THE ELECTION OF BARACK OBAMA: ONE YEAR LATER

Army of volunteers still talking politics

The day after Election Day 2008, Nancy Judd initiated an unusual recycling project: Obama campaign trash.

“I had volunteered for the Obama campaign and realized there would be a lot of leftover posters,” the Santa Fe artist tells Metro.  Assisted by fellow Obama volunteers, Judd made the Campaign for Change Couture Collection, including an Obama cocktail dress and an Obama coat. She needed some serious help sewing, as her collection was to be presented at the Presidential Inaugural Ball.

For Nancy Judd and many fellow volunteers, the Obama campaign was a first foray into politics.  

Jelena Woehr of Denver volunteered for Obama several hours a day, and spent all of Election Day standing outside a polling station with a sign reading, “Honk if you’ll vote for Obama.”

“But the work doesn’t end with the victory,” she says. “Obama needs some help in the White House, too.”

Today Woehr, 21, volunteers with Organizing for America, the renamed version of Obama for America. So do many other former campaign volunteers.

“But Obama has not used Organizing for America very much,” cautioned professor Matthew Kerbel, a campaign expert at Villanova University. “The question is: Can he give his volunteers something to get excited about in the next election?”