Organizing for America is the kind of operation most campaigns would be glad to have. | REUTERS Obama's online army quietly gears up

President Obama’s aides have quietly turned the key in the engine of the massive campaign-in-waiting that’s been operating under the name Organizing for America for the past two years, and will begin his reelection with the sort of online and field organizations most presidential campaigns would be glad to have 16 months from now.

The leadership of the field organization — with hundreds of employees, tens of thousands of volunteers and massive online assets (primarily, a giant email list) — is shifting from the Democratic National Committee to the new campaign in Chicago. And in mass emails and in a quiet series of one-on-one meetings with volunteer leaders, the group is resetting its relationship with its supporters.


And while many Democrats have complained that Organizing for America’s vaunted abilities began to sputter once Obama became president, people watching the organization closely say it has succeeded in what may have been its central mission all along: building an unparalleled reelection organization while staying under the political world’s radar.

“Nothing like this has ever happened this early or this big,” said Natalie Foster, a former DNC new media director.

Obama’s reelection campaign may lack the novelty, and the purity, of his first campaign. Aides hope, though, that any enthusiasm gap — which they believe will close as the race begins to take shape — will be made up for by the sheer scale and capacity of the newly re-tuned organization.

Obama’s campaign will “give a little on the enthusiasm, but they gain a lot on the fact that they’re starting with this huge set of resources they didn’t have in 2008 ,” said a Democrat closely watching the ramp-up.

That Organizing for America remains very much a political powerhouse to be feared may come as a surprise to some who have bought into the popular narrative that group has floundered since the 2008 campaign. And early in Obama’s presidency, OFA did suffer from being wildly over-hyped: it was to be a juggernaut that would transform legislative politics, sending members of Congress of both parties running headlong in fear.

The group, to the dismay of some of Obama’s key supporters, never attempted to bring the “movement” feel of the campaign to a truly independent new organization. Its website remained BarackObama.com, and – after an early foray drew complaints from Capitol Hill – it shied away from doing anything that could get the president in trouble with his less trail-blazing allies in Congress.

But despite the fact that OFA did not live up to admittedly unrealistic expectations, it did play a role in keeping Democrats on board during the protracted health care fight, mobilizing on a large scale despite a sour national mood and skepticism of the bill, even among Democrats. The group’s 2008 breakthrough had been linking the online organization with offline action, and the organization’s leaders last month detailed some of their results in a Huffington Post article, writing that in August of 2009, more than 34,000 OFA members attended 410 town hall events to back the bill, and that 65,000 supporters paid in-person visits to members of Congress.

Now Organizing for America begins where many presidential campaigns would be glad to finish. Leading Democrats say the group has more than 400 staffers around the country — many with two or more years of experience in the organization — thousands of local volunteer leaders, a list of a million people willing to volunteer, and an email list insiders say has grown since the campaign ended, and stands at more than 10 million names. (An Obama campaign spokeswoman, Katie Hogan, said the campaign will not be giving out the exact numbers of staffers, though they become public in occasional filings.)

The central question, of course, is whether those millions still care, and whether the tens of thousands of active 2008 volunteers are ready to engage. In interviews, some volunteer leaders said they’d begun to see signs that supporters, who had dipped in and out of engagement on specific issues, were returning to the organization.

“I see people coming back. It’s very thrilling actually,” said Cathy Johns, a secretary and volunteer in the suburbs of Toledo, Ohio, whose number was provided by a campaign aide. “I’m really looking forward to it, to seeing some of the old gang.”

A Philadelphia volunteer, Jim Walton, acknowledged that governing had been hard on the organization.

“Every time President Obama made a compromise, you lose people who feel very strongly about these issues,” he said. “I think it’ll come back — people are now being faced with the real choice, and you’ll be able to see the contrast between what the president is offering and what the other side is offering.”

The online operation, intrinsic to both field and fund-raising operations of the reelection campaign, has also been quietly gearing up. An email message and no-frills video from campaign manager Jim Messina earlier this week returned the messaging to its successful roots in wonky, direct, gimmick-free, and openly political discussions with core supporters.

The structure and leadership of the online side of the campaign have yet to be announced, but two people involved said Joe Rospars, a consultant who headed the 2008 campaign’s wildly successful internet fundraising and communications, will likely occupy a similar post this cycle.

Other crucial details, though, remain unsettled. The 2008 campaign was marked by occasional scuffles between Rospars’ team and the campaign’s finance side, over the share of email that would be devoted to asking for money, versus building a movement and driving supporters to take other action. Julianna Smoot, who ran fundraising in 2008, is now a deputy campaign manager, and two Democrats who work in online politics said they worry the new organization will be tempted to overuse the list for fundraising.

People involved in setting it up, though, dismissed that concern, and said Rospars will likely report directly to Messina. What’s more, the campaign so far has been heavily devoted to expanding its field operation, and raising money to pay for that expansion, quelling some of those concerns.

And the online organization will operate with new tools. Facebook integration, for instance, will offer the campaign “a much sharper scalpel” for slicing its email list – still its key online asset — into segments based on all sorts of personal details.

Leaders of Organizing for America seemed to have learned the lessons of the past and have spent less time in recent years hyping the group’s scale and accomplishments. That’s a pattern, insiders say, that’s likely to continue.

But Obama is relying heavily on the unparalleled organization in what’s likely to be a very different 2012 campaign, and his supporters would like nothing more than to take the GOP by surprise with its scale and ferocity.

“If you’re the other side I would not be sitting hoping and praying they can’t get it moving again. That’s a big mistake,” said Democratic consultant Joe Trippi. “It’s going to be moving.”