2016 Postmortem

brooklynite

(94,358 posts) Wed Jun 15, 2016, 03:37 PM Jun 2016

Meet Buffy the Bernie Sanders Slayer

OZY:

(June 3)

I hear her before I see her. Her laughter, really. It rolls through the hallway, trips through the eighth-floor campaign office that, even after three weeks in the building, still holds some prior tenant’s nameplate on its door. An aide leads me to an unglamorous waiting area, all ibuprofen bottles and strewn gum packets. I look up and see a photo plastered on the wall of a smiling blonde, and a caption: “Buffy the Bernie Slayer.”

In a political arena dominated by brash billionaires, wealthy politicians and high-priced consultants, Hillary Clinton aide Buffy Wicks is an outlier. The California state director is “just full of love,” says Marlon Marshall, the national director of states for the Clinton campaign. “She is brilliant in strategy, tactics, but she’s an organizer at heart.” Wicks is responsible for corralling nine campaign offices, hundreds of volunteers and 475 delegates. Hopes are pinned on this likable yet shrewd former Obama-ite, who helped elect the president and push through his signature legacy, the Affordable Care Act, to make the difference for Clinton. The challenge has become more difficult: A recent NBC/WSJ poll had Clinton up over rival Bernie Sanders by just 2 points in the Golden State.

Wearing a rugged forest-green jacket and black pants, Wicks plonks down on the couch next to me in her Oakland headquarters, legs crossed as phone bankers tap away around us. “I grew up in the dirt,” the 39-year-old says, building forts near her trailer in the shadow of the Sierra Nevadas. Then came community college — all she could afford — before leading antiwar protests in San Francisco, campaign events for Howard Dean, protests for the now-defunct Wake Up, Wal-Mart protest movement in D.C.

She tells these stories alongside anecdotes of standing on the Truman Balcony with bigwigs such as David Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel, toasting the successful passage of Obamacare. As deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, Wicks was charged with drafting nonprofits and advocacy groups to support the health care bill, a task she promised to complete before stepping down from her position in 2010. “Everyone is heading out, and as we walk out the door, (Obama) looks at me and says, ‘OK, Buffy, you can go now,’” Wicks recalled in a recent episode of her weekly podcast, “The Riveters,” which calls for “an unfiltered ode to the modern woman.”