DEMOCRACY IN ACTION Interview:
Steve Varnum, Campaign Director of Priorities NH

early June 2007  Copyright © 2007  Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action

STEVE VARNUM:  I'm the campaign director of Priorities NH.  I was hired to create, house and launch the campaign--started January 2nd 2006.  Melissa [Bernardin] came on board in March and we officially launched the campaign almost exactly a year ago, I think it was June 12th, 2006, we had a party in Portsmouth and launched the campaign.

It's a very differrent kind of campaign in that we rely very heavily on dramatic visual effects such as our topsy-turvy bus, our pigmobile, our van that has the discretionary budget 12' high on the side, and viral activity.  So for example when the topsy-turvy bus comes to New Hampshire we don't hoard it, we the staff don't hoard it and keep all the fun to ourselves.  We put out to our e-mail list of about 6,000 members, hey the bus is coming; if you want to take it for two or three days let us know and you can drive it around.

Same thing with our pull-out pen that has essentially a bar chart of the discretionary budget.  Most of our activities are designed to be viral, to be something that somebody is loaned, like a vehicle, or gets, like a pen, that they're going to want to turn around and show their friends, show their neighbors, show the bank teller, and so to do that they have to become educated some degree on what we're talking about because they want to be able to know what they're saying, what they're talking about.  And they're out there every day spreading our message, spreading the facts about the federal budget for almost free--I mean for the price of a pen or for the price of a tank of gas, which isn't free anymore but you get the drift, the price of a tank of gas.  And also anyone who does any advertising tells you that word of mouth is the best advertising.  Well this is word of mouth; this is son to mom, neighbor to neighbor, friend to friend passing information about our campaign.  And so it's very different in that sense.  But that is an element of the campaign, that kind of is the campaign; that's the way we do business.

Question: And the cookie mom?

STEVE VARNUM:  That's another piece of it.  We hired a woman who has a youth theater company in the southern part of the state as a part-time paid by the hour actress, and her character is called cookie mom.  And cookie mom wears a blue apron with our Priorities logo, the budget pie, on the front and goes to campaign events and simply hands out sugar cookies frosted with our budget logo.  And her job is not just to put cookies in people's hands, but to find out--you at a John Edwards event, what brought you out here, what issues are you concerned with, what are you looking for from the country?  And chat with them and look for ways to connect whatever they come through the door with with federal budget priorities.  How could a reordering of federal budget priorities address what this person's concerned with or what this person wants to have happen...

The reason it's a mom in an apron is it's not threatening, neither is it something you expect to find in a political rally.  So it's a little bit offbeat, kind of what's this all about?

In two words, we call what we do "serious fun."  We're a very serious campaign.  We want to change federal spending priorities, but the way we choose to do it is with a fun face, with an engaging face, with viral activity.

And in terms of is it working, I'm kind of stunned.  In the Democratic debate the other night [June 3] we had Dennis Kucinich turning a question about the war in Iraq to a question of military spending and splitting the question of whether we need a troop buildup from whether the Pentagon needs more money.  Then we had Barack Obama, who is by any account a top tier candidate, jumping on and saying absolutely those two things are different.  And while he wants to build another 100,000 troops, he doesn't believe that you need to up Pentagon spending to do it, and in fact he's talking about ways to cut Pentagon spending.  Joe Biden when he first came to this state, I think this was the first time we asked him a question was back in November or December, and he kind of blew off our question about shifting Pentagon waste.  We asked him about shifting, about Pentagon waste and he started talking about rebuilding the military.  Well now after having birddogged the Senator for six months he will pick up the list of Pentagon programs that he would eliminate or cut back, and lo and behold they just happen to be the same ones on our list.

Question: Talk about that a bit, the bird dogging.

STEVE VARNUM:  We have a wonderful young woman Olivia Zink, who really deserves all of the credit for this because she is just tireless and fabulous.  What we're asking our members to do is join what we're calling a Power of 10 campaign.  We're asking people to commit to going to ten candidate events in the course of the New Hampshire primary and ask a budget priorities related question.  Now if that was the beginning and the end of what we were doing it wouldn't be any different really from a whole lot of groups out there doing it.  What does make us different is that we are then asking the person who asks the question to report the answer back to us and using that information and using what we can glean from the candidates own statements and from the news media to tighten up our question.

So that if for example Bill Richardson is in the state doing four events, we might start in his first morning event saying Gov. Richardson you've said that you're committed to cuting Pentagon waste.  Are there any particular programs you have your eyes on?  And he might mention a couple.  That information comes back to us, and the next person may say, well Gov. Richardson, you've said you'd cut these programs; to what degree would you cut them?  Are you talking about elimination or cutting them in half?  What price tag would you put on it?  If he then responds the way that we hope, he would respond with a specific dollar number, or in the case of nuclear weapons, a nuclear warhead number.  Then we may get in touch with a third person going to the [next] Richardson event and completely change the question.  Hit him with a different weapon system, one that he hasn't been talking about our hasn't been committed to [inaud.].

Question: Presumably it may take a bit more time; that's an optimistic scenario?

STEVE VARNUM:  Well it actually has happened.  One of the candidates it happened with was John Edwards, and I know because I happened to be the third, I happened to be going to the third event of that day.  And the first two people had gotten to ask question, had relayed the answers back, and so I was able to go to Edwards' event on a Saturday night and say Sen. Edwards, you've said twice already today that you're willing to cut the F/A 22 [Raptor].  Are we talking about elimination or are we talking about some percentage, and to what programs would you shift that money?  And so from our end when we do get a response that is specific in some sense it really does work well because the people who are working with us are getting used to the fact that we are asking them to take that one extra step and report back, and they're seing how we use that to tighten the questions and pin these guys down.  And so what we're experiencing is they're getting more with the program as we go along...