Chet and Connie Hood live in central Los Angeles on the top of a hill that overlooks the commercial heart of the city. Chet is ex-military and, until earlier this year, they say that neither of them had ever done anything political. In fact, they haven’t even always supported the Democrats. Yet in July they hosted a party for dozens of Democrat activists from all over LA and southern California.
‘We’re angry.’ Connie says. ‘We are angry about the people who are in charge of our country. And, as Chet will tell you, when I get angry I don’t shout: I take it out with a pick and shovel. I go and do something. I told Chet we have to do something about this. So we signed up.’
Changes in the US’ campaign finance laws have made the ‘little people’ more important. The reforms, which were designed to curb the huge amounts of money spent on election campaigns, have failed in their core mission but they have taken so-called ‘soft’ money and big corporate donations out of the system. Now, political war-chests need to be filled with thousands of individual small donations – no one person can donate more than $25,000.
Typical of the new breed is Bobby, who I met in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is a proud member of Veterans for Kerry and keeps having to hand over his campaign button.
‘I was having dinner in a restaurant with a friend of mine and a middle-aged man comes over. He said he was a veteran too and that he wondered where he could get a button like mine. Well, I was about to hand it over to him but he said, “it’s not for me, it’s for my son”.
‘“Well, where is your son?” I said, and he said: “he’s just over there at that table saying goodbye to the family – he’s off to Baghdad tomorrow”. So I went over there and I shook his hand and pinned that button on him and said, “son, you keep your head down, and you come back and vote for John Kerry.” And he said he would. So I had to get myself a new button.’
In Wichita, we attended the weekly John Kerry Meetup – one of hundreds in different cities across the USA on the same day. Meetup.com has become a particular feature of this election, having been used extensively by Howard Dean in the primaries. The site allows you to organise meetings with other like-minded people – you register for the system and then sign up to a particular group, like Kerry supporters, anti-war, philatelists, trekkies and so on. Then someone suggests a time and date for a meeting and the group votes on it. When the day comes up, everyone is emailed telling them where they have to be.
It’s a great way of organising volunteers, especially in somewhere like Wichita. This is a Republican city in a usually Republican state, which hasn’t yet had much support from the Democrat HQ. So it’s down to the local volunteers – many of whom are not experienced Democrats – to organise.
With a closed cafe and twenty hard-core Kerry supporters, it’s a strange experience – a bit like a branch Labour party meeting, but because of the nature of meetups, people are very careful to allow a wide spread of opinion. Not everyone here is a Democrat – many simply want to get rid of Bush and see Kerry as the best way to do it.
Among them are Virgil and Kathy Miller. He is running for state senator in a local winnable seat and is looking for volunteers to help. On the agenda today: the group thinks it ought to do something to celebrate Kerry’s nomination at the convention. Someone suggests using the Radisson Hotel in town for a party. A lady with a Howard Dean T-Shirt says: ‘Will they let us hoop and holler when the speech is over, though?’ One of the other group members says: ‘You’re not in the Dean campaign now…’
There is a general discussion about going on a march after the nomination, which I struggle to stay out of – but eventually they talk themselves round to the more sensible option of a big party and a walkabout to hand out information to people. The obvious thing for so many people to do with a local campaign is to go blitzing for local candidate Miller and, without my intervention, they basically talk themselves into that, too.
I hope they go ahead and do it because there is something eerily familiar about all these angry people sitting in a room talking about politics instead of going out and doing some. It reminds me of Labour in the early 1990s – a lot of anger but not much action.
But there is real appetite for change here, emphasised by the questions we get about what the UK thinks about Bush, and concern about what would happen if Bush got back in again. Despite the fact that this is a heavily conservative state, these volunteers are determined to get out the message and are organising voter registration and information stands at upcoming major events.