A Super Pac supporting former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley’s campaign for the Democratic party presidential nomination could have more than 150 staffers on the ground in Iowa.
Ron Boehmer, a spokesman for Generation Forward, a pro-O’Malley Super Pac confirmed to the Guardian that his organization had already hired 45 staffers to do on-the-ground organizing for the Iowa caucuses and was planning on hiring between 50-100 more staffers in the state.
The group has already opened an office in Des Moines and is planning to open at least two more offices in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City on behalf of the underdog Democrat.
Boehmer told the Guardian that while they can not legally coordinate with the O’Malley campaign, they are not worried about duplicating efforts. He thought it wouldn’t be a problem “if we [contact] people two or three times and not just once.”. Boehmer maintained “we’re not doing robo calls, we’re going up and having conversations” which will not hassle or bother Iowa Democrats.
The question is how that interaction between the campaign and the Super Pac will work. O’Malley has already built a strong and well-respected campaign apparatus in Iowa and led by experienced operatives and there are major two parallel campaigns supporting the same candidate to work in tandem without legally being allowed to communicate. An O’Malley spokesperson said the campaign was not affiliated with the outside group and declined to comment further.
In an op-ed in Thursday’s Des Moines Register, Generation Forward’s chief executive Damian O’Doherty described the group as one that “won’t be focused on the Super Pac politics of the past”. Instead, he pledged that “rather than thinking about what a Super Pac can do, we want to show what a Super Pac should do”.
Generation Forward would not disclose how much money it had raised in advance of the 15 July deadline for campaigns to disclose money. This was a step taken by the Super Pac’s affiliated with a number of other presidential campaigns. O’Malley had a relatively disappointing fundraising quarter, raising just over $2m, $13m less than Bernie Sanders and $43m less than Hillary Clinton. Only 4% of O’Malley’s donations came from small donors.
The Iowa caucuses are currently scheduled to be held on 1 February 2016 and O’Malley currently polls at around 3% among likely Democratic caucus-goers.
