( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

Hello Obama Delegates!

Over the past 17 months — aside from family and work — I’ve had little time or energy for anything other than helping Barack Obama become the Democratic nominee and the 44th President of the United States.

It has truly been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. And I am deeply proud to have had the opportunity to assist the Obama campaign in any way that I could.

I would be deeply honored if you would consider casting your vote for me to represent Vermont as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

Throughout the last year and a half, I’ve tried to keep focused on the central idea of the Obama campaign — that there is far more that unites us than divides us.

And to this end, I’ve worked to try to break down barriers, actively attempting to bring together young and old, on-line and off-line organizing, top-down Chicago HQ and state-based bottom-up structures, field volunteers and fundraisers, the politically connected and the newly energized…

Some of you may already be familiar with aspects of the work that I’ve been involved with. But, I’d like to try your patience just a bit if I could, to help demonstrate why I believe I played an important role in building and maintaining the citizen-based Obama campaign in Vermont…

• In late 2006, I was one of the lead Vermont participants in the national Draft Obama movement, organized the first Obama supporters meeting in December, and launched http://vermontersforobama.org. I designed the Vermonters For Obama logo, now on many T-shirts throughout the state. And, much to my amazement, a modified version of the logo — along with the Vermonters For Obama web address — appeared on the side of Ben & Jerry’s vans (see below).
• On February 10, 2007 — the day the Obama campaign officially launched — I created the Vermonters For Obama group (540+ members) on BarackObama.com, which along with the companion website mentioned above has served as a central clearing house for Vermont’s Obama volunteer community.
• For the majority of 2007, I took the lead in organizing monthly Burlington area meetings, highlighted by the widely covered endorsement event at Club Metronome on September 12th, 2007, featuring Bill Sorrell, Jeb Spaulding, and Peter Clavelle.
• I’ve fielded questions from the local press, assisted with press releases, and exchanged thousands of emails and phone calls with supporters and Obama campaign staff to ensure that useful information got to the people that needed it. I spent five days volunteering on the ground in January for the New Hampshire primary — and led the canvassing effort in Bristol for Vermont’s March 4th primary.
• In February, I had the privilege of representing Obama supporters in an online debate with Former Gov. Madeleine Kunin, hosted by Vermont Public Television.
• I’m a member of the Obama campaign’s Grassroots Fundraising Committee Leadership Circle having helped channel over $3,600 through the Vermonters For Obama group fundraising page.
• I’ve continued to try to facilitate democratic communication among Obama supporters by helping to promote Damian Sedney’s amazing work in hosting the delegate candidate forums — and providing delegate candidates the opportunity to post candidate statements at: http://vermontersforobama.org/delegates
• In addition to my work here in Vermont, I’m an active organizer in the BarackObama.com online community — creating and moderating three of the longest-running and most active groups, Obama Rapid Response (920+ members), Citizen Strategy Think Tank (560+ members) and Website Feedback (280+ members). All three have helped build community and communication among supporters and the Obama HQ Web Team. And I’ve worked with online activists from across the country since 2006 to help ensure that Barack’s message was heard as widely and clearly as possible, including assisting with the creation and editing of One Million Strong, a nationally-focused Obama supporter website.

OK, well, there you have it… There’s probably not much more I should add except to say that I’d really, really love to go to Denver.

It would be an experience of a lifetime for me — after such a long journey — to be in that convention hall, representing Vermont and the ideals of this historic campaign, and to hear Barack Obama accept the nomination on August 28th, 2008, the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s "I Have a Dream" speech.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks so much for taking the time to allow me the opportunity to make my case.

However, there are certainly many other dedicated people who’ve put in days, weeks, and months and months of hard work for Barack Obama. And we Vermonters should be proud to have so many deserving candidates to choose from.

See you all on Saturday!

Neil Jensen
Monkton, VT

P.S. I think the following excerpts help provide some further context…

From a March 6th, 2008 article on Barack’s victory in Vermont, by Dan Barlow of the Vermont Press Bureau…

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080306/NEWS01/803060357/1002/NEWS01

Obama may have Neil Jensen of Monkton to thank for his win here Tuesday night. Jensen, a web designer, began talking to friends about the Illinois senator in the fall of 2006 — long before he was even a declared candidate.

A meet-up of Obama supporters at a restaurant in Burlington in December 2006 attracted about 30 people, Jensen said. Soon, the monthly meetings began drawing more and more interested Vermonters — a base that the campaign easily tapped into when it began its groundwork this year in the state.

“Our goal at first was to help out in New Hampshire,” Jensen said. “But once it became clear that Vermont might actually be important in this, we shifted focus.”

Thankfully, Obama’s campaign did not take a top-down approach to generating support in Vermont, he added, and instead facilitated the efforts and outreach brainstormed by supporters on the grass-roots-level, Jensen said…

A statement of support from Obama volunteer, Mark Wiznitzer…

Neil Jensen (Monkton) is well known as the creator of Vermonters for Obama on My.BarackObama.com and www.vermontersforobama.org. As such he has been an unofficial spokesman for all Obama supporters in Vermont, as well as the lead organizer of many of our grass roots activities. However, most of you probably did not realize that Neil is also the creator of the Obama Rapid Response group (in addition to the Citizen Strategy Think Tank), an informal media watchdog effort that is probably the most active and successful of all barackobama.com groups. And he has administered that group with unbelievable tact and patience. Neil also speaks eloquently to the substantive issues that have dominated the campaign and embodies the civil tone that Barack has asked us to maintain in this heated contest.

And finally: The Ben & Jerry ObamaMobile (my kids certainly thought it was cool) …

The Times Argus has this preview of the coming Democratic primary for House of Representatives. 

Hooper eyes House race
She's expected to battle Anderson for position
May 22, 2008

By Daniel Barlow Vermont Press Bureau

MONTPELIER – There will be at least three Democrats running in this year's primary for Montpelier's two House seats.

Incumbents Rep. Warren Kitzmiller and Rep. Jon Anderson, who was appointed to fill the remainder of a term last year, face a challenge from Montpelier Mayor Mary Hooper for the city's two at-large district seats for the Vermont House.

What the story in the Times Argus fails to add is that Anderson is considered potentially vulnerable not only because of Hooper's popularity as mayor, a position to which she has won reelection without opposition, but also because in his first important vote after being appointed to the seat by Governor Douglas, Anderson voted to sustain Douglas's veto of the FY 2007 Budget Adjustment Act.

Even with the expected absence of any Republican candidate for the seat, this shapes up to be an interesting election season in Montpelier. 

Cross posted from Rational Resistance:

As a delegate to our state convention, pledged to support Obama, I’ve been getting a lot of emails from other Obama delegates who want to be delegates to the national convention. I would say it’s way more than I got in 2004. Today was a new one, however. I got my first true spam in the guise of an Obama mailing.

Here’s part of the text:

Email-Subject:   Where to find stronger  general election weapon for Obama of Democratic Party?  The latest evidence shows that Bush was the   killer of  the crisis of  second mortgage loan  true …how Bush trade out the power of control exchange rate beg for Communism China for betray benefits of American & Japanese…behind letter to Obama of Prospective President of USA!

As the office of Obama general election do not have either fax number or email address, please transmit to Obama urgent!

Zhen-man Lin

2008.05.21

The Email records for Republic-party are stated as below

:

It goes on, with the kind of illiterate text you often see in Nigeria scam messages, and links that you wouldn’t want to take the chance of clicking on.

It’s a brave new world, eh?

Received via email:

VPR’s Vermont Edition live broadcast today (Thursday, May 22) will feature Dr. Deb Richter talking with host Bob Kinzel about health care costs. You can call in at 800-258-1619. The show starts at noon with Dr. Elliott Fisher, professor at Dartmouth Medical School, and  Dr. Mark Novotny, chief medical officer for Southwestern Vermont Health Care, on the subject of high costs. This will be followed at 12:30 to 1 by Dr. Richter and Rep. Tom Koch (Republican- Barre) debating consumer-driven insurance plans vs. publicly financed health care systems.  

Per the Rutland Herald (emphasis mine)

The last time the 110-ton heavy-duty crane, which is being used at Vermont Yankee to move its high-level radioactive waste, was tested with a heavy load was more than 30 years ago, Entergy Nuclear and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.

The crane, which is being relied on to handle the 97-ton steel and concrete casks that will contain the high-level radioactive waste, was slated to be tested Wednesday evening after last week’s failure.

And, of course, there’s more.

Robert Williams, a spokesman for Entergy Nuclear, said the 1968 crane had last been tested for very heavy loads in 1975… he said full weight testing was not required before last week’s first move. He said a test move with a lesser load was conducted before last week’s problems.

Questions about the crane’s ability to safely lift the super-heavy loads, such as a steel-and-concrete cask containing 68 fuel assemblies, were raised this week after an incident where the brakes on the crane failed to stop the descent of the cask to the floor.

The rest of this covers discussions with Stephen Wark, from Vermont’s DPS:

Wark said as a result the state would be increasing its inspection and oversight at the plant, although he said he wasn’t sure what path that would take.

He said the state’s engineer who works on nuclear issues, Uldis Vanags, was at the plant on Wednesday and waiting for the crane test.

He said Vanags had questioned Entergy officials about whether the crane was “certified” to handle the heavy loads, and was told the last time it was certified was in the 1970s.

I have a thought.  My thought is that if we’re going to use nuclear power, it might be good to have equipment that has been tested since all of GMD’s front-page bloggers were born.  

Anyway, there is a silver lining here:

He did say the state was pleased that Entergy had volunteered the information about the crane snafu on its own. The incident occurred on May 12, and Entergy released information on May 16 in a limited way.

“We’re happy to see them starting to embrace transparency,” Wark said.

Argh.

Until last election season, the Executive Director of the Vermont Democratic Party traditionally led the Party’s “Coordinated Campaign” during campaign season (the Coordinated Campaign being the coalition of Democratic interests – such as the statewide candidate campaigns, the House and Senate campaign committees, as well as the Democratic Party proper – all acting in coordination for the purposes of resource sharing and overall cooperation, to the extent allowable by law). Last year, former Democratic Statehouse Communications staffer Bill Lofy was brought in to run the Coordinated Campaign distinctly from the party, which continued under then-Executive Director Jon Copans.

This year, Kristina Althoff has been tapped to head the Coordinated Campaign, and given the more typical dual role of Coordinated Campaign Director and Executive Director, her arrival likely takes the pressure off to find a quick replacement for Party ED Jill Krowinski (who is leaving to run Gaye Symington’s campaign for Governor).

Altoff was a Field Staffer for the Party in 2004 and worked for the House Campaign PAC. Since that time she has kept busy in politics, most recently as a Field Organizer for the Obama campaign.

Althoff is close to Krowinski and Symington, and her appointment further underscores how seriously the Party infrastructure – enhanced considerably with DNC “50-state project” personnel and resources over the past year – will be focused on electing Symington this year.