Today's feel-good story: In West Virginia, old-fashioned local Dems learn they can work together with Obama campaign activists

"'It's a different era,' she muses. 'I accept it.'"
-- Waneta Acker, 88-year-old Democratic Party doyenne in Ohio County, WV, quoted by Amar C. Bakshi in his Washington Post report today, "How W.Va. Democrats Came to Terms with Obama's Rise"

by Ken

"Almost as soon as Obama locked up the Democratic presidential nomination," reporter Bakshi writes, "the order came from Washington to merge the operations of the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign from the top down to the local level."

In June Bakshi visited Wheeling, West Virginia, to see how the "merger" was working there. The answer seemed to be that both sides thought it would be difficult if not impossible. "Fast-forward five months to October," he writes, "and it feels like five decades have passed."

What he found on his revisit makes for my feel-good story of the month, or maybe year, if not decade. I encourage you to read the whole account, but here is a clumsy abridgment:

The predominately elderly, white organizers who have run the county Democratic Party here for a generation were uneasy about integrating their operation with the Democratic presidential campaign, which was filled with new, unknown faces, many of them minorities. . . .


Back in June, if you asked longtime Democratic activist Waneta Acker what she thought about merging the Obama campaign with her party's local operations, she'd just strain her neck and tense up.

For the past two decades, this 88-year-old retired insurance saleswoman has run the one-room Democratic headquarters downtown.

She collected $600 per month to rent the space, set up the phone bank, and organize the candidates' promotional material on a table: local commissioner here, prosecuting attorney there, state assessor here, President of the United States there.

From morning to night Acker held court. Factory workers, union representatives, and retirees came by to snatch buttons and talk politics. You'll all get healthcare, she assured them. . . .


With friends and acquaintances, she discussed their concerns.

"Race is one issue," she said then. "That's the biggest issue." . . .


If the Obama campaign and the Democratic headquarters merged, Acker worried, maybe Obama supporters wouldn't work hard for their local Democrats. Maybe they wouldn't pay their dues. Maybe they'd try to oust her. . . .


Back in June, some Obama supporters were anxious too. Aaron Wilkinson, a divorced 25-year-old with a black father and white mother lives just a few blocks from Acker. Wilkinson was the first African American student president of West Liberty State College. Now he sells shoes in the morning, volunteers for local Democratic candidates in the afternoon, and plots politics by night.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there's people that work for the Democratic Committee in West Virginia that are not too thrilled that there's an African-American running for president" he said.

If the Democratic Headquarters and the Obama Campaign merge, Wilkinson wondered, couldn't some disgruntled white party officials try to "tear it [the Obama efforts] apart from the inside?" Or, at least, ignore Obama and focus entirely on the local races? . . .


FAST-FORWARD FIVE MONTHS to October, and it feels like five decades have passed.

On Sept. 2 the Obama Campaign and the local Democratic Headquarters cut the tape together inaugurating the joint "Democratic Headquarters for Change."

Acker dates the beginning of the two camps' integration to July 24, the opening of the Italian Festival on the waterfront. She was busy setting up the Democratic Party booth when some of the Obama newbies approached her and offered their help passing out local politicians' fliers and registering voters.

"I didn't know them from a load of coal," she remembers, "But they knew what they were doing" with their forms, their talk of health care and their relentlessness. "Just talking to them, I saw what nice people they were." . . .


And the same local white Democrats kept coming to the headquarters, despite the life-sized cutouts of Obama. "I was surprised so many of them [white Democrats] have changed," says Acker. "Where they didn't accept the fact that he was colored, now they've changed their attitude. Really."

"I also had some concern because he was colored that they [Obama volunteers] might turn the table on us here, but now when I see the way people have really worked together and banded together, I see a different way."

"It's a different era," she muses. "I accept it."