Students Hit the Road on ’04 Campaign Trail

Political campaigns attract a strange cast of characters—a mélange of college students, the unemployed and trust fund babies. Some are locals who only stick around for a few days; others are peripatetics who roam from one end of the country to the other, groupies who follow candidates from one swing state to the next.

Harvardians readily threw themselves into this mix this school year, suffering the stress, pressures and sacrifices of a grassroots operation while still juggling classes, exams and additional extracurriculars.

Students traveled across the country to volunteer for their favored candidates, in trips ranging from bus rides to New Hampshire to flights to South Carolina.

And with national elections heading into full swing in the fall, all campus political organizations are expecting an active next few months in the chaos of the campaign.

ON THE ROAD

“It was one of the greatest learning experiences I’ve ever had,” Eric P. Lesser ’07 said of his work for Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., in Charleston, S.C. last January.

Lesser, a member of the Harvard College Democrats, flew to the Palmetto State with 21 other students to help campaign in the South Carolina presidential primary.

Jessica R. Rosenfeld ’07, who worked in the Londonberry, N.H. campaign office of Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., laughed at the memory of her experiences.

“I came back [to campus] once for my Justice final,” she said. Rosenfeld, internships director for the College Dems, spent almost the entirety of fall reading period working in the Granite State, living in volunteers’ basements and subsisting on the coffee-and-snacks campaign diet for nearly three weeks.

“It was freezing,” she said. “There were some points where it was 30 below...at one point I was sitting on an overpass over I-93 and I physically got sick. We had volunteers with frostbite, it was just ridiculous. You knew you had to do it, it was just the weather was not cooperating.”

Rosenfeld appreciated the camaraderie that came with the campaign climate, however.

“Everyone there for the most part was between the ages of 18 and 30,” she said. “You get to be really close friends in a very short time with people.”

Although Edwards emerged from New Hampshire with a defeat, Rosenfeld followed Edwards to his more successful run in South Carolina, where she helped coordinate volunteer activities at the Charleston field office. Three weeks later, she joined the New York offices of the campaign, acting as field director for Long Island.

“I definitely missed a lot of class,” Rosenfeld said. “Thankfully my grades, I don’t think have suffered. I definitely worked very hard before I left to get ahead and worked very hard when I got back to catch up.”

In Charleston, the Harvard contingent split into four groups, each volunteering for a specific candidate. Students were out in support of Kerry, Edwards, Gov. Howard Dean, D-Vt., and Gen. Wesley Clark.

While intraparty tensions ran high among the Dems when the primary was involved, they put aside their differences after hours, when debates finished and television pundits mouthed superficial insight and insubstantial chatter into the night. As Kerry fans and Deaniacs came together to share a pitcher of beer, cameras preserved the memories of fun times on the campaign trail.

Lesser, who worked for Dean’s campaign in New Hampshire but switched to Kerry in South Carolina, found his Charleston experience an eye-opening one.

“[We] really became immersed in the culture of the campaign. You learned what the concerns and needs of people in that area were,” he said. “It was a tremendous chance to see the differences in American political culture but also see the similarities. Everyone wanted a better economy, everyone wants government to be effective.”

A visit to a poor African American neighborhood in Charleston brought out strong emotions in Kerry volunteer Jonathan D. Einkauf ’06. Einkauf, who said his family “just scraped by” at one point in their lives, said he was frustrated that other campaigns were ignoring poorer communities.

“I feel that no one else treats [these people] with respect and I feel that we are,” he said while walking through the area, on the outskirts of metropolitan Charleston.

SOFT MONEY

The Dems were not alone in their off-campus junkets. The Harvard Republican Club (HRC) also sponsored a campaign trip to Rhode Island in December. With a heated primary race affecting the party, however, the Democrats were much more active in campaigning this year.

This disparity actually led to conflict between the HRC and the Institute of Politics (IOP).

“It was frustrating to hear the IOP talk about parity during a semester in which its resources were focused so exclusively on the Democratic primary,” HRC President Mark T. Silvestri ’05 said in February.

Silvestri and other club members said they were concerned that while the Dems had received $2,500 from the IOP for the Charleston trip, the HRC had received hardly any IOP funds for their own campaign activities.

The IOP defended the disparities in funding as a “function of the campaign cycle,” according to Ilan T. Graff ’05, president of the IOP Student Affairs Committee.

The HRC had previously filed a request for an IOP grant to fund its 115th anniversary dinner last fall at the Faculty Club. The original application asked for $1,500, but the IOP only provided $500 to the club. Per IOP regulations, the HRC was then barred from applying for a second grant for the remainder of the year.

Despite his frustrations, Silvestri said in January he was hopeful that the IOP would provide funds to bankroll later trips taken by the HRC, perhaps on the same scale as the Dems’ South Carolina sojourn.

DON’T STOP THINKING ABOUT TOMORROW

At the close of the primary season, the Dems shifted gears, mobilizing behind the primary victor and apparent Democratic presidential contender Kerry.

“We work closely with the Kerry campaign and try to do whatever we can for them,” Dems President Andrew J. Frank ’05 said. “Unfortunately we didn’t work as much as we wanted to. It’s a lot to shift from a primary campaign in the states to a national campaign.”

Frank cited disorganization on the part of the Kerry campaign as a reason for a post-primary slow start.

“It took awhile for [the Kerry campaign] to get everything set up,” he said. “They didn’t have field offices, they had to hire a lot more staff.”

Nevertheless, the Dems tried to form an active presence on campus during the spring semester. A “Beat Bush” rally, organized by the Dems, the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters Alliance, Harvard Socialist Alternative and other campus groups, was held outside the Science Center in mid-May.

And Frank said that compared to other schools, Harvard Dems were ahead of the game.

“We’ve done a lot for this stage in the campaign,” Frank said. “In most colleges the campus is pretty dead until the fall before the election.”

Frank said he is proud of the Dems’ fundraising efforts, which he said have brought in between $700 and $1,000 for the Kerry campaign.

Every weekend in the fall, the Dems plan to send volunteers to New Hampshire, the nearest swing state. Frank said the group is also planning a campaigning trip outside of New England. On campus, Dems will set up phonebanking hubs in dorms and House junior common rooms.

On the GOP side, Silvestri confirmed last week that the HRC will ask the IOP for funding in the fall.

Josh M. Mendelsohn ’05, former president of the HRC and chair of Harvard Students for Bush, said the HRC will be looking to dispatch student Bush supporters off campus to help support the president.

“Massachusetts is obviously a very dynamic state but unfortunately is very liberal and is very loyally Democratic,” said Mendelsohn, who is also chair of Massachusetts Students for Bush. “As a result, we are focusing our efforts on exporting the time, talent and energy of our volunteers.”

“We’re going to go to New Hampshire where the president had a very narrow [victory] margin there and we want to maintain that,” he said. “We are going to make ourselves available to some of the key swing states across the country, whether that be Ohio, Michigan or Florida.”

Mendelsohn also said the club will participate in an absentee ballot initiative on campus.

He noted that while no plans have been confirmed, there will “definitely be out-of-state trips.”

Stephanie N. Kendall ’05, membership director of the HRC, is already on the ground for her candidate. Kendall is currently in Tallahassee working at the central Florida office of the Bush-Cheney reelect campaign.

“It’s an adventure everyday,” said Kendall, who is also communications director for Massachusetts Students for Bush. Kendall is in charge of handling campus press queries in Massachusetts, and is performing odd jobs around the Tallahassee office.

“Students have a lot of energy and in the summer they have a lot of time and they’re eager,” Kendall said. “It’s a fantastic opportunity to gain a lot of experience themselves and also it’s a fantastic position for the campaign to get a lot of people willing and able to work long hours.”

—Staff writer Michael M. Grynbaum can be reached at grynbaum@fas.harvard.edu.