Opinion: Clinton, Obama workers show differing concerns

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Times reporter Scott Martelle is up in Northern California these days researching a story on the divergent grass-roots approaches that the Clinton and Obama campaigns are taking as they gear up for the California primary Feb. 5.

You can look for his story on this website and in the print editions over the coming holiday weekend. But as often happens when an experienced observer starts asking questions, Martelle stumbled upon a curious thing, not earthshaking but revealing. This is by no means a scientific observation, but it does highlight a trend he’s seen elsewhere.

In an inaugural training session for Hillary Clinton volunteers Wednesday night, more than 50 people showed up, self-selected through the Clinton campaign website. About half of them said they had never before volunteered in a presidential campaign.

The next night, at the third meeting of Barack Obama‘s Congressional District 14 committee, about 24 people showed up. This one was geared toward updates and creating subcommittees, not a general call for volunteers like the Clinton session. But fully 17 of them said this was their first presidential campaign.

In talks and comments before their full groups, the Clinton volunteers tended to cite specific reasons they joined -- a desire for universal healthcare, wanting to elect the first woman as president, seeking fundamental change in national policies and so forth. The Obama supporters, on the other hand, talked with more of a sense of joining a broad social and political movement, and effecting wide national change through political engagement. They cared less about specific policy issues.

And of the 50-plus supporters at the Clinton meeting, only 14 were men. Of the 24 at the Obama meeting, 13 were men -- a much more even distribution.

-- Andrew Malcolm