Obama volunteers await further orders

Marisa Pinto is waiting for her new marching orders.

Pinto was a neighborhood team leader for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, which won Nevada thanks in part to her community group's work in Washoe County in Northern Nevada.

Most Obama supporters live in Democrat-rich Clark County, which the president won by 15 percentage points. But the president also was aiming to win Washoe County, where Republicans have a voter registration edge, to ensure his victory statewide. (Republican Mitt Romney won the rest of Nevada's less populated GOP-leaning counties.)

At the end of the ballot counting Nov. 6, Obama beat Romney in Washoe County by nearly 4 percentage points.

Pinto, who lives in Sparks, said her dedicated team of 12 to 15 people in her neighborhood worked hard for Obama's re-election. She even became a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.

Now, she and other Obama campaign volunteers across the country are waiting for word from the president's political advisers about how they can continue to help Obama during the four years of his second term.

"They've just started to reach out to us as far as getting our ideas," Pinto said. "We want to keep the neighborhood teams going, especially helping on messaging. There's a ripple effect. After you put so much work and passion into it, we wonder what do we do now. You want to keep working because you know you can make a difference."

Pinto, who is a medical technologist, would like to keep promoting Obama's health care policies as the law is implemented to ensure more Americans have insurance. As the mother of two girls, ages 16 and 8, she's also interested in family and education, she said. Some of her team want to work on protecting the environment.

She also wants to learn Spanish, to better reach out to the growing Hispanic community in Nevada.

"One of our main goals is to keep Washoe blue," said Pinto, who's active in the county's Democratic Party. "So we're going to stay tuned into everything, including local races even down to the school board."

After the Nov. 6 election, the 25 Obama campaign offices in Nevada closed, paid staffers went home and volunteers no longer had to spend endless hours talking to voters on the phone and going door to door.

The Obama campaign, which built an unprecedented network of volunteers and social media tools, knows it has a powerful machine at its disposal to promote the president's policies as he battles Republicans on Capitol Hill.

So the campaign sent out an email to its volunteers to survey them about their future roles.

Jeremy Bird, the field director for the Obama campaign, said more than 1 million people took the survey. He said the president's advisers are still "sorting through all the responses," but he released some results.

He said a majority of volunteers went into field offices to work during the campaign, although many got involved from their homes by using online tools.

Nearly half of those surveyed said they forwarded campaign emails and more than one-third communicated on Facebook about Obama's positions and plans.

Nearly 80 percent said they "want to keep volunteering, primarily around the President's legislative agenda."

And about one in 10 surveyed said they were interested in running for office.

"That level of political engagement is inspiring," Bird wrote in a Nov. 28 email.

Bird said that over the next month or two, the campaign will be documenting and analyzing what worked and what didn't during the 19 months of the formal Obama re-election campaign, and determine what to do now.

Pinto said she expects to know more after Obama's Jan. 21 inauguration.

Asked if she thought the organization would outlast the president, Pinto said yes since volunteers were trained on how to use social media and other organizing tools to win campaigns. Obama himself began as a community organizer in Chicago and used his skills to win the White House the first time around against the odds.

As for who might follow Obama in the White House, Pinto said she had no favorites for president in 2016.

"I'm going to stand behind whoever they choose," she said of the Democrats. "I'm going to do my homework if I'm doing to dedicate time and energy to someone. And it also depends on who Obama stands behind."

- Laura Myers

HOUSE CANDIDATES RAISED $10 MILLION

Nevada candidates for the U.S. House raised more than $10.7 million combined for their campaigns this year and spent almost all of it. Some still are looking at unpaid bills, according to the latest campaign finance reports that became available late last week.

In the hard-fought race to represent the new 4th Congressional District, the winner reported finishing in the red, while the loser reported $50,000 in bills that remain in question, according to documents filed at the Federal Election Commission covering activity through Nov. 26.

Democratic Rep.-elect Steven Horsford reported owing $89,416 from his late campaign push while holding a $13,074 balance in his campaign fund.

"Debt retirement will happen but he's focused on being ready to serve his constituents," Horsford spokesman Tim Hogan said Friday. Horsford, along with other new lawmakers, takes office in January.

Republican Danny Tarkanian held $30,973 cash on hand, according to his report that also listed $54,281 that remains in question involving a half-dozen vendors.

Tarkanian said Friday night his campaign's current and former accountants would review payment records to straighten out apparent confusion.

"There's no money owed on my account," Tarkanian said. "I have $1,500 left over after all my bills have been paid." The accountants "are going to get it resolved."

In the 3rd Congressional District race, Democrat John Oceguera lost but emerged debt-free and in fact counted a $5,022 surplus. He raised $1.531 million and spent $1.526 million.

Republican Rep. Joe Heck, who won re-election in that district, counted $295,098 in leftover funds, enough to cover the $120,551 still owed mostly to the firm of his campaign manager Ryan Erwin and to the Townsend Group, his Virginia-based fundraising firm.

Democratic Rep.-elect Dina Titus was preparing to pay win bonuses to senior advisers after she won election in the 1st Congressional District, including $30,000 to campaign manager (and incoming chief of staff) Jay Gertsema, $20,000 to media consultant Kully Hall and $5,000 to pollster John Anzalone.

The payments, along with $20,000 in pay owed to Gertsema, accounted for much of the $127,000 in debts Titus reported outstanding. She had $53,501 remaining in her campaign account.

Titus' Republican opponent, Chris Edwards, raised $41,671 in contributions while spending $90,025 to run his race, according to FEC documents. Edwards, a U.S. Navy consultant, had loaned his campaign $142,000, which remains outstanding.

Republican Rep. Mark Amodei took on no new debt while winning re-election in the 2nd Congressional District against information technology professional Samuel Koepnick, who ran an unfunded campaign.

Amodei still carries $29,000 in debt after winning an August 2011 special election to Congress. He reported a $214,000 balance in his campaign fund.

- Steve Tetreault

Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760. Follow him on Twitter @STetreaultDC. Contact Laura Myers at lmyers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919. Follow @lmyerslvrj on Twitter.