Something Just Clicked

Linnie Frank Bailey, an Obama delegate from California's 44th District, strolls the grounds of the state capitol in Sacramento with husband Greg Bailey. (Michael Rondou - For The Washington Post)

"It was just one thing after another, and everyone was so helpful," Bailey says. "I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I didn't know what an area coordinator did, or what a regional field organizer did, or how to open a campaign office, or what it even means to be a delegate. I've seen the conventions on TV, but I didn't know what delegates did or how they even got there."

Her family wasn't sure exactly what to make of it all. She was so preoccupied with Obama that she didn't realize that her son, Gregory, was a Ron Paul supporter. (He's for Obama now.)

Her husband, Greg, a registered independent and usually the quiet, reserved type, says he's not worried about his wife's intensity. "She's on to something, and when Linnie's on to something, she cannot be stopped." He supports Obama, too, though he's nowhere near as politically active as his wife. When her younger brother Carlton, who lives in Denver and supports McCain, asked her how far she'll go, Bailey responded with a joke. "I'm like Hillary," she told him. "I have no endgame."

But she does. Though Obama lost to Clinton in Riverside County 59 to 34 on the night of Super Tuesday, Obama, like Clinton, earned two delegates from the 44th District. Being a delegate, in a way, is an insider's game. You run a mini-campaign in your voting precinct.

Two months ago, after running for office for the first time, Bailey was elected as a delegate.

On to November

"Most of you know me. I'm one of the delegates," Bailey is saying, standing in front of about 35 Obama supporters gathered inside La Sierra Library on a recent weeknight. "We know what this election will be about. It will be about faith versus fear, division versus unity, lies versus truth, rhetoric versus reality -- and that's just the primary."

The room explodes in laughter.

It's mid-May. Five primaries are still left, but Bailey is already focusing on November: not just on the presidential race but also on the local congressional seat long held by a Republican. She arranges this two-hour meeting at La Sierra to update her fellow volunteers on where the campaign is headed.

"This isn't about Hillary anymore," she tells the crowd. "This is about McCain.

"Our big emphasis right now is voter registration. How many of you have been on BarackObama.com recently? A few days ago, the campaign kicked off 'Vote for Change,' a national voter registration drive. . . . They're asking us, each and every one of us, to get out in our communities . . . and bring new people in," she continues.

"Now I don't know about you, but in Corona, I've been seeing all these signs, all these politicians running as a quote-unquote 'Conservative Republican.' And you know they're running as anti-immigrant, in areas that are, what, 40 to 50 percent Latino? Again, here's the bottom line: We have to bring new voters in."

Later that night, after reading an article on the failure of the Riverside Community College District to hire a new chancellor, she makes a decision that she's been thinking about for months: She'll run for one of two open seats on the district's board of trustees this fall. The district has gone without a chancellor for a year. Two searches costing more than $150,000 have failed. A third is underway. Taxpayers' money is being wasted as drop-out rates, especially among Latino and black students, remain high.

It's time, she says, to get involved.

She didn't foresee any of this activism. There was "no grand plan," she says. She never thought politics would define her life; she had spent more time watching HGTV and the Food Network than reading news articles. But gone are those apathetic days. The Web, she says, has "awakened" her.

After the initial $10 online donation, after hours and hours of volunteering, then opening Obama Riverside, then winning a delegate spot to the national convention and, later, deciding to run for local office, Bailey, politically, has been born anew.

Though she's talking about Obama Riverside, she could well be talking about herself when she says, "To think, we went from nothing to something."