For my project, I am working on the Friends of Matt Dolan campaign for Cuyahoga county executive. This is a new position created in the last election, so this is a pretty unique experience to get to see how it is being formed. Because it is so early in the year, with the election being in November, my job hasn't gptten too exciting yet. For most of the first week, I spent my time typing names of county employees into an Excel spreadsheet. The reason for this is because when Matt announced his candidacy he pledged not to take any donations from employees of the county as a way to ensure there is no corruption in his campaign. But I made the most of the job. There was another guy, who is a Hawken grad, who was volunteering there and we had races to see who could finish a page of names faster, I always lost. Even though it is not a very exciting job to do, I know that it is important to do grunt work at any job that I will have in the future. By the end, I got up to 4,615 names, an accomplishment I'd say. During the first week I also got to sit in on a weekly strategy meeting. This was the most interesting part of the week. They talked about how they want him to be portrayed in the media, how to use Facebook and Twitter in communicating Matt's message, analyzing the results of the first primary that took place and how that would affect the campaign structure, and things like that. I hope to be able to make some contributions in future meetings.
Sorry for the late post, I had some trouble with my blog account. New post on this week to come soon.
Ellen M