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Alright, here is the scoop on the Las Vegas CRNC Board meeting.
Numero uno: Blake Harris was elected Co-Chairman
Numero dos: Northeast Regional Vice-Chairman, Mike Keough, gave a roaring speech which equated, to a degree, the current CRNC administration to Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and Charlie Smith to George Washington. It was a treat to listen to….
Numero tres: Charlie and Ethan gave a 1 1/2 hour presentation on the budget, STORM and field program; during which they took any question which was asked. Lots of questions were asked, probably upwards of 20. Most focused on the field program and STORM. The discussion was very open, honest, and productive.
Numero cuatro: The presentation Charlie and Ethan gave was very numerical. During the 2008 election, more than 116,000 unique persons were added to STORM. Also, during any one time, 17,000 unique users were using STORM. In summary, a lot of people were added and a lot of people use it.
Numero cinco: More numbers, but this time on the field plan. The CRNC budgeted $10,700 for each field rep. The actual cost of much lower, coming in around $9,400 (if my memory serves me). The cost per recruit was $3.02 and the cost per voter contact was $0.30. Overall, more than 1,500,000 voter contacts were made during the three ramp up events and the finals days of the election.
More on Saturday night’s party and CRNC ‘09 election jockeying to come later, so be sure to check back.
Numero cuatro: Still bull. There is NO WAY they got a majority of their numbers AFTER the prime recruiting window. And it wasn’t a small majority, we’re talking 60% of their numbers they claim they got after the 1st month of the semester. Not possible.
Schools out West didn’t start until the end of September…not mid August like Oklahoma, Chad Ocho Cinco. Plus several large schools in Ohio and a few other states also didn’t start until mid to late September. The numbers are believable. Maybe if you had attended the board meeting you could have called the CRNC out. Or maybe you could have called the Field Directors out and the top 5 field reps who were ALSO in Vegas. But instead, you blogged negativity and probably played WOW.
HAHAHAHA “instead, you blogged negativity and probably played WOW”
AMEN!
Do the math California CR. You are essentially assuming that entire states do not start school until the end of September. But no matter. If memory serves me right, wasn’t the original number after the first month just around 25% of the goal, then it was immediately replaced with a press release that said something around 40%? Either way, the numbers are still highly unbelieveable and to believe it, you would have to believe the Smith Administration’s claims of good field rep program. These same claims that were saying that some field reps had recruited 5,000, on their own, just a month into school. It would also presuppose that many other schools, who didn’t have field reps, actually wanted to use STORM to recruit new members (nobody but a handful actually does).
But you know what? Who cares? STORM is widely considered a failure, and will never catch on, no matter how many fake profile and inflated numbers you use.
BTW, which schools specifically didn’t start til the end of September?
And who actually wanted to go see the CRNC pat itself on the back and act like it didn’t have one of the worst presidential election cycles in modern history? Thanks for the Ashley Todd embarassment, it really helped the image.
And it’s called blogging “cynically” or “critically”, not “negativity”. Geez, CRNC office workers take criticism so personally.
Every UC (University of California) School starts at the end of September, so that’s UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA,IC Irvine, and UC San Diego, just to name a few. Those schools, which make up the LARGE majority of CRs in CA, combined with the other state systems schools and some private schools more than account for California’s share of that boost. I believe also that certain schools in Oregon and Utah do not start until later.
If you want to legitimately criticize the idea of STORM and its underlying success based on how effective it is, I would probably agree, but to make claims of misrepresentation of users/numbers is uncalled for.
As far as the “worst presidential election cycle” goes, you need to take a long hard look in the mirror to see exactly what went wrong. You are probably the type of person who stands there criticizing everyone for everything, but never do anything yourself.
I am no fan of Smith and this group, but I do not blindly hate them either, and I have to say they did a good job considering the circumstances. You can’t expect someone to take an organization in shambles and build it up to perfection, but you can expect them to build a good foundation and get the house in order, and that is what they did.
As far as Ashely Todd, it was not like there was a check box on the application “mark here if you are crazy and unstable”.
Thank you for adding stats to the other side of this debate. You definitely gave it a leg to stand on. That being said, you have moved my argument from it being “unbelieveable” that they reached those numbers to “unlikely”. However, you still gave me 3 states (although California is a big one).
I do not criticize the ORIGINAL idea of STORM: a national database for the CRNC and state federations to keep more accurate information on members. This is what Charlie and Ethan ran on. Ask anybody, even state chairs their opinion of STORM and it’s clear- all it is and looks like is a cheap Facebook knock-off. That is the part, like you, I disagree with. Had STORM been what it was promised originally and I doubt I would have a problem with it. Instead we wasted $250K on a terrible product.
The “worst presidential election cycle” claim goes to the lack of production of numbers by Republican organizations across the board. A good number of factors contributed to that, among them was a complete lack of motivation from the TOP down. The same works true for the CRNC. Whether it’s terrible placement of field reps, terrible field reps, or just a lack of good leadership (i.e. lack of contacting state chairs for months).
And the Ashley Todd incident: the CRNC claimed they had the most vetted reps ever hired. Ashley Todd shows that they weren’t.