New York, NY –
Congressional Democrats are getting a lot of calls about health-care reform, especially if they oppose or are on the fence about the current bill. Here in New York, as many as five congressmen are opposed to the current health-care bill.
On a recent afternoon, about 60 volunteers are working the phones at the midtown office of Organizing for America, the Democratic National Committee’s follow-up movement to President Obama's 2008 campaign. The volunteers are calling registered Democrats trying to persuade them to call their local congressman and ask them to support the health-care bill.
One day recently, Joel Schiff, one of those volunteers, is calling registered Democrats in the district of Congressman Michael McMahon. The Staten Island Democrat has voted against earlier versions of health-care reform.
Schiff has been volunteering at phone banks for years. He dials a number and begins his pitch: "This is not about money. I just wanted to get that out right away," Schiff says.
Schiff says some people he asks to phone their congressman seem to be just humoring him, but he can tell who’s really sincere.
"A lot of people don’t want to disappoint somebody, so they might be fudging it, but generally if they wait to take the number down, and they’re repeating it back to you, then they’re taking the time to go through the effort," Schiff says.
Another volunteer, Naomi Rothwell, says generally most people are very enthusiastic, except for some who think the health-care bill is too conservative.
"People on the Obama list are going to be against it because it’s not progressive enough," Rothwell says. "If I get angry emails, it’s from people on the left; they think their costs are going to go up, or they think it’s a giveaway to insurance companies. So, part of the job is to reassure them that this is still something worth doing."
That certainly isn’t the issue for Lorraine Scanni, one of the organizers of the Staten Island Tea Party. She believes the government is too large already and doesn’t need to play an even more active role in health care. She’s running a much scrappier operation: a Facebook group with 341 members and an e-mail list with nearly 1,500. She simply wants people to call Congressman McMahon and urge him to stand firm against the latest bill.
"We encourage people to call the congressman. We don’t have phone banking. We’re just not that sophisticated. Our congressman has said no and so we don’t feel the need to bombard the guy,” Scanni says.
But both sides say the main challenge is logistical, not political--it’s simply reaching people by phone. That’s because for every person you reach, there’s usually several you don’t.
Calls and emails to Congressman McMahon's communications office have not been returned.
Fred Mogul has been covering healthcare and medicine for WNYC since 2002. His beat takes him to hospitals, community clinics, doctors offices, health agencies, public schools and research labs across the metropolitan area. His work has appeared on NPR and in the New York Times, Time magazine and Philadelphia Inquirer, among others.
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