Ellison Heroes - Pam Costain & Larry Weiss

There were hundreds maybe even over a thousand people who volunteered their time to help Keith Ellison's campaign for Congress (MN-05). However, without Pam Costain and Larry Weiss, we might be contemplating ... well ... we don't have to ponder what might have been because when the Ellison campaign was foundering at the end of July, Pam and Larry dropped everything to help. I actually mean that literally.

Pam Costain is running for Minneapolis School Board and working full-time as Education and Training Director at Wellstone Action. She took a leave of absence from work and set aside her campaign for the School Board. I'd like to repeat that for emphasis. Set aside her campaign for School Board. She and Larry think that getting Keith elected was that important. Pam took the paid position through the DFL of Deputy Director for the Ellison Campaign.

Larry just took an unpaid leave of absence from work and like Pam set aside his duties with her School Board Campaign. He never got a title with the Ellison Campaign nor any pay. Not that he cared that much about the title. What he did was set up the guts of the GOTV operation. "It's what he loves to do," said Pam.

She and Larry got to implement all the things that she's been teaching and preaching at Wellstone Action. They believe that marginalized people want to participate and just need a candidate that they can believe in. Pam and Larry knew Keith was that sort of candidate. So they structured the Get Out The Vote (GOTV) effort around reaching these types of voters. Traditional politics and politicians write off minority, immigrant and poor voters, but Keith has always cared about these voters and has always been working and fighting for them. They realized they had the charismatic candidate with the right ideals.

"There were moments when I wondered if it would work," she said considering all the bad press Keith received in June and July. She wondered if all the things she'd been teaching would pull Keith through. There were doubts, of course. That's part and parcel of running a campaign.

But as most of the Minneapolis legislative delegation got behind Keith, as a large chunk of the Minneapolis City Council came on board, as the Labor unions began turning out volunteers, as the Latino, Somali and African-American communities came on board, as the GLBT community got on board and as the Muslim and Jewish communities came on board, it was becoming a large and highly motivated coalition. Larry was building the infrastructure for a massive GOTV effort and Pam was coordinating the pieces of the puzzle.

They guessed (and guessed correctly) that 70-80% minority, poor and disenfranchised communities would vote for Keith. The challenge was to get them into the voting booth on September 12th. They targeted their doorknocking and outreach efforts in the traditionally low primary turnout Wards like 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 8. Keith had paid his dues, especially in Wards 3, 4 & 5 and they were counting on the people recognizing that.

On GOTV weekend before the primary, the Ellison campaign rolled out its massive GOTV operation in Northside around the U of M and in the poorer areas of central Minneapolis. The Capri Theater coordinated hundreds of doorknockers over the weekend on Northside. I can speak to what was going on in the 8th Ward: Doorknockers swept through Powderhorn, Central and Bryant neighborhoods. The phone banks I went to on Sunday and Monday were packed. The Midnight Madness Rally at 9pm Monday night had 250+ people. All of the targeted precincts had a piece of Keith lit on the windshields of their cars by dawn.

On Election Day I ran into both Pam and Larry. I mentioned that turnouts were projecting as pretty normal and would likely be around 25% citywide. They didn't like the sound of those projections as they wanted really high turnout in Minneapolis. Looking back, my projections were mainly from southern precincts. I didn't know and nobody really knew that an unprecedented percentage (double normal) was turning out on northside. While the turnout in the 8th Ward was 25% higher than normal which is bad (not great, either), Bryant, Central and Powderhorn neighborhoods voted for Keith in the 70-80% range. The combination of high turnout in the north, kicking butt in typically disenfranchised central neighborhoods and winning handily in typically high turnout neighborhoods, was the key.

Exactly as Pam had been teaching.

"Election Night was a spiritual experience," said Pam. A once in a lifetime experience. The Blue Nile was stuffed full of the widest variety of Minneapolitans and suburbanites imaginable. Suburban voters were unmotivated and Keith did respectably well there. Looking back, "we shouldn't have been as scared of the suburban vote. We should have gotten Keith out there more. Once people meet him, they like him." That would have been great idea if she would've had more than a month and a half to pull it all together.

Pam and Larry are still catching up with work, Pam's School Board Campaign and basking in the glow of an unprecedented, historic victory. Looking to the future, she's convinced that everyone needs to get involved with Saving our Schools. She does admit that she misses the exhiliration of running a high stakes race like Keith's. I'm feeling a little of the letdown from it being over, but probably nothing like being in the center of that campaign.

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