Obama Campaign’s Exporting Of Volunteer A Disservice To Texas Democrats

Every four years, Democratic presidential candidates export some volunteers from Texas to battleground states. Typically, it is mostly volunteers from El Paso with a handful of volunteer from across the state deciding independently to volunteer with the campaign and go to other states.

This year, the Obama campaign is essentially pillaging Texas Democratic activists wholesale:

Unemployed and angry but with a strong sense of purpose, Shannon Curtis joined Barack Obama’s volunteer army.

Her first assignment: boot camp in Dallas, where the 27-year-old learned how to walk blocks, operate phone banks and become a precinct captain.

She’s being shipped with other Texans to one of the presidential battle’s western fronts – the crucial swing state of Colorado.

What is worse, the Obama campaign is pillaging volunteers from battleground areas within our state. Dallas County remains a battleground. A high-profile sheriff’s race and countless state legislative races in Dallas County could use the volunteer Obama is hijacking from Texas.

Two points on this: 1.) If the Obama campaign really wanted to be useful to us in Texas, they could offer their training to Texas volunteer to be used in battleground areas in Texas (come to think of it, perhaps the Texas Democratic Party could do that as well). 2.) Texas will never become a Democratic state fully in a presidential election as long as national campaigns simply view us as a breeding ground for exportable volunteers. Perhaps if the Obama campaign would allow the volunteers it is training to remain in Texas, we could boost our numbers. Perhaps, with almost all of the state’s most populous areas alread Democratic or likely to trend that way this election cycle, the campaign could actually carry the state (had they not essentially already abandoned their ground-game here).

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