Blog update - a little something about August 2008

Hi All,
Sorry for the delay but class, political leadership program, events and life have kept me busy! Oh, and let's not forget Facebook! This blog for my internship forever looms in the back of my mind because I know I am behind and have yet to visit the blogs of my fellow SPA Internship classmates...
Last August 2008 when I began the Congressman Mitchell internship was a very exciting and already somewhat exhausting time for Democrats in AZ (actually, yes, everywhere but since the blog is about my internship I will try and focus on AZ).
One of the first assignments I was given was to assist with contacting voters via phone.
Voter Contact via phone consisted of the following:
*Volunteer recruitment - there are always those folks who have signed up & express interest and the challenging work is reminding them and having them sign up for dates and times to come in.
*Informing voters on campaign updates; media articles; happenings in D.C. which can affect voter turnout (such as the stimulus plan, and also how politician voted on bills of importance to AZ voters).
*Informing voters why canditate is the best person to vote for - providing concrete information.
Not everyone loves doing Voter Contact via phone but it is one of the most important ways to reach the public. Here are a few things to consider:
**Targeting - "helps us to better balance our resources to more effectively, and efficiently, COMMUNICATE, with the specific voters that will decide the outcome of the election."
**Predicted Turnout - "such as current events, ballot initiatives, absentee ballot drive; this just names a few.
**Polling (demographic)
*Voter file (geographic)

Each night afterwork I would head over to the Mitchell Campaign headquarters which was located on the corner of Mill Avenue and Baseline Road. Each night Congressman Mitchell's amazing team of Campaign Directors were there - these people had the best attitude, sense of humor (which proves crucial as campaign is coming to a close) and worked amazingly well as a team.
Each night I would see different volunteers, some folks I would get to know fairly well and would find that campaign volunteering was nothing new to them.
I would become quite amazed with myself as the campaign continued; I would put in 40 hours at work, go to Ron Perry's Research Methods I on Wednesday night & would put in many hours at headquarters.
To give you an idea of hours:
In the beginning (August) I would go in Tue/Thu for 6 hours totals & Saturday usually about 11AM - 4PM or 5PM. So about 12-15 to begin with...this would eventually go to 20 hours - 30 hours....pretty much anytime I was not at work I was there & LOVING IT...
This was not the first campaign I had volunteered and I had been active in LD17 for a few years.
****I hope you have enjoyed this post & look forward to hearing what the rest of you in SPA 584 think!!