I had better watch out for these people. They could trample me to death with their sandals!
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You Go, Dean! Babies of Boomers Find a Candidate
By JODI WILGOREN NEW YORK TIMES
SEATTLE, Oct. 5 — Ryan Simpkins, a 25-year-old producer on the reality television series "Big Brother," gave up on politics back in student government. Yet he has donated $300, so far, to Howard Dean's presidential campaign, monitors its Web sites daily and has lately been luring peers to their first political rallies.
Brady Carlson, 27, a graduate student who lives in Newmarket, N.H., was quickly bored when he tried to work on previous political campaigns but found his niche in Dr. Dean's.
"I don't have any money, I hate telemarketing, and I'm not comfortable reading a prepared script on the doorstep of a bunch of strangers, so they had little use for me," Mr. Carlson said, recalling his previous campaign involvement.
For Dr. Dean, Mr. Carlson has, on his own, produced a radio spot, designed a Web page and raised $403.17 through Satire for Dean, posting a joke for every donation.
"I'm doing things that other campaigns didn't want me to do," he said, "and because of that, I'm willing to help out with the phone calls and the contributions, too."
They call themselves Generation Dean, legions of hip young people who have helped catapult Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, into the top tier of the crowded Democratic presidential field, despite their age group's notorious apathy toward and alienation from electoral politics.
Behind Dr. Dean's record fund-raising totals, mobbed rallies and innovative grass-roots organization are, in many cases, twentysomethings and thirtysomethings for whom this campaign thing is the latest fad.
They pack nightclubs for fund-raisers and treat the candidate as a celebrity. They stage clandestine outings to concerts, removing fashionable garments to reveal campaign T-shirts underneath. This month alone, they plan to go bowling in Oklahoma City; play Drag Bingo in Durham, N.C.; tailgate at Arizona State University football games.
Many of the new political converts said they were attracted by Dr. Dean's antiwar message, or his promise of free health care for everyone under 25. Mr. Simpkins, the "Big Brother" producer, said it was Dr. Dean's signing of a bill recognizing civil unions for gay couples in Vermont that got his vote, and the spirit of the campaign that got him involved.
"Maybe it's the ignorance of youth or whatever, but it feels like we can actually make a difference," Mr. Simpkins said. "I know it's cliché. I know it's the campaign motto. But I think it's true."
While candidates frequently spark support on college campuses, and many students certainly are among the 12,000 members registered on the generationdean.com Web site, what is unusual here is the fervent activity by the young professionals of Generation X (those born from the mid-60's through the 70's) and Generation Y (born in 1980 or after). These age groups have long been considered the least interested and least involved in politics of any similar bloc in the last century. In the last presidential election, a record-low 30 percent of voters under 30 turned out.
But experts said that the image of politically disconnected young people began to change after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And just when the young started paying attention, along came Howard Dean, 54, who casts himself as a plain-spoken antipolitician who promises to tell the truth.
"I don't think it's an ideology thing, I don't think it's an issue thing," said Dan Ancona, 30, a software engineer from Santa Barbara, Calif. "We have been lied to more, we have been advertised at more."
Then there is the way the campaign is being run, with its aggressive use of the Internet, bottom-up brainstorming and decidedly hip accents.
For a fund-raiser at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles last week, for example, the campaign borrowed a technique from the record industry. Supporters could pay the $100 ticket, or earn points toward free entry by providing new e-mail addresses, just as street teams earn points toward free concerts and early CD releases by calling radio stations to request songs or handing out CD's.
"It's the language that they're used to, it's the culture that they live in right now," Jehmu Greene, executive director of MTV's "Rock the Vote," said. "The top reason that he is resonating with young people is because he's talking to them, he's including them in his outreach efforts and where he's expending his resources."
Indeed, Dr. Dean is in the midst of a four-day, six-state "Generation Dean" tour focused on the under-30 set, aboard a chartered Gulfstream ferrying reporters, including one for college newspapers. He was the only presidential contender to speak at the Young Democrats convention in Buffalo this summer. And when the Democratic candidates were asked their favorite songs at a debate last month, the others named baby boomer classics by Bruce Springsteen, James Brown and John Lennon, while Dr. Dean, who has a teenage son and daughter, picked "Jaspora," by the hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean.
"Listen, if all you guys vote and bring a friend, we're going to win easy!" he shouted to the 150 or so students who gathered here at the University of Washington to touch his wrinkled suit jacket before a speech to the state Democratic Party.
"Young people don't vote because we don't give them a reason to vote," Dr. Dean said on Friday afternoon at Howard University in Washington. "Now we're going to give you a reason to vote."
At the University of Oklahoma in Norman on Saturday, he added: "You are not the foot soldiers of our campaign, you are leading this campaign. This is about young people taking, now, the responsibility for changing our country."
Dr. Dean is not alone in trying to court the next generation.
Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, whose daughter Catharine, a college senior, sometimes accompanies him on the trail, has appeared on Comedy Central and on "Real Time With Bill Maher."
The Rev. Al Sharpton was introduced recently at a church in Washington as "one who has a very profound, critical, true, genuine, real and contemporary word for the hip-hop generation."
But it is the Dean campaign that earned the headline "Political Partying" in New York magazine, with scenes from campaign events turned singles mixers.
More than 1,000 "Deaniacs," most dressed in black, packed the newly opened Chelsea club Avalon a few weeks back for a bill that included Al Franken, Phoebe Snow, Whoopi Goldberg and Janeane Garofalo; when the headliner, Dr. Dean, was drowned out by cheers, he halted his speech and held out the microphone to the crowd like a rock star.
Jenifer Ragland, 27, traces her support for Dr. Dean to when she posted a question about the candidate on an anti-Bush Web site and got a prompt answer from the manager of the Dean campaign, Joe Trippi.
Then she learned that the Burlington, Vt., headquarters was filled with young people like herself: the political director, the field director, the scheduler and the Web master are all under 30.
"It's just, like, so inspiring," said Ms. Ragland, who recently quit her job as a newspaper reporter to volunteer. "These people get it. The campaign is transparent — or it at least appears that way. You feel like you're involved. You feel like you matter."
nytimes.com |
