 |
| December 19, 2006--Draft Obama held a fundraiser at Local 16, a bar
on U Street. Among those present (not pictured) were Georgetown University
Law student Brian Wallach, who read and was impressed with Obama's book
"The Audacity of Hope." Adam Conner, who worked as a blogger for
Mark Warner's Forward Together PAC and is now helping out with the RunObama.com
site started by Todd Webster, was another attendee. "I think he inspires
a generation and a country that hasn't seen such inspiration in a while
and may have forgotten what it was like," Conner said. |
 |
| Ben Stanfield, who in real life does computer work for government agency
in Bethesda, was inspired by Obama's 2004 speech at the Democratic National
Convention and subsequently acquired the DraftObama.org domain. In
October 2006 he posted a single page. "Almost immediately e-mails
started coming in," he said. |
 |
| Kris Schultz says she has been putting in 60-hour weeks on the Draft
Obama effort. She initially offered to buy the www.draftobama.org
domain from Stanfield, but he refused to sell. Schultz has extensive
campaign experience. Shultz is originally from Kentucky, where she
volunteered on her first campaign in 1986. More recently she ran
Mark Fernald's 2002 gubernatorial campaign in New Hampshire, served as
executive director of the New Hampshire Democratic Party in 2002-03, and
was Milwaukee field director of the Democratic Coordinated Campaign in
Wisconsin in 2004. "For me there finally is a candidate that represents
why I got into politics 20 years ago," she said. "He transcends so
much of what frustrates people about Washington," Shultz said, adding that
Obama can "truly be a uniter." |
 |
| Attorney Andy Rosenberg has also been active in the Draft Obama effort. |
 |
| On December 7 Draft Obama brought John Hlinko onto its national leadership
team. Hlinko founded DraftWesleyClark.com in the last presidential
cycle. |
