Brooklyn Hipster Politics Wonks Going National, Launch 2,012 for 2012 Campaign

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http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/12/the_candidate_p.php

Last year, Brooklyn politics-as-usual got a shakeup via the election of glasses-sporting 27-year-old Lincoln Restler to a State Committee seat as the District Leader for Williamsburg and the surrounding environs. Restler and the New Kings Democrats, a grassroots lefty organization in Brooklyn, took on crooked Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Vito Lopez and won, showing that with the right amount of effort and door-knocking, an upstart can get voted into local elected office.

The Voice wrote about NKD a bit last year during that election cycle. Recently we heard from Sarah Baker, a NKD organizer who's now involved in a new project down in D.C. with other young Brooklyn political minds. She and Carlos Odio, an Obama campaign veteran, are running the Candidate Project, whose goal is basically to replicate Lincoln Restler's success all over the country by recruiting progressives to run for local elected positions (the political establishment in Washington now being seen as something of a lost cause). Odio is the director of the project and Baker's title is digital director. Yesterday they launched the 2,012 for 2012 initiative, which will attempt to get 2,012 regular people elected to local offices in the 2012 cycle. Brooklyn hipster-pols are going national!

Baker is taking a year off from Brooklyn to work on the Candidate Project in D.C. She and Odio met working on various Brooklyn campaigns; Baker was an important force behind the push to get Lincoln Restler elected, while Odio went off to work for Obama.

"We're trying to replicate what we've been doing in Brooklyn," Baker said. "We're trying to get regular local people to think of themselves as someone who could be potentially running for office."




*** ruh-roh -- the masses are gettin uppity.