Interview: Tobin Van Ostern, Deputy Director, Students for Barack Obama

Earlier today I had the chance to talk with Tobin Van Ostern, the Deputy Director of Students for Barack Obama.

SFBO started as a group on FaceBook, and will soon shut down their PAC and become the official youth outreach operation for the Obama Campaign. They've been profiled in The Nation and the Washington Post for their success in translating FaceBook energy offline into rallies on college campuses.

During the interview we talked about Students for Barack Obama's beginnings, the opportunities and challenges presented by social network organizing, and Senator Obama's call for "generational change."

Transcript after the jump.

me: If you are willing to sit for that, I'm game for doing this via iChat.

Tobin: great

me: I figured that might be a little too time intensive for you.

Tobin: that'll be easier for me actually, since I can multitask

me: Sure.

Tobin: if it's equally ok for you

me: is this still a good time?

Tobin: I think so, I'm expecting a call, but I don't think I’ll get it for at least 20-30
minutes.

me: Ok. How did Students for Barack Obama start, and what was your role?

Tobin: Students for Barack Obama was started by Meredith Segal after she was inspired by Sen. Obama

me: As a FaceBook group . . .

Tobin: yes, she decided to make the FaceBook group to spread the word about Sen. Obama and show the amount of support there was for him. After a few months Sen. Obama started to be discussed by MSM a bit more and the group started to gain support and began to number in the thousands instead of the hundreds. At that point, I noticed it, and offered to make her a website like I had other democratic grassroots groups.

me: Is that the current Students for Barack Obama website?

Tobin: yes, we've make significant changes and added features to it, but it's generally the same website. After that point the group caught on fire and we realized the potential there was to make a real impact on the election and started setting up a field and communications staff.

me: Can you define "caught fire?"

Tobin: Sure, we hit the point where we were gaining more members in one day then the largest groups for other political candidates had in their total membership.

me: wow. Ok. You were saying that you started to set up field and communications . . .

Tobin: yep, so we put the word out, and started taking résumés and set up a field and communications staff (director, deputy director, and so on) and then started setting up chapters at colleges across the country.

me: Were all these staffers in the same location, or are you spread out?

Tobin: All over. I am in Washington, DC, at school at George Washington. One of our deputy field directors lives in California, our communications director lives in new York, our executive director, Meredith, lives in Maine, and so on.

me: And what defines a chapter?

Tobin: a chapter is where someone expresses interest in organizing a campus, and they work with our field staff to get started and set up an organization at their respective school. So, for example, when we knew Sen. Obama would be visiting Iowa University we let the local chapter leaders know and our state leader and they spread the word as to how members could attend and show their support.

me: During one of our email exchanges, you said that you were a committee. Could you talk about how - legally - SFBO is structured?

Tobin: Sure. Once we realized we needed to be able to raise and spend money we looked into what legal entity we would need to become. After consulting with lawyers settled on a non-connected political action committee in the form of a Draft Committee (and I'm pleased to say we were successful in "drafting" Sen. Obama to run). Now that we have achieved our goal we are almost done with shutting down the PAC.

me: At Future Majority, one of the things we're trying to do is teach people how they can become involved and have an impact. What advice would you give to anyone else out there looking to do what you did? What's some best practices you've learned for setting up a committee and just finding answer to all the things you didn’t know and that might seem intimidating to people?

Tobin: Absolutely. First off the internet allows anyone to connect with millions of people. If you invest time into it, you will be able to achieve that connection. Some examples are popular blogs, FaceBook, etc…Once you enter into the legal world, I would highly recommend asking for help. If a family member is a lawyer, or you have a family friend that is one way.

me: Is that how you found your lawyers? I'm wondering specifically how you came the realization that you needed to form a PAC, and how you located lawyers willing to give you pro bono help on this?

Tobin: Sure. It came down to the simple fact that if you don't ask for help, you won't get it. We asked, and had many different sources offer to help us with the understanding that once we set up our group we would pay them back but, because we were students attempting something massive, they knew we couldn't afford to shell out large amounts of money in the beginning and were willing to help us for that.

me: So what is your current status now? You said you are shutting down the PAC? Are you going to be joining the campaign?

Tobin: Yes, since we were successful in our goal as a draft committee we are in the process of filling out paperwork and shutting down the PAC completely once this is achieved, we will have sold anything of market value to the campaign (such as mailing list, etc..) as prescribed by the law and will lead the official student movement for the campaign.

me: sold anything to the campaign? Can you explain the legal necessity of that?

Tobin: Well, web domains, and mailing lists for example have a market value. Sen. Obama's campaign has, and I am very pleased that this is the case, decided not to accept any PAC donations.

me: And as a PAC (or because Barack does not accept PAC money), you can't "give" anything like lists or domains to him because it would be an in-kind donation?

Tobin: Exactly, and his campaign does not take PAC donations, and to avoid any legal issues as well the easiest and best solution is to sell it to the campaign.

me: Got it. Going back to structure of the group - can you tell me how big Students for Barack is currently and how it is structured?

Tobin: Sure, right now we've been focusing on the early primary and caucus states so our first goal (which we achieved) is to set up chapters at the major universities in all the early states. We do, however, have very active chapters all across the country as well such as in California, new York, etc...

me: The goal being to front-load all your energy into winning the primary. That leads me to my next question.

Tobin: right, well our goal was to show Sen. Obama’s strength in the states needed to win the primary, and that was our reason for focusing on them in the past.

me: A lot of the attention you've been receiving has come from your FaceBook work.

Tobin: Yes.

me: It seems like you've gotten great media attention from it, but there are also those (including me), who tend to look at "friends" as a very soft metric.

Tobin: Right

me: And that massive FaceBook groups aren't necessarily amenable to the kind of localized organizing that can produce results in the form of boots on the ground, votes at the polls/caucuses, or dollars raised. Can you talk about that and how you are dealing with those challenges?

Tobin: Sure. Well, it's definitely a challenge. Our first real encounter with this is when we realized that groups with more than 1,000 members cannot message all the members of the group the good benefit to that, though, is we realized that we needed to be able to move beyond FaceBook early on. That sparked need for a website with a mailing list, outside forums and blogs, and staff to set up real-world chapters that do real-world things. However, with that said, the FaceBook groups are still tremendously useful, and I do think they will have a real impact for a few reasons.

First off, it is spreading the word about candidates to an age group that is normally less interested. At literally any hour of the day you can take a look at our message board and all and people are discussing what is going on in the world, and what they think about Sen. Obama's issues. That alone, I think is fantastic just as an example I'll just pull a post

me: Sure. And the media hype is a pretty big boon as well, even if it may not be replicable beyond this election cycle.

Tobin: straight from the wall right now:

"I just wanted to make a point to Mr. Wright about Obama maintaining the integrity of our Constitution. Do you have any idea how many courses this guy has taken on the subject? (Answer: it's a lot.) I'm personally not worried about "a closer tie between Church and State." Only Obama really knows what he means by that anyway, and I trust his interpretation of the Constitution better than I trust my own, unfortunately.
Peace "

I mean, we're having random students across the country debating the constitution. I think that's fantastic. So that's my first point, that it's spreading the word and considering how (surprisingly) low Obama is on name recognition when compared to the other candidates that is also useful. Additionally, I’d point to the fact that no other candidate is anywhere close to the amount of support Sen. Obama has and that speaks to the tremendous enthusiasm and excitement that there is for who he is, and what he stands for. And for example, right now one of our sister groups, one million strong for barrack Obama, has 282,015 members, let's check back with that in a few minutes and see if we've gotten anymore people.

me: So how do you move that offline?

Tobin: Sure, moving it offline is the issue. I see two outlets:

1-time
2-money

The first is speaking to grassroots organizing, volunteering, and such. Judging by the amount of people that have been turning out to events, that one is going to be easier than we had initially expected to achieve. The second, money, naturally, it's not going to be the strong suit for college students (considering our typically limited finances). However, I think that when people in a more financially secure time of their life see the numbers of people donating to Sen. Obama, it will help them in their decisions regarding their donations. Additionally, since Sen. Obama is not accepting lobbyist or PAC money (nor has he ever for the record) unlike other candidates every little bit helps.

Let's All Donate Money As One is a message board thread with 654 posts and 226 donations already to Sen. Obama.

me: So I don't know if you were active in 2004 . . . But it seems to me that a lot of the energy surrounding Barack, especially among young people, is the closest thing this season to Gov. Dean’s primary run. I'm wondering if you were involved enough last go around to make any comparisons?

Tobin: Well, to be honest, personally I really was not very connected with Dean's candidacy at all, and I believe it focused more on his able to connect with average people across the internet (and not specifically students). With that said he raised a significant amount of money but, I think that technologically there is a connection in terms of support for the candidates, though, I really don't think I should speculate.

me: I ask because in 2003 I was 24, and Dean was the first candidate I ever gave money to. Being in the Brooklyn My.BarackObama email groups feels very much like the Dean Yahoo groups in 2003.

Tobin: Interesting, it was somewhat before my time, so I really don't know how much insight I can offer.

me: What is your take on the role that young voters will play in the primary this year, and in the general election? Specifically for Obama, but also for the Democrats generally. Turnout has increased dramatically in recent years, but I feel like the primaries and caucuses are different beasts than a Presidential or Midterm election . . .

Tobin: Right, well obviously students are far more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. With that said, it’s sadly the true fact that if you're over 50 you're twice as likely to vote as if you're under 50. I think though, that if you examine the trends as linked to technology, all of a sudden voting is relating a lot more to youth. From everything such as voting for American idol, to FaceBook groups, to organizations such as rock the vote, youth interest in politics in general is rising, and is already having an impact on elections. In relation to primary vs. general, it'll of course be more challenging for youth to turn out for a primary election but I am confident that the enthusiasm for Sen. Obama will overcome that. And we (SFBO) see that being one of our main goals. To educate students so that they feel comfortable taking part in the caucuses and voting in the primaries. Especially that in most states, you will not even need to be 18 to vote in the primary, you will just need to be 18 by the general election.

me: It's going to be interesting. I have high hopes for youth turnout in next year's primaries. I have one more question.

Tobin: no problem

me: Listening to Barack's announcement speech, it seems like he's really going after creating a generational change. And I actually have heard some political commentary talking about his speech as a renouncement of the Boomers and their politics. Which would in some ways mean that he's making a play to get Xers and Millennials (and maybe the GI generation) to back his candidacy. If that's his strategy, then he is really putting a lot of faith in Millennials to turnout. I'm wondering if we've got the numbers yet - despite rising turnout - to make that gamble in a primary. We = Millennials as a share of the electorate.

Tobin: Right. I don't know about it being a renouncement necessarily of the baby boomer generation. I know that his appeal spreads across all ages and generations. With that said, Sen. Obama is a young candidate, and for that reason will relate better to youth. It is a gamble. Everything Sen. Obama is doing is a gamble though. He has the potential to be the first African-American President of the United States. He was the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. Everything he has done in his entire life has pushed the edge, and been a gamble. Because he has done, what we need to do. He has the audacity to hope. And I know that if we do not pay attention to those that say it's youth, it won't happen, it's only FaceBook, it won't happen. If we ignore those outside voices and focus on our beliefs, and our hopes, then I have no doubt that we will succeed.

I pointed out a little while ago the number of people in one of the groups: 282,015. Right now? Just a few minutes later: 282,089. In the time I took to do this interview, 74 people (students most likely) learned of the group for the first time, and decided to support Sen. Obama. It is that, that gives me the option to hope.

me: Ok. Well thanks for taking the time to do this interview. I really appreciate it.

Tobin: Great, thanks for you time as well Mike. We're always happy to work with news organizations online, as well as more traditional media, and are thrilled by the work that is done by blogs such as yours.