Obama campaign targets down-ballot races -- WAY down-ballot

Dana Goldstein and Ezra Klein in The American Prospect:

[T]he Obama campaign's most aggressive effort to influence the down-ticket races that Democrats traditionally ignore is playing out in solidly Republican Texas. In June, Obama sent his chief strategist, David Axelrod, to Houston to deliver an important message to Texas Democratic funders. The Obama campaign had decided, Axelrod announced to a crowd of 250 at the downtown Wortham Center, to send 15 paid staffers to the state and organize thousands of volunteers to get out the vote, an unprecedented commitment of resources to the Lone Star State from a Democratic presidential campaign. The goal isn't for Obama to win Texas' 34 electoral votes. Rather, by registering Democrats, Obama hopes to help the Texas Democratic Party regain control of its state legislature, which would allow Democrats to redistrict the state's congressional delegation for 2010, potentially winning House seats in the process. That's not simply down-ballot organizing — it's way down-ballot organizing, reaching into state legislatures to influence coming congressional reapportionments in order to create large national majorities years down the line. Obama, looking ahead to governing with as large a congressional majority as possible, is determined to take advantage of a population boom in the Houston area, which is increasingly dominated by immigrants.

At times, the campaign's down-ticket energy takes on a life of its own. Jeremy Bird, field director for Obama's record-breaking victory in South Carolina, likes to tell the story of Stephen Wukela. Wukela, an attorney in his early 30s, was an Obama neighborhood team leader in Florence, South Carolina. Energized by his work with the campaign, Wukela decided to challenge Frank Willis, the 13-year incumbent mayor of Florence. It seemed a quixotic idea, but Wukela tapped into the activist network built by Obama's organizers, ran a campaign straight out of his hero's playbook ("a Real Democrat for Real Change"), and won — by a single vote. "It shows what we were able to do," says Bird, "which is not only win, but leave something behind, so we can begin to turn South Carolina blue in the years to come."