Obama Campaign in Iowa Launches New Television Effort to Back Grassroots Campaign
DES MOINES -- On Monday, the Obama campaign announced it will supplement its aggressive grassroots outreach operation in Iowa with a low-level paid media campaign that includes two documentary-style television ads about the biography and career of Barack Obama. The television ads will be accompanied by radio and Internet ads that reinforce the same themes.
The television ads focus on Obama’s commitment to the power of grassroots movements and his success in bringing people together to solve important challenges. By demonstrating how Obama has successfully dedicated his life to these values, Iowa voters will better understand that Obama’s vision for bringing the country together to solve important problems is not just campaign rhetoric. For him, it’s been a way of life. The ads will show what Obama will do as President after they learn more about what he’s already done.
On an afternoon conference call, Republican Illinois State Senator Kirk Dillard, who is featured in the ad titled “Carry”, talked about personally working with Obama and seeing firsthand his ability to bring people together to accomplish important goals.
“Senator Obama and I spent hundreds of hours working on issues together in a bipartisan fashion,” said State Senator Kirk Dillard. “I’ve seen firsthand that Senator Obama can take tough problems, reconcile parties and races and explain difficult topics to everyday people. We worked as a tag-team on many complex issues, and I feel privileged to have worked with Senator Obama in the early part of his career.”
Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe spoke about Obama’s remarkable talent and commitment to serving his community.
“I’ve had the privilege of knowing thousands of students, but none more remarkable or more inspiring than Barack Obama,” Professor Laurence Tribe said. “What was most remarkable about him was that even though he could have written his ticket with any Wall Street law firm and had offers for clerkships on circuit courts with a virtual pathway to a Supreme Court clerkship, he didn’t. He chose instead to go back to the South Side of Chicago and work with the community, registering voters, doing civil rights work. He was really just doing good things with his legal education. It was an inspiration to watch.”
Modest Paid Media Campaign is Part of Larger Outreach Plan
This low-level television advertising campaign is just the latest supplement to the aggressive grassroots outreach program that’s already underway in Iowa. Three weeks ago, thousands of Iowa households received a booklet and DVD detailing the life, experience and record of Barack Obama. One week later, 1,500 volunteers knocked on more than 30,000 doors in 84 Iowa cities and town to talk to people in their community about Obama’s record and his plan to lower health care costs by up to $2,500 annually for the typical family. The television ads are also part of an integrated plan that includes radio spots and Internet advertising all highlighting Obama’s experience bringing people together to solve important problems.
“Choices” (:60) – Highlights Obama’s Commitment to Power of Grassroots
The first ad, entitled “Choices,” highlights Obama’s years in Chicago. He first came to Chicago as a community organizer to work with a group of churches in a community that felt abandoned and powerless as local steel mills closed. During his time as a community organizer, Obama persuaded local residents they could effect real change and they did – block by block. After graduating from Harvard, he passed up big money offers to return to Chicago and run a voter registration drive – once again devoting himself to the local community and to making people’s lives better.
Script:
Obama: I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message.
Obama (from the 2004 Democratic National Convention): It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work.
Narrator: After college, Barack Obama signed on as a community organizer for local churches, working to help families devastated by plant closings.
Tom Balanoff (President SEIU Local I): Barack was organizing at a time when everything was collapsing…it was people who had good lives and all of a sudden they unraveled.
David Kindler (Former community organizer): The fact that Barack chose to try and effect social change, you know how do you understand that motivation? The pay stinks, the hours are bad.
Narrator: Three years later, Barack went to Harvard Law, then returned to the community to lead a voter registration drive and defend civil rights.
Laurence Tribe (Harvard University Law School): It was inspiring, absolutely inspiring to see someone as brilliant as Barack Obama, as successful, someone who could’ve written his ticket on Wall Street, take all of the talent and all of the learning and decide to devote it to the community and to making people’s lives better.
“Carry” (:30) – Chronicles Success in Bridging Partisan Divide to Solve Problems
The second ad chronicles Obama’s eight years in the Illinois state senate and his success in working with Democrats and Republicans to achieve goals that people only talk about in Washington, DC. In Illinois, Obama built bipartisan coalitions to pass sweeping ethics reform, extend health care to 150,000 people and offer tax relief to low-income workers.
They’ve been talking about these issues in Washington for years, but Obama reached across party lines to make progress on these priorities in Illinois.
Bringing people together across partisan lines stands in contrast to current politics in Washington, DC and it’s exactly the kind of leadership Americans are searching for.
Script:
Obama: I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message.
Obama (from the 2004 Democratic National Convention): There is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America.
Kirk Dillard (Republican Illinois State Senator): Senator Obama worked on some of the deepest issues we had and was successful in a bipartisan way…
Larry Walsh (Democratic Illinois State Senator): The legislation that he carried, he believed in. He was not carrying it for a group. He was not carrying for a lobbyist.
Kirk Dillard: Republicans legislators respected Senator Obama. His negotiation skills and an ability to understand both sides would serve the country very well.
