PaliHi Grad Helps Campaign in Swing State

(Editor’s Note: Philip de Vellis was born and raised in the Palisades, where he attended Marquez Elementary School, Paul Revere Junior High School and Palisades High School.) For nearly six months, Philip de Vellis has been campaigning for the Democratic National Committee in Ohio. Having served in two different directorial positions, de Vellis has gained experience and insight that provide a close look at the critical swing state’s political atmosphere leading up to the election. ”When he received his first assignment as canvass director for the Cleveland office of Grassroots Campaigns at the end of May, de Vellis says he ‘barely knew where Cleveland or Ohio were on the map, but I was aware that this state would play a decisive role in this election.’ ”’No Republican has ever won the presidency without carrying Ohio. In 2000, Gore lost this state by only 3.5 percent even after pulling all his staff and commercials off the air six weeks before Election Day. It’s dumbfounding to think that if we’d invested a little more energy here last time, then Florida would have been irrelevant.’ ”As canvass director, de Vellis managed ‘an ever-evolving group of 25-30 canvassers with the help of four assistant directors’ whose primary goal was to run door-to-door fundraising drives for the DNC in the Cleveland area. ‘But we had the added responsibility of representing the party in this critical battleground state.’ ”In his current position as regional volunteer director for Ohio Victory 2004 (the Ohio coordinated campaign), de Vellis recruits and trains volunteers with the five volunteer coordinators in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland and 50 other municipalities. ”’Cuyahoga County has the largest concentration of Democratic votes in the state, and a high turnout on election day is required to carry the state,’ he says. ‘This area has been especially hard hit under the Bush Administration. Cleveland is now the poorest big city in America and suffers heavily from the outsourcing of factory jobs overseas.’ ”So while it is exciting for de Vellis to be in this critical location during the election, he says, ‘It is depressing to see what a bleak future young people face here.’ ”A graduate of Palisades High School, de Vellis attended University of Massachusetts Amherst and earned his bachelor’s degree in history from UCLA in 1996. Having worked for the past five years as an editor and graphic designer in television and commercials, de Vellis says, ‘I’ve always been a news junkie, and worked as a volunteer for the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign, but kept politics as a hobby until I was swept into the enthusiasm of Howard Dean’s primary campaign early last year.’ ”During the primary season, de Vellis organized several large events for then Vermont Gov. Dean’s campaign, including a project that brought 600 volunteers from across the West to the early nominating contests in Arizona and New Mexico. ‘After the disappointing loss of my candidate [Dean] and a two-week European vacation, I headed back onto the campaign trail as the Cleveland canvass director,’ he says. ”In this position, de Vellis observed that fundraising was relatively easy at first, in the eastern suburbs of Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights, which he says are ‘filled with educated, middle-class liberals.’ However, ‘that territory soon expired…and the reality of the Rust Belt sunk in.’ ”He learned that fundraising was a difficult task in Cuyahoga County, where the unemployment rate was ‘well above the national average’ at about 6.8 percent, while ‘Cleveland proper had a staggering 15 percent of its citizens unemployed. These figures are just the tip of the iceberg. Once this city had over one million residents, but now has shrunk to half that size. Large portions of Cleveland now lay abandoned and there are only a few blocks in the entire city with houses worth more than $100,000.’ ”De Vellis says that the ad in the Plain Dealer newspaper classifieds that his team used to recruit canvassers generated over 120 calls a day for a job that only paid $300-$500 a week with no benefits. ‘Our applicants ran the gamut from laid-off plant managers, teachers, factory workers and college kids to fast-food workers, high school dropouts and ex-cons. Most had a sincere desire to beat Bush, but they all needed the money just as much. ”’Many times we questioned the wisdom of such an enterprise in this area, but I was reminded of how Howard Dean used fundraising to solidify his supporters by getting them to invest in his campaign,’ de Vellis says. ‘I was surprised at first when I met a Republican willing to donate to the Democratic Party. Later I received contributions daily from Republicans and Independents who not only wanted to give us their vote, but the [money]. In fact, the largest donation I received at the door’a $1,000 check’came from a registered Republican.’ ”Yet de Vellis says that the smaller donations were more important to him. By adding their names to the over 50,000 DNC contributors that Grassroots Campaigns gathered each week, donors ‘were demonstrating that our campaign was funded by average citizens, not multimillionaires who can afford to write $25,000 checks to the Republican National Committee.’ ”In order to make the canvassing team, a canvasser had to raise at least $100 on his or her first three days on the job. ‘While this is a simple task in cities like San Francisco, where canvassers average over $300 a day, it can be a herculean effort in this town,’ de Vellis says. ‘We had to let many dedicated and educated people go, because they couldn’t scrounge more than $40 a night from these suburbs.’ ”Other canvassers ‘left the job out of frustration after having too many conversations with Democrats who thought that posting a John Kerry lawn sign should excuse them from even contributing $5 to our campaign.’ ”Now working on the volunteer side, de Vellis says, ‘We need volunteers to carry out many diverse tasks for the campaign, including phone banking [campaigning by phone], canvassing, and staffing events that include the candidates and well-known surrogates like Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbroke and Puff Daddy.’ ”Specifically, de Vellis runs the program for out-of-state travelers coming to Cuyahoga County to campaign for Kerry. ‘Every morning, new staffers and volunteers arrive from out-of-state to our office,’ he says. ‘We need to recruit 2,000 to 6,000 for November 2. The scale of this operation is daunting.’ ”Local residents are also becoming more interested in the campaign as election day nears.’A shipment of 10,000 yard signs flew out the door in three days,’ says de Vellis, who recently began planning phone bank operations for the big day. ‘Edwards and Kerry are constantly visiting the state. The level of intensity grows every hour.’ ”With the atmosphere changing daily, de Vellis says that ‘the debates have completely changed the race. Thousands of supporters watched the [VP] debate outside the hall [Case Western Reserve University’s Veale Center in Cleveland] on a very cold night and cheered Edwards at a midnight rally. It was a great experience to be a part of. Our supporters are much more confident about our chances. We just have to keep on pushing in the coming days. Only a fool would expect anything less than a nail-biter in the end.’ ”On election day, de Vellis will be working as a regional phone bank coordinator, calling registered voters and helping to reach the DNC’s goal of making 150,000 phone calls in Cuyahoga County on that day. ”No matter what the outcome, de Vellis, age 31, says he feels his experiences will be worthwhile. ‘I do think, however, that this country’is ready for a change, but some people still need a nudge. Television commercials or mass mailing won’t sway them. Talking to these undecided voters one-on-one is the only way we can win for sure