City Hall News

New York, NY

http://www.cityhallnews.com/news/132/ARTICLE/2082/2009-08-19.html

Key organizers from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in New York are beginning to break from the president’s official field operation, Organizing For America, which they say has been missing in action as the debate over health care intensifies.

More than two dozen grassroots organizers and leaders of the Obama campaign’s regional chapters are planning a separate organizing and lobbying effort, in order to push back against what they say has been a concerted—and unanswered—effort by conservative groups to drown out support for a government-run health insurance program, the so-called “public option.”

“OFA isn’t doing their job,” said Virginia Davies, an Obama organizer who hosted both then-Senator Obama and former President Bill Clinton at her Manhattan penthouse during the campaign. “OFA is just totally disorganized, don’t know what their doing, and getting mixed messages from Washington.”

Obama is scheduled to address supporters of OFA in a nationwide conference call Thursday afternoon. Depending on what he says, the grassroots organizers may temper their dissent.

The group also includes local elected officials, such as Albany Councilman Corey Ellis and Suffolk Legislator Jon Cooper, as well as political operatives like Richard Fife, who most recently served as Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s campaign manager in her aborted challenge to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

The group plans on releasing a formal statement to the media and to members of New York’s congressional delegation this week, and will hold separate press events across the state on Friday.

In a draft of the statement provided to City Hall, the organizers write that they are “concerned about OFA,” and that “there are also general concerns about their abilities to lead and though we are willing to work in coalition with them, we are not willing to allow them to take the lead in matters such as this.”

Notably, the dissident Obama organizers will also be joining other advocacy groups, such as Health Care for All New York and Citizen Action, to organize rallies in favor of the public option. One such event is scheduled for Aug. 29 in Times Square.

“We don’t want President Obama and congressional leaders to cave on an important issue like the public option,” said Kate Doehring of Citizen Action, one of the lead organizers of the rally.

OFA has been involved, but the effort was spearheaded by local grassroots groups like NYC for Change, a local activist organization formed to canvass for Obama in New York and nearby battleground states during the presidential primary.

“We feel that OFA didn’t take a leadership role on this one, so we’re not going to follow their lead,” said Diana Cihak, the leader of Buffalo for Obama and one of the organizers of the lobbying effort. “We need to create an informal structure of the Obama grassroots groups in New York State, so that when things like this come up and we feel like OFA is not reacting strongly enough, we can come together.”

Cihak, who is also an organizer for Citizen Action, said she and other grassroots Obama organizers were rebuffed when they expressed their concerns to OFA leaders.

“They said, ‘We work for the White House and the DNC, we’re not going to criticize them,” she said.

Some Obama organizers attributed OFA’s lack of action in New York to the fact that national organization only recently appointed a state director, Melissa DeRosa, and two regional field directors.

“The grassroots groups are saying, ‘Let’s not wait for OFA to get up and running,’” said Dave Pollak, the director of Obama’s official New York campaign operation during the general election and a former co-chair of the state Democratic Party.

Michael Czin, a spokesperson for OFA, said the organization remained committed to advancing the president’s health care reform agenda, including the public option.

“Contrary to what these individuals have said, the president remains committed to inserting competition into the health insurance market place and providing more choices to consumers–and he believes the public option is the best way to achieve those goals,” Czin said. “While a small number of people are going their own way, we are proud of the many committed activists we have across the state who are working in support of the president and his agenda.”

The national frenzy over Obama’s health care reform proposal emanated, in part, from New York. Rep. Tim Bishop, of Suffolk, was one of the first members of Congress in the nation to be captured on YouTube facing down angry critics of President Obama’s reform plan. Rep. Anthony Weiner, a proponent of a single-payer health care plan, has similarly faced down fiery protesters at town hall meetings in Brooklyn.

Chet Whye, the leader of Harlem for Obama, said the Obama grassroots were better equipped to push back against such conservative attacks than OFA, and that they had already begun to do so. Whye, for example, has hosted Gillibrand and Rep. Charles Rangel at separate press events and town hall meetings, and has converted the Harlem for Obama headquarters into an advocacy non-profit called “Harlem4.”

“How can we function if we’re a sub-arm of a DNC piece that really hasn’t even gotten up to snuff yet?” he said. “I’m sitting up here with a brick-and-mortar place. Why am I going to defer anything to Organizing For America?”