Grass-Roots Volunteers Push Obama’s Health Overhaul

NPR Morning Edition September 2, 2009 | RENEE MONTAGNE RENEE MONTAGNE NPR Morning Edition 09-02-2009 Grass-Roots Volunteers Push Obama’s Health Overhaul site organizing for america

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RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

And it was a tough August for President Obama, a month in which he lost ground in his campaign to revamp health care. Raucous town hall meetings and attacks on his proposals led the news. A Kaiser Health tracking poll shows that now just 40 percent of Americans support restructuring health care, down from 62 percent in June. Supporters of the president’s plan are making a drive to regain some of that ground. From Miami, NPR’s Greg Allen reports.

GREG ALLEN: It’s 9:30 in the morning at the West Regional Courthouse in Plantation, a Florida suburb west of Fort Lauderdale. Since mid-July, Obama supporters have been out here most mornings, gathering signatures in support of the president’s effort to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

Ms. NAN VOLLBRACHT: Hi, do you support the president’s health care reform?

Unidentified Man: Yes, I do.

Ms. VOLLBRACHT: Could you please fill out little card?

ALLEN: Today, Nan Vollbracht is one of the volunteers gathering signatures.

Ms. VOLLBRACHT: Here’s one more thing: Please have your friends and family call Senator Nelson. Here’s a little blurb. Most importantly, we want a public option.

ALLEN: Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson is one legislator Obama supporters are trying to pressure. They want to make sure he supports the public insurance option. During the presidential campaign, Vollbracht says she was on the phone constantly, making calls for Barack Obama. After the election, she says she took a break until she saw the loud and relentless opposition to the president’s health care overhaul.

Ms. VOLLBRACHT: I just knew that I had to get out there and show the other side that they were monopolizing the whole situation. And I know that a lot of people support health care reform much more than the people that were at those town hall meetings.

(Soundbite of knocking)

(Soundbite of door opening)

Ms. SHARON CARROLL (Organizing for America): Hello, how are you?

ALLEN: Several miles away in Dania Beach, Sharon Carroll is leading a group of volunteers on a neighborhood canvass. All worked last year on the Obama campaign. They’re now back working with the campaign’s successor group, Organizing for America. go to web site organizing for america

Instead of a candidate, though, they’re now promoting an issue, and improving the nation’s health care system is something that Sharon Carroll cares deeply about. She says she began to wonder a few months back why more work wasn’t being done to organize support for the president’s health care plan. After winning an historic election, she thinks Obama supporters were complacent.

Ms. CARROLL: I don’t blame it on the organization. I blame it – it’s people make the organization. So it’s like, okay, we got to get up and do this again.

ALLEN: Since June, Organizing for America has actively promoted the president’s health care overhaul. The group says it’s had members at most congressional town halls and held 12,000 events nationwide since June 6th, including a series of health care meetings billed as a listening tour. The group’s volunteers and staff say if their efforts have flown under the radar, it’s the fault of the media that pays more attention to bombast than to substance.

Outside of a hospital in Hialeah yesterday, Obama supporters made a little bombast of their own. They showed up at a hospital where Republican senators Mitch McConnell, John McCain and Mel Martinez were holding a town hall, one that was not open to the public.

They held signs saying: Health care can’t wait, and one with photos of McCain and McConnell and a question: Why don’t you want a public option? News crews from most of the local TV stations were there, as was Anita Michelson. She’s an 81-year-old retiree, who with her husband Don, last year campaigned tirelessly for Barack Obama. If there’s a lack of fire among Mr. Obama’s former campaign volunteers, Michelson believes, part of the blame rest with the president.

Ms. ANITA MICHELSON: We were so enthusiastic and so, just full of hope. And now we’re disillusioned, not only with the public option, but also with the war in Afghanistan. It’s disgust. He’s not listening to his base.

ALLEN: Staff and volunteers with Organizing for America are optimistic they can regain ground they lost last month on health care. One of the group’s leaders has this reminder: A legislative battle, he says, is a marathon, not a sprint.

Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.