, the transformation extended a significantly pared-down version of the campaign’s field operation along with its digital capacity – including the much touted 13 million recipient e-mail list – to the national committee. Physically, Organizing for America occupied space at the DNC. Organizationally, it became a “department” of the national committee. And as such, OFA was subject to FEC national party regulation, including contribution limits and mandated disclosure to the FEC of receipts and disbursements. However, isolating Organizing for America finances within the larger organization was impossible for outsiders, the first of what would be long line of transparency challenges in the Obama lineage.

It is noteworthy that the Obama 2008 campaign, still flush with cash after the election, transferred $2 million to the DNC in March 2009, allowing the national committee to marginally decrease the $5-6 M debt that it held after the 2008 election. Still, it is inconclusive whether that March $2 million transfer to the DNC had any relationship to Organizing for America. But money was not the only factor posing a transparency challenge. Since Organizing for America operatives were actually hired by state parties, it became difficult to track even the paid staff resources of this second-generation Obama organization. Media reports calculated that there were approximately 40 staff spread across the states by mid-summer and staff in 45 states by September 1, 2009 (Bellantoni 2009).

In reality, the formal party – the DNC and the state parties – offered just the organizational base for Organization for America; the White House called the shots. At times this arrangement created a strategic dilemma for the Organizing for Action, with much of its 2009 activity aimed at engaging the progressive activists on the 13 million-strong e-mail list in the legislative battles of the first term, including the Affordable Care Act, while the White House operated under terms of politics-as usual. Ari Melber (2010), who chronicled the first year of Organizing for America, quotes an unnamed staffer about the organization circa 2009: “… [Organizing for America] is not a campaign – they are an arm of the White House. They have to do what [the] White House tells them.” The staffer continues: “The White House [doesn’t] give a crap about this email list and [doesn’t] think it’s a very useful thing. They want to do stuff the delicate way – the horse-trading, backroom talks, one-to-one lobbying.” (Melber 2010, 49)

Organizing for America remained in place throughout the first term, but by 2012 had turned its attention to electoral politics, a pivot reasonable and legal given its placement within the Democratic formal party. In fact, during 2011 and 2012 Organizing for America worked lockstep with the Obama re-election campaign, though the precise nature of the organizational relationship,

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as is so often the case with campaigns and political parties, is difficult to disentangle. Eric Appleman, who tirelessly documents the organizational details of presidential campaigns, lends credence to the assertion that Organizing for America was really about 2012 and not advocacy politics. Appleman described it as the “campaign in waiting” until the reelection campaign formally opened shop in April 2011. Eventually, some Organizing for America personnel transferred to the Obama campaign or held joint positions in the two entities. Yet others remained structurally housed in state parties, even though they were functionally part of the re-election campaign, a classic “distinction without a difference”. But in reality, even the “distinction” was weak, since the campaign used a transfer-down account to relay funds that supported the state party/Organizing for America presence.2

501(c)(4) Status

The current organizing for Action (OFA) offers a stark contrast to Organizing for America, which had been tied structurally to the party and functionally to the Obama campaign in 2009 through 2012. OFA, instead, is a stand-alone organization with 501(c)(4) legal status, the long-standing IRS non-profit arrangement under which such groups as the NAACP and the Sierra Club had organized. Organizationally, OFA is completely separate from the party, which was interpreted by some, though denied by OFA, to be a blatant snub of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

A “C4” group, unlike its non-profit 501(c)(3) counterpart, is permitted to engage in political activities under two conditions: 1) that politics is not the group’s primary purpose; and 2) that the group’s activity is not directed toward electoral politics, more narrowly defined as advocating voting for or against a candidate.3 Along with this open door for political activity come no limits on contributions and no mandatory donor disclosure to the IRS; this latter condition had been validated for C4s by NAACP v. Alabama (1964), in which the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the ability of the NAACP to keep its membership lists secret and thereby protect members’ first amendments rights of free association.

C4s had become an especially attractive organizational form by 2012 precisely because they didn’t require disclosure, setting them apart from the other committees that operated without

2 Description of relationship between Organizing for America and Obama 2012 from Appleman’s website p2012.org.

3 The IRS specifies that 501(c)(4)s “must not be organized for profit and must be operated exclusively to promote social welfare.” It elaborates, however, that political activity is acceptable as long as it does not venture into electoral politics. “The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office. However, a section 501(c)(4) social welfare organization may engage in some political activities, so long as that is not its primary activity.” Practically speaking, as long as an organization does not spend more than 50% of its resources or time on political activity, it can retain C4 status.

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contribution limits – Super PACs and 527s. The social welfare requirement of the C4 was, at most, an inconvenience. And significantly, public opinion was stacked against Super PACs as an option. An April 2012 Breen Center national survey commissioned found widespread concern that Super PACs contributed to corruption and threatened democracy in the U.S. Almost three-quarters of survey respondents expressed agreement that “there would be less corruption if there were limits on how much could be given to Super PACs.”4 But strangely enough, GOP operative Karl Rove, whose Crossroad GPS 501(c)(4) had spent over $42M in the 2010 midterm contest and over $22M in off-year 2011, handed OFA a gift when he vocally defended the absence of disclosure for C4s.5

Rove offered NAACP v. Alabama as a defense for Crossroads GPS protecting members and shielding them from disclosure requirements. This was derided by good-government observers, who felt it was a comical stretch to liken Rove’s big-money donors to NAACP members in the 1950s Deep South whose safety was threatened by their fight for civil rights (Overby 2013). Nonetheless, the Rove “no disclosure” defense in December 2012 served as a convenient backdrop for the OFA statement, just one day after its launch on January 18, 2013, that it would voluntarily disclose on its website the names of donors who contribute $250 or more.

Although a movement toward transparency, the OFA disclosure plan and other finance-related practices were widely derided; there were many concerns. OFA stopped short of full disclosure. Initially the plan specified that donor names would be associated with a contribution range, rather than a precise value. That changed, but OFA decided not to disclose donor occupation and employer, the standard disclosure practice and, in fact, information that OFA collects but does not disclose. Add to this the widespread concern about unlimited contributions, compounded by the legal possibility that OFA could accept corporate and union donation. And even more, OFA promoted a “founding member” status, designation reserved for donors who contributed or bundled $500,000. Soon after it formed, OFA did publicize that it would eschew corporate donations, but it kept open the possibility of gifts from unions. But stirring the special ire of observers from all corridors was an image that OFA was a pay-to-play operation; it promised quarterly access to President Obama for those big-ticket founders, including a March 2013 “Founder’s Summit” in at the St. Regis hotel in Washington. Slate’s David Weigel (2013) captured the mood of critics well when he described OFA’s practices as “fake transparency”.

4 Brennan Center findings: “National Survey: Super PACs, Corruption, and Democracy” at http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/national-survey-super-pacs-corruption-and-democracy .

5 Crossroads GPS spending reported by Center for Responsive Politics. (http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2013/09/opensecretsorgs-new-dark-money-data-measures-groups-politicization.html)

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2013 Finance

At present operating within a weak regulatory environment, OFA appears to be on solid footing regarding contributions. Clearly it benefits from large donors, whose support is not limited by a contribution cap. But it also has a strong foundation built on small donors. Both of these qualities beg the question of how OFA coexists with the Democratic Party establishment.

The three quarterly disclosure releases from 2013 put OFA aggregate receipts at $21 million, at that pace putting it on par with other players in the national realm, falling short of some but surpassing others. Receipts during the first half of 2013 for OFA were $13 million, far exceeding even the 2013 Super PAC leader, Gabby Gifford’s Americans for Responsible Solutions, which took in $6.6 million over that same period (Beckel 2013). Still, early fundraising activity made it clear that OFA was not on pace to reach the initial $50 million (Confessore 2013) goal that it publicized for 2013. Yet the prospects, as of October 2013, look good for meeting the revised yearly goal of $25 million, established in early March when OFA succumbed to good-government pressure and announced that it would not accept corporate donations (Gold 2013a).

The OFA quarterly releases of its donors add to the finance story. The itemized disclosure of donors who give at the level of $250 or more shows that OFA has the support of large donors, with contributions that well exceed what they could legally give to traditional party organizations. Topping the charts were two Q2 donors who each gave $500,000.6 But information released by OFA also established that a large number of donors had yearly aggregates which did not exceed the self-imposed $250 reporting threshold. Indeed, OFA’s website touts that these undisclosed donors account for a full 98% of its donors, though measured in terms of their impact on totals raised the undisclosed donors are considerably less formidable, though still important. A comparison of the undisclosed totals to the total receipts publicized by OFA shows that small donations as a percentage of total receipts range from 58% to 66% over the three 2013 quarters.

Map 1 shows the geographic foundation for the OFA fundraising, with the color scheme indicating aggregate sums in states. In some limited sense, it is a single-hue version of a red/blue map, with the wide swath of the central plains and the northern mountain states with low levels of contributions, a finding that holds up even when adjusting for population size. The financial powerhouses of California, Illinois, Florida and New York deliver as expected. Some very large gifts in Nevada and Tennessee account for deep blue shading there, and a large number of Texas donors (N=281) explain that state’s financial position, though none of the Texas donors gave over $12,000, a modest sum by OFA standards.

6 OFA makes quarterly releases of donor information. The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) and The Sunlight Foundation have independently compiled Q1 and Q2 releases into readily-analyzed data sets. The CRP data for Q1 include additional information about the contributions of the OFA donors, including aggregate 2012 cycle gifts to Democrats at the federal level (party and candidate committees), to the Obama presidential campaign and to Priorities USA, the pro-Obama Super PAC. See www.openscrets.org and sunlightfoundation.com.

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Map 1: OFA aggregated disclosed receipts, Q1 and Q2 combined.

Note: Data are from OFA voluntary disclosure of receipts > $250. Both Hawaii and Alaska, not shown on the map, fall into the lightest category.

Even though OFA may not have met its initial 2013 targets, it is viewed as a drain on the donor base that supports the traditional parties. DNC denies that OFA is its rival (Howell 2013), in much the same way that it dispelled rumors of animosity between Chairwoman Wasserman Schultz and President Obama when OFA staked out its 501(c)(4) status. Other observers, however, see OFA and DNC fundraising as zero-sum politics, a view reflected in the comments of Michael Toner, former FEC chairman: “DNC fundraising has been hurt by [the] OFA, there’s no question about it.” (Howell 2013) The data offer some evidence to support this contention.

On the surface, DNC receipts for 2013 are credible and, according to the aggregate individual receipts from the first few months, roughly comparable to 2009, year one of the first Obama administration. However, recall that at that time Organizing for America, the 2009 iteration of OFA, was implanted at the DNC, with funds of the two organizations merged. Figure 1 shows the monthly individual receipts over the first nine months of 2013. Note the upswing in 2009 DNC receipts into summer and fall months, a phenomenon not matched in 2013 and circumstantial evidence of OFA/DNC tension, given the OFA pulled in its highest total in Q2, $8.2 million. But the more compelling evidence that OFA may be a drain on party resources is seen in the pattern of giving of the large OFA donors.

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Note: FEC reports combining itemized and unitemized individual receipts. October through December 2009 not shown in Figure, for 2013 not yet available.

A full 38% of the 1,428 first quarter OFA disclosed donors – that is, those who had met the $250 reporting threshold – had made no contributions to Democrats at the federal level (party or candidates) in 2012. Six of the 24 donors who gave at $10,000 or higher in Q1 had not contributed to Democrats in 2012. This could cut both ways regarding the relationship between OFA and the DNC. On one hand, OFA may simply be expanding the donor base beyond those traditionally contributing the Democratic Party. On the other hand, that base might have been drawn into the party rather than this specific Obama-focused effort.

There is more to the story than the big OFA donors who are not strong Democrats. The party, in fact, has reason to be concerned about small donors and, in a related way, the fundraising prowess of e-mail, the primary recruitment tool for small donors. Figure 2 shows the percentage of DNC receipts from undisclosed donors in the first three quarters of 2009 and 2013 in the bars, with OFA 2013 percentages hanging below. The DNC in 2013 lags behind in small donors, relative to both its own standing in 2009 and OFA in 2013. The DNC 2013 deficit in Q2 is especially stark, with the DNC falling behind OFA in terms of undisclosed contributions by a full 20 percentage points, granted a gap that would be smaller if the DNC and OFA used comparable cutoffs for disclosure; as it stands, OFA discloses and reports at the $250 level while the FEC, and therefore the DNC, reports at the $200 level. 7

7 Of course, receipt percentage from small donors is simply the inverse of that value for the disclosed, large donors. And the 2013 DNC/OFA comparison could well indicate DNC prowess in soliciting large, though capped, donations. At the same time, the extent of the sums amassed by OFA in undisclosed, small gifts (i.e., $2.8 million in Q1, $4.7 million in Q2) gives pause to consider how those donations might otherwise have been drawn into the party.

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OFA efforts and resources could have been directed toward small-donor fundraising in the formal party if it were embedded in the DNC and not a 501(c)(4). This takes on added significance in 2013, since the DNC, like the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), struggles with lingering debt from the 2012 contest. At the end of the third quarter, combined the two owe $26 million, with the DNC carrying the lion’s share of the debt – $17 million. While the national committee is no stranger to post-election debt, the 2013 levels greatly overshadow the approximately $5 million debt it carried in 2009 after the previous presidential cycle. Furthermore, the DNC financial situation calls into question whether it will have the financial wherewithal to transfer funds to the hill committees in advance of the 2014 midterm election, an expected practice.

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Figure 2. DNC and OFA Undisclosed Receipts

2009 DNC

2013 DNC

2013 OFA 66% 68% 50%

Note: FEC reports for DNC reflect undisclosed (i.e., “unitemized” or < $200) individual contributions. OFA undisclosed calculated by author from OFA reports of totals and itemized contributions (i.e., < $250) as presented by The Sunlight Foundation. October through December DNC 2009 not shown in Figure 2, DNC and OFA 2013 not yet available.

It is difficult to determine whether the President is himself complicit in the party fundraising woes. According to one measure – appearances at DNC fundraising events – President Obama appears as active in 2013 as he was in 2009. CBS Radio News reporter Mark Knoller chronicles the presidency “by the numbers”. His 2009 October estimate was 23 “fundraising events” for the DNC and candidates (Montopoli 2009). Knoller ( October 23, 2013) tweets a similar number – 22 – for the first year of the second term. He writes, “Also tomorrow, Obama attends a DNC fundraiser … His 22nd fundraiser this year. No Press.” Regardless, the juxtaposition of party struggles with reasonable OFA fundraising success feeds the image that the party and OFA are operating at cross-purposes. OFA staff also could suggest a certain degree of tension with the formal party.

Staffing and Structure

OFA is largely a super-thin version of the reelection campaign, with paid staff headquartered in Chicago and scattered around the country, including some in DC. The principals

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are figures with significant Obama campaign experience and, in some cases, White House first-term experience. Jim Messina, 2012 campaign manager and former deputy chief of staff, chairs OFA. Jon Carson is OFA’s Executive director, having moved from the White House Office of Public Engagement. The handful of other top-tier figures are mainstays from Obama campaign world, including David Plouffe, 2008 campaign director and former special assistant to the President, who serves as an OFA adviser. Put simply, OFA is run by Obama people, not party insiders, much like Organizing for America was in 2009.

Like Organizing for America and the two campaigns, OFA is quick to release some information about the organization – especially those metrics on which the 2008 and 2012 campaigns excelled (e.g., tweets, house parties, volunteer actions and the like). But it remains tight-lipped about staffing details. This veil of secrecy is further compounded by OFA’s 501(c)(4) status; the usual check-book trail of organizational attributes for federal parties and campaigns is not in place. The spending information C4s are required to file with the IRS is vague and not particularly timely.8 That said, media reports, the OFA website, email communications as well as professional networking posts on LinkedIn reveal a sketch of the staffing and organizational structure. As with the senior leadership, the broader staff has strong ties to other Obama organizations. Despite the grassroots image propagated by OFA, it is in many respects a top-down structure, directed out of the national headquarters by paid staff, and targeting resources strategically in a way that builds on Obama’s past electoral success.

OFA is headquartered in Chicago, like both campaigns were. But its early home was in Washington, the product of a $15,466 Q1 in-kind donation by the National Education Association.9 While the Washington NEA space remains a home to some of the operations and activities, most of the national staff is based in Chicago; the Chicago staff started to take shape in the spring 2013 and expanded through the summer. In addition to personnel charged with organizational management – like a human resources coordinator – Chicago is the home to directors of Grassroots Organizations, Organizing, State Press, and Issue Campaigns, a directorship that oversees seven issue-based advocacy campaigns. Chicago, also, houses most of the individual issue campaign

8 The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) reviews the unique challenges in tracking C4 spending. “[The] groups must disclose their total spending on their IRS Form 990s, due annually. But nowhere do they have to break down those expenditures in detail and say exactly how they spent the money… On top of that, the 990s are filed anywhere from five to 23 months after the spending in question actually takes place. Once they're filed, the IRS offers no searchable database or machine readable data to the public. It provides only scant summary data.” (Maguire 2013) As of October 2013, OFA had not yet filed a 990 form with the IRS. Under certain conditions and for certain expenditures, the FEC does expect C4s to file disbursement reports (CRP 2013). To date, FEC holdings suggest that OFA has not filed any such reports.

9 According OFA donor data for the first three quarters of 2013, the NEA is the only union contributor to OFA. Its Q2 in-kind contribution was $20,397.

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directors and a cadre of staff with responsibility for digital, including advertising, social media and e-mail. The vast majority of the Chicago staff has ties to former Obama efforts, with the exception of a limited number who bring narrow technical expertise to the operation.

OFA as diffused throughout the states is largely a field operation run by “jack-of-all-trades” state coordinators; presently, state coordinators are in place in about half of the states. While the campaign touted in early 2013 that it had volunteer state coordinators in 48 states, over the year it hired coordinators in approximately 22 states. These state coordinators came overwhelmingly from the ranks of regional field directors in the 2012 campaign effort, either working for Organizing for America or the Obama campaign. Paid coordinators for New York and Illinois were hired in February and March, and the bulk – seventeen – of the additional state coordinators were hired in April. This national organization is blue-state dominant, with hired staff dispersed in states that President Obama carried in 2012, or states (Indiana and North Carolina) that switched from blue to red in 2012. There are just two exceptions to the blue-state rule: Texas and Arizona.

OFA job postings describe the vast array of duties assigned to the state coordinators:

The State Coordinator will be responsible for supporting all OFA activities in their state … [will] coach, mentor, and guide staff and volunteers to … execute a local issue organizing program around national issues like immigration reform, gun violence prevention, climate change, and statewide legislative battles… The State Coordinator will work with volunteers in many areas of grassroots organizing, including issue advocacy, earned media, training, organization building, political outreach, constituency outreach, digital organizing, data management, and resource management…The State Coordinator will also be a key member of the grassroots fundraising team…responsible for developing a robust and effective in-state network of grassroots fundraisers…

The pattern of states hosting paid coordinators, along with the OFA expectations for staff who serve in that capacity, suggest that OFA has made a strategic decision to build from areas of preexisting strength, with a mass base of supporters and former activists available to mobilize into action. The Texas and Arizona exceptions to the state-coordinator pattern likely represents the pull of immigration reform as an agenda item and the perceived base of support that those two states offers OFA. A few states have additional permanent staff: deputy state directors in Ohio, Illinois and Florida, a California data coordinator, an issue organizer in Texas (Houston). But OFA, like the Obama campaign, aspires to be volunteer-based. The website, as of late October 2013, invites visitors to “Join the more than 3.6m Americans who have already taken action with OFA.” OFA shored up its volunteer base for summer 2013 with a Summer Fellows program. A Jon Carson memo to the “founders” said that the summer program working with approximately 800 fellows would generate a “500%” increase in organizational capacity over the summer. The details of the Carson message, however, are instructive. Messina promoted to the founders that OFA would be “groom[ing] a new class of organizers who will move into positions with a broad base of progressive issue advocacy organizations.” Even more, Carson extended an outline for the fellows into the future:

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Beyond using the fellows for internal staff recruitment, we have set a goal…to recommend 200 of our best Fellows (~25%) for staff roles with allied organizations committed to passing the President’s agenda after the program ends.

This new class of fellows represents the future wave of OFA-trained organizers that will leave the program ready to be recruited by coalition partners within the movement—our “alumni” community will continue to grow through this program. (emphasis added)10

This vision for summer fellows as populating the progressive left, presumably with paid positions, may simply have been a recruitment ploy for OFA. But it is noteworthy that the bridge is to the organizations in the progressive left, and not necessarily the party or other candidates.

Digital, Data and Analytics

OFA may be a scaled-down version of the campaign in a number of regards, including money and staffing. The same is generally true in the domain of digital, data and analytics, to the extent that in some areas it may be a qualitative difference. Whether or not the reduction in capacity is just proportionate to the scale of the enterprise, digital, data and analytics in OFA is not diffused through the organization the way that it was in Obama for America.

OFA has a strong digital presence in social media and e-mail. It has national staff responsible for thirteen social media platforms, which includes Barack Obama’s Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ accounts, as well as OFA’s own accounts. OFA’s e-mail operation uses the management system of Blue State Digital, the for-profit digital campaign technology firm that worked with both the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns. In all likelihood, OFA uses A/B testing on its digital communications. While a mainstay of the Obama electoral campaign world – and for that matter, electoral politics in general one decade into the 21st century – A/B testing by OFA raises some eyebrows as an affront to the gravitas of the presidency.11

Politico reports that the Obama campaign, yet to be terminated, still legally owns the campaign email list, though the list is managed by the DNC (Tau 2013). But presumably the e-mail list transferred from the campaign to OFA as well, with what appeared to be a seamless transition in email from the Obama for America reelection campaign to OFA, upon its January 2013 launch.

Figure 3 displays OFA email and Twitter activity in 2013.12

10 Slack (2013) includes full text of Carson memo.

11 See for example Daily Kos (2013).

12 Tweets includes OFA tweets and retweets, mostly of tweets from OFA state Twitter accounts. Twitter data not available prior to July 9, 2013.

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Figure 3: OFA Email and Twitter Activity, 2013

Email: Numbers of daily OFA email messages from 1/18-9/30

Tweets: Numbers of daily OFA tweets and retweets from 7/9-9/30

The email data reflect only email delivered to one user. And with this in mind, it is important to note that email campaigns routinely tailor communications – follow-up messages, even the specific content of an email – in a manner that responds to the recipient’s responses or unique characteristics. Put differently, email receipts likely vary from person to person. There is some evidence of OFA email targeting; however, it does not seem to be a particularly pronounced part of the email strategy, at least extending beyond the amount the donation “ask”, which accompanies almost every email embedded in Figure 3, as well as in the email records compiled by ProPublica’s “Message Machine” project.13

The total volume of e-mail received over the first nine months of 2013 is 68. The typical message is sent under the name of one of the principals, often Jon Carson, with the rare Barack Obama sign-off reserved that messages that include no fundraising appeal. Figure 3 shows a slight uptick in email in advance of the third quarter self-imposed reporting deadline, but that time frame also corresponded to heightened activity that surrounded the impending government shutdown. Indeed, the unprecedented flurry of emails in that late September period delivered repeated appeals regarding budget negotiations and the “Defund Obamacare” initiative, which eventually shut down the federal government.

The Twitter data – OFA’s tweets and retweets – follow a cyclical pattern of gearing up for “days of action” – for such issues as immigration, climate change, and gun violence. Many of the tweet peaks are associated with a high volume of retweets of local OFA chapters tweets, including

13 According to Pro Publica (www.propublica.org) “Message Machine” records as of November 1, 2013, 17 of the OFA emails archived had multiple versions, most with just two or three versions. The 2013 “Message Machine” data, however, are quite incomplete.

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photos of their events. President Obama’s August 4 birthday as well as the 50th anniversary of the MLK March on Washington (August 28) prompted a large number of tweets as well as emails.

OFA’s website is BarackObama.com, the URL a repeat of the campaign’s webpage.14 The site includes instructions for advocacy activities, including letters to the editor and petitions; an activist is asked to report back to OFA, through the website, about these activities. Another important component of the webpage is an “event planning” tool which allows the user to plan events, like house parties, letter writing events, rallies and phone banks. The events are searchable by zip code for other users. The organizer can access RSVP information for events he or she has planned. But while OFA routinely report metrics of activities on its website and in email accounts, there is no leaderboard component; this had been featured on the Organizing for America web-portal in 2009.15 “Dashboard,” the signature tool of the 2012 campaign which provided the ability to integrate information about activist on line activity with the voter data base, is not used by OFA.

That OFA is not as digitally accomplished as the Obama campaigns is not necessarily a problem. After all, a nation-wide campaign with an Election Day focus is fundamentally different than an ongoing advocacy effort. Still, OFA does not appear to meet the promise held at its outset for extending the digital power of the Obama campaign into the future, at least as of October 2013. Similarly, with respect to data and analytics, OFA is no Obama for America, with its data-driven activities and a data-centric organization. OFA does, however, have credible data resources.

In addition to possessing the campaign’s e-mail list, OFA subscribes – like many other Democratic-leaning enterprises – to VoteBuilder, the NGP-VAN voter database system; this is the path through which it has access to the much heralded “Obama data,” since the campaign fed into the “VAN” data trove. OFA also has an in-house list of “alumni volunteers” – numbering around 10,000 – which was compiled during the inaugural planning effort. Finally, OFA has rented the Obama fundraising list; 2013 FEC reports filed by the Obama campaign show Q1 and Q2 campaign receipts of $925,188 resulting from payments from OFA for equipment and list rental.16 These data and lists are the domain of headquarters, with access to the information not routinely diffused to the state OFA operations. This is in stark comparison to the campaign season, during which the

14 OFA failed to register the URL “OrganizingforAction” before the January 18, 2013 launch and found that someone else had secured the name in .org, .com and .net domains (Stirland 2013a) The .net version was purchased for $10 by a Republican computer technician who saw the news on Fox News. Directed to National Rifle Association website (Stirland 2013b)

15 The website includes a small, permanent tribute to Alex Okrent, an Obama for American campaign worker. The tribute, “In loving memory of Alex Okrent”, first ran on the campaign website after Okrent’s death in the summer of 2012 at the Chicago Headquarters. It continues to run on the OFA website.

16 The campaign has yet to terminate, as of September 30, 2013 carrying $3,378,781 in debt, according the FEC Q3 report. OFA rental payments to the Obama campaign constitute a sizeable proportion of the campaign’s revenues: 31% and 19% in Q2 and Q3 respectively. There were no OFA payments to Obama for America in Q1 2013.

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field operations had VAN access. In fact, the canvassing and phone activities of 2008, which occupied many of those same activists who are part of the current OFA, were fed into the VAN and other Obama data collections.

There is not much of an analytics presence in OFA beyond tracking and the A/B testing built into the commercial products it uses. Certainly there is no “cave,” the Big Data/data mining and analytics unit of the 2012. Those experts who staffed the campaign effort have dispersed largely into the private world, as did the technology innovators of the 2008 campaign.17 At the same time, the digital OFA efforts reveal signs of lessons learned from earlier efforts in experimentation and analytics. The simple “hey” as a subject line – “The most successful subject line of the [2012] campaign, based on e-mail opens” (Engage 2013) appeared occasionally in 2013 OFA emails. “Donor record” email solicitations build from the research of academics (e.g., Gerber, Green and Larimer 2008) and the Analyst Institute, which assess the impact of social pressure on the vote.

2013 Activities

OFA invites ongoing involvement of its supporters, but it directs activity to a limited number of domestic policy initiatives according to a calendar that it prescribes. In doing so, OFA walks the fine line between preserving a “grassroots” image while marshaling the organizational effort toward the President’s policy agenda.

OFA policy emphasis over 2013 has targeted a handful of issues: gun violence, climate change, immigration, Obamacare and, secondarily, women’s issues and jobs, all with headquarters-led campaigns in 2013. The timetable on which OFA took on these issues corresponded to major legislative debates as well as the general rhythm of the year, with special resources available in the summer. But the organization, however, experienced some limited tension about the choice of issues, most notably regarding the nature of the climate change emphasis and the absence of an effort on the question of Syria. The early rhetoric of the organization described an agenda-building process with room for a true grassroots dynamic, including involvement in local issues.

Jon Carson’s January 20, 2013 email to supporters detailed a vision of a locally-driven issues organization:

The way we'll get it done can be summed up in one word: local. That means each city or region will have its own OFA chapter, and you'll decide the issues your community cares about most, the work you want to do to make progress on them, and the kind of support you'll need to get it done… [F]or the most part, the direction our work takes will be

17 Perhaps the most notable move is Dan Wagner, the head of the Obama 2012 analytics team, and two dozen of his campaign analytics coworkers to the new “Civis Analytics,” with backing from Google’s Eric Schmidt (Green 2013). Civis promotes its Obama heritage front and center on its website: “OUR COMPANY was born in a large backroom of the Obama 2012 Re-Election Headquarters.” (http://www.civisanalytics.com/pages/our-mission)

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completely in your hand – with the support of this organization behind you every step of the way.

But in practice, there appears to be little percolating up of issues, even to the point of OFA suppressing efforts to include the Keystone pipeline debate as part of its climate change initiative. There is the rare example – marriage equality in Illinois – of a local chapter directing OFA’s resources to a local issue. And the absence of any OFA attention to Syria, the pivotal foreign policy debate of 2013, could reflect simply the organization’s domestic emphasis or the political risk associated with issue. Carson conveyed the following to OFA supporters:

What I definitely want you all to know is that OFA supports President Obama and the agenda that Americans voted for on Nov. 6, but we don't always actively organize around every issue. And the debate in Congress over the Syria vote is not one that OFA is planning on organizing around.18

OFA has put its checkbook behind advertising in a few different policy campaigns: background checks/gun violence, immigration reform, the Affordable Care Act and, in a limited fashion, affordable education. Early in the year, OFA purchased banner ads, reportedly for a sum of “close to six figures” targeting nine members of Congress, urging their support for background checks legislation (Gold 2013b). A June TV ad buy of $1 Million promoted the merits of the Affordable care Act (Salant 2013). Later in the Summer, OFA ran radio ads, including on Spanish radio, promoting immigration reform (Murray 2013a). The advertising strategy has a singular purpose: ultimately to encourage members of Congress to support the President’s policy positions, a message leveled along with the not-so-subtle threat that OFA will be watching the member’s votes.

In August, OFA geared up for activities related to the congressional recess, including trips to encounter members home for the recess at Town Halls or in their district offices. OFA hired temporary “Get-out-the-August” staff who would be onboard for eight weeks starting in mid-July to “strategically build our organization and maximize our impact leading up to and during the August Recess.” OFA’s self-report of its August volunteer activities include over 500 immigration reform events, 225 Obamacare events, 300 rallies on climate change and 200 background check/gun violence events. (Eilperin 2013)

These self-reported figures, though silent on the number of actual attendees, seem largely consistent with independently-generated measures of OFA August recess events. Reporting event data accessible through the OFA website, Map 2 shows events scheduled to occur during a two week period at, roughly, the end of August.19 The circles reported in the figure reflect the total number of

18 Murray (2013b).

19 Events were compiled using the website’s “Find Event” capacity, searching zip-codes to amass a record of scheduled events across the nation. Due to slight variation in timing of data collection, the precise two week period considered for each state varies slightly, but generally speaking reflects the last two weeks in August 2013. There was no activity for Hawaii or Alaska, states not shown in Map 2.

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events, while the red/blue strategy indicates 2012 presidential outcome. Note that activists themselves can plan events and enter them on the website.

Map 2: OFA August 2013 Recess Events.

Note: Data compiled by author from OFA “event finder” website capacity. Circle size proportionate to number of activities.

The event activity, like the donating activity reported earlier, is concentrated in states with a strong Obama 2012 base. However, organizational resources directed toward the state, notably in the form of paid staff, also seem to matter. Not surprisingly, those red states with paid staff produced August recess; events. But even some blue states, those operating without paid staff, registered no events; though a narrow point, this datum again begs the question of the balance between OFA’s grassroots orientation and its direction from headquarters. And in general, the event data prompt a consideration of just how effective these OFA activities are, a concern to which this paper will return.

Discussion

OFA’s ten month lifespan is too short to arrive at a settled organizational portrait or, even more so, to judge its role in party politics. However, three aspects of OFA do seem particularly clear.

First, OFA is a transparency failure. In large part, this comes along with 501(c)(4) status, though even the OFA disclosure policy is inadequate. Beyond the cutoff for disclosure and the absence of employer/occupation fields, the data are not readily machine readable. At the same time, OFA has simply opted for an organizational form that, given the incentive structure in place, does not place it at a disadvantage in advancing President Obama’s policy goals. Like it or not, in 2013 organizations have incentives to operate in the shadows; to expect anything else would be

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overly naïve. However, organizations cannot have it both ways. “Fake transparency” (Weigel 2013, might be too strong, but OFA’s practices fall short of true transparency.

Second, the absence of contribution limits poses a special problem for an organization so closely tied to the President, especially in the context of rewards offered to big donors. Even something as seemingly innocuous as a gathering of big-ticket donors addressed by President Obama projects the image of buying access. That is clearly something that should be avoided.

Finally, as a case study OFA demonstrates the already-understood fact that 501(c)(4) status offers the political world a monumental loophole. If OFA is indeed devoting less than half of its resources – including time – to non-political activity, then what the remaining 50%-plus is directed toward remains a mystery. Even the “days of service” that figured prominently for Organizing for America (Melber 2010; Trish 2011) in President Obama’s first term, are not central to the current OFA. But non-profit, social-welfare status is just like transparency: political organizations should not be expected to self-regulate.

Questions about the president-as-party-leader and about general party politics are more difficult to address. Still, even the first year of OFA offers some clues.

When President Obama took office in 2009 and placed Organizing for America, his 2008 campaign legacy, at the DNC, it looked like a signal that the President was intent on party building (Milkis 2014). Even if its ultimate purpose had been to institutionalize a permanent Obama campaign, Organizing for America was part of the formal party apparatus. On the surface, the seamless integration of Organizing for America and the Obama reelection campaign could be interpreted as evidence that Organizing for America was all about the President and not the Democratic Party. However, it could also be interpreted as the party’s unique approach in marshaling its resources toward the top contest on the 2012 ballot. In short, even the Obama-centered focus of Organizing for America does necessarily call into question President Obama’s intent and potential accomplishments in party leadership.

The situation in 2013 with OFA is a little different. The stated purpose of OFA is to advance President Obama’s policy agenda, just like Organizing for America before it. The new structure, however, contributes only in limited ways to the party itself. Still while OFA might be considered a drain on the Democratic Party, it is probably more appropriately considered an opportunity lost – for party building, at least.

Despite its legal status as an entity distinct from the party, OFA needs to be conceptualized as a unit in the larger Democratic organization. In the spirit of Schlesinger (1985), OFA is a nuclei within the multinuclear party. Even though Schlesinger’s party conceptualization predates the contemporary world of Super PACs, 527s and 501(c)(4)s, it can readily be extended to these new organizational forms. In this context, OFA appears to tax the party, but not for the obvious reasons, of which there are at least three.

The question of whether OFA is a drain on the pool of donors who could be contributing – or contributing more – to the formal party is unresolved. Granted campaign finance records reveal

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that many of the large donors to OFA have not contributed or have not contributed at maximum levels to the party apparatus. Still, it remains to be seen what these donors will do when the campaign season, once again, kicks into high gear. Their contributions to the candidates in the 2014 midterm contest and in the next presidential cycle will clarify whether their support is exclusively Obama-centric.

Does the fact that OFA is staffed by a cadre of Obama people – and not formal party people – bode poorly for party building? Not necessarily. Drawing conclusions from the tiny fraction of Obama campaign personnel who occupy positions in OFA is not very useful; of course they have a connection to the campaign. But more revealing would be how the Obama campaign personnel have populated the formal party apparatus, and – perhaps more importantly – whether their work for and support of the party and Democratic candidates extends into the future, a question similar to the one explored by Rapoport and Stone (2007), though with Ross Perot not Barack Obama in mind.

Finally, there might be legitimate concern that the promise of technology has not been realized, whether the prowess of the Obama campaign data and analytics might have been extended more fully to OFA. In fact, some observers imagined that OFA would be the repository of the advanced data and analytics of the campaign, resources that could be preserved and even cultivated. The resources could be offered or sold to Democratic candidates in the future in a “Democratic marketplace hosted by OfA” (Leichman and Parsons 2013). In retrospect, this was an unrealistic expectation. The money and manpower necessary for this to become reality dwarfs even the most optimistic vision for funding and staffing in an organization like OFA. At this point, it seems like the commercial world of data and analytics provides the more promising fixtures for extending the legacy of a single Democratic campaign, no matter how large in scope and successful, into the future.

Though money, staffing and technology do not necessarily mark OFA as a lost opportunity for party building or a drain on the party, the lack of discernible impact may. OFA beats a steady drum of activities, both in the online and offline worlds, at least in blue America. And it has a strong financial base. But there is not much evidence that OFA has had an impact on policy. Consider, for example, OFA’s August attention to Obamacare. The OFA efforts were eclipsed, at least in terms of anecdotal evidence of success, by the stealth Heritage Action, itself a 501(c)(4), which helped to catalyze the “Defund Obamacare” movement and the eventual government shutdown of October 2013 (Stolberg and McIntire 2013.)

Unless OFA can offer compelling evidence that it has an impact on policy, it runs the risk of wearing down an already-weary activist pool and donor base that the Democratic Party – in all of the forms that it takes – will need as it moves into the future. Undoubtedly President Obama did not set out to engage in “party predation” (Galvin 2010) rather than party building. Time will paint a more complete picture. But with OFA, President Obama may, in fact, be an inadvertent party predator.

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