Saturday, May 29, 2010

Reshma Saujani, Carolyn Maloney

Reshma Saujani - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Saujani's parents lived in Uganda, prior to being expelled, along with other Indians, in the early 1970s by Idi Amin. The Saujanis settled in Chicago. ...... Saujani attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she graduated in 1997 with majors in Political Science and Speech Communications. She attended the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where she received a Masters of Public Policy in 1999, and Yale Law School, where she received her Juris Doctorate in 2002. ..... She worked at the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, where she handled asylum cases pro bono..... Saujani founded "South Asians for Kerry" during the 2004 presidential election. ..... Saujani served on the National Finance Board for Hillary Clinton during Clinton's campaign for president in 2008. Following the primaries, she was named Vice-Chair of the New York delegation at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. ...... Saujani has won the support of top entrepreneurs including Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chairman of Twitter; Randi Zuckerberg, director of market development for Facebook and sister of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg; Alexis Maybank, co-founder of Gilt Groupe; and Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook........ Saujani has raised a considerable amount of money for a challenger in a congressional race, outraising Maloney by almost a 2-to-1 margin in the last quarter of 2009...... Her candidacy has received the backing of prominent Upper East Side political fundraisers, including Cathy Lasry and Maureen White.



Carolyn B. Maloney - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia the Congresswoman for New York's 14th congressional district since 1993. .... most of Manhattan's East Side; Astoria and Long Island City in Queens; and Roosevelt Island. ...... In 1970, she visited New York City and decided to stay. ..... In 1992, Maloney was elected to the House of Representatives, narrowly defeating a 15-year incumbent, liberal Republican Bill Green, in a victory considered an upset. She is the first woman to ever represent the district, and has been re-elected eight times ....... Following Maloney's win, Republicans continued to hold most of the State Senate, Assembly, and City Council seats on Manhattan's East Side for nearly another decade. Since 2002, the Democrats have dominated the area, and now hold all of the area's seats in the state legislature and City Council. ....... among the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Maloney has the ninth-highest amount of investment in oil stocks. ........In the book, Maloney argues that progress for women has stalled and offers recommendations for resuming their advance toward full equality ...... In December 2008, Maloney hired a public relations firm to help bolster her efforts to be named by Governor David Paterson as Hillary Clinton's successor as a New York Senator. Maloney toured parts of the state, but was overshadowed by Caroline Kennedy's promotional tour for the same seat. Maloney interviewed with the governor for 55 minutes. Public opinion polls placed Maloney's support for the Senate seat in the single digits, trailing the front-runner ..... On July 20, 2009, Maloney apologized after using the word "nigger" in repeating a comment made by a third party about Gillibrand. ....... he married Clifton Maloney, an investment banker, in 1976.

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Carolyn Maloney has a longer resume, but it is because she is older, twice as old. I say her resume is not long enough.

Issues in women's rights like equal pay, and reproductive rights are like a ceiling to Maloney. She tried the best she could, but she has done the best she can. Those same issues are a floor to Reshma Saujani. She will fight for equal pay, she will fight harder for reproductive rights. And she will build on all that to do much more. Maloney belongs to a generation that imagined equality. Reshma Saujani belongs to a generation that wants to be able to take equality for granted.

Obama has done so much for race without even talking about it. Reshma Saujani's focus on technology and innovation and the next generation of jobs, companies and industries is something similar. She dreams of things that a leader - man or woman - would dream of. That kind of confidence comes from wanting to take equality for granted.

This is not about okay let's just undo the good work Maloney has done for women's rights. This is about she has not done enough, although she tried, and let's build upon whatever she has been able to do. And let's also touch upon leadership issues in general. Let's also talk about creating the next generation of jobs, companies and industries.

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My Talk With Kevin Lawler Of Reshma 2010

Image of Reshma Saujani from FacebookImage of Reshma Saujani
I am going to be a super engaged volunteer. That is my default mode. But I have considered going to work full time for Reshma 2010 for three and a half months. And I shared that with Kevin. He is an Obama 08 veteran, and Campaign Manager to Reshma 2010.

Reshma 2010 Get Together In Little India

I shared some thoughts. I explored a possible role for me. I shared some stories from my work into Nepal's democracy movement a few years back. I had a few things to say about the campaign.

(1) Can't Get Into On Autopilot To A Grand Loss Mode

I saw that happen to the Fernando Ferrer campaign in 2005. You showed up at the campaign headquarters. And there were these tens of super busy people. They were going to put in their hours, even work hard. But there was little experimenting, little of trying to come in from a few different angles.

First of all, Maloney is no Bloomberg, not even close. She leads in the polls now, but Obama too lagged in the polls the longest time. Reshma has raised the most money in the first two quarters like Obama did.

Got to stay in the victory mode. How do you do that? You keep having fun. You keep trying out new things. You keep working the things that work. You feel the growth of the snowball of support.

Carolyn Maloney is never going to run for president, she is a spent force, Reshma could. Maloney has done some good work, but she has had her turn. She is pre-Obama at many levels. Reshma is post-Obama. Maloney is not known nationally for any kind of thought leadership, Reshma is oozing with new ideas. Reshma deserves to win, she is going to win.

(2) Produce Plentiful Video Clips

It is free to do. Produce five minutes of video per day. Produce a video clip for every event small and big. Getting 50-100 hits on a video clip is good enough. You do this for the core team, for the staff and volunteers. Text does not do what video does. The video format has greater emotional appeal. Use a flip camera. Let some staffer volunteer to do the editing.

(3) The Subway Stops: Where It Is At

Showing up at rush hours to hand out small flyers would be a great way to reach out. My first day canvassing in Astoria was 100 knocks, 10 talks. At the subway stops you might approach 500 people in an hour, give out perhaps 200 flyers/post cards/business cards. Even if you net 20 potential voters, that is a lot. All you want is to get people to visit the site.

How many subway stops are there in the district? They are in the 20s. How about having someone at each stop every day during rush hour for the 30 days before the primary? This is about volume.

Kevin told me they already have a cropped map of the NYC subway system that shows only the stops in the district.

(4) Build A Brain Trust

Reshma has to come across as a thought leader. Got to start collecting a brain trust of people from academia and think tanks who will offer advice on all the key policy areas. What would a 2016 platform look like? Build towards that.

(5) Phone Marathons

Modern campaigns are able to pin down the potential primary voters. Being able to call them all would be a thing to do. Working the phone has to be something all staffers do, regardless of expertise.

(6) Community Press, Community Leaders

I saw this with the John Liu campaign. John Liu ended up with more votes than Bloomberg even, but during the primary he was shunned by the establishment press. John Liu reacted by aggressively courting small, ethnic newspapers. Their circulations were small, but loyal. They were flattered by the attention and often talked glowingly about Liu.

Identifying and courting community leaders fall in a similar category. In every community there are people who make it their business to reach out to members of the community on a regular basis.

(7) Pro.Act.Ly

The first time I heard about it was in the TechCrunch Disrupt video, and it promises to be a great tool. (Reshma Saujani, Scott Heiferman, Chris Hughes: TechCrunch Disrupt)

(8) Debating Maloney

Maloney is going to try and not debate Reshma. We have to keep nudging her, and we have to make political hay out of her not saying yes, and then we have to beat her at the debates when she finally says yes. The campaign has to do a super job of helping the candidate with the best possible preparation for the debates. Those debates will be the turning points. Start watching videos of Maloney on YouTube. Google her up. Read up on her. Know her strengths and weaknesses.

(9) Money

I am not going to say much about money, except that it is money, message, organization. Those are the three pillars.

(10) Social Media

I am hoping to blog profusely. It can be a tool to boost team morale, and more.
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