David Plouffe and Obama for America created a monster in California.  Now Organizing for America – “OFA 2.0” – needs to figure out how what to do with it.

Between February 2007 and November 2008, the original OFA established an unprecedented grassroots organizing operation across the state of California.  When the election ended, we were left with a huge group of trained volunteer organizers, former campaign staff returning home from battleground states, and newly activated volunteers ready for their next assignment.  It’s an exciting but challenging resource, thousands of people fired up to remake California politics and bring recalcitrant Democrats and Republicans resisting the President’s agenda to heel.  This is not a group that wants to be asked to throw house parties.

Fortunately, the new OFA has recruited a veteran of this grassroots army to lead its operation in California.  As new CA State Director Mary Jane Stevenson kicks off her statewide listening tour this weekend in Sacramento (details below), she can expect to get an earful.  But she also has an incredible opportunity to unleash this monster to attack serious problems for our state and the nation.

Organizing for America is in the process of rolling out staff in all fifty states, and this week is bringing on board state directors for the entire Western Region.  In each state, OFA has asked its new leaders to tour their states and hear directly from grassroots volunteers.

California’s “listening tour” begins this Sunday in Sacramento following the California Democratic Party’s state convention, and will come to Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose and Fresno over the next week.  Then it will come to Southern California

Mary Jane Stevenson, the new California state director, was a field organizer during the primary and the state field director for the general election.  Under her leadership, a paid field staff of just eleven people statewide mobilized tens of thousands of volunteer leaders throughout the state.  The field team generated literally millions of phone calls to battleground states, trained and deployed thousands of interns and organizers in Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and elsewhere.  

I was one of those eleven field staffers, and I have huge confidence in “MJ” and her leadership.  I know her Story of Self practically by heart now, and she’s in this for the right reasons – she believes community organizing is the only way to generate lasting change.  One of the most important things she did was to push us to give more autonomy to our volunteer leaders, to let them take over and make mistakes if necessary so they could get the experience that made the difference during GOTV.  She also pushed us to use “Camp Obama” training at outrageous levels, which created legions of out of state volunteers and dozens of impromptu phonebanks.

During the primary, California field tested the volunteer organizing team structure later used to win in places like Ohio, and piloted software for its precinct captain program that ultimately became Neighbor to Neighbor.  

Usually, California’s ability to influence national politics begins and ends with its ability to marshal vast amounts of money to pay for campaigns elsewhere.  This time, we got to do far more.

Indeed, one of the biggest reasons I got involved with this campaign was my excitement