i won't say mitch stewart is responsible for barack obama being in the white house, but mitch and steve hildebrand played an enormous role in the crucial victory of the iowa caucusses, and you know how crucial those iowa caucusses were. and then mitch went on to pull off another miracle, turning the commonwealth of virginia blue for barack obama. he is director of the new 13 million strong grass routes and online force to emerge from the campaign to help obama win new victories. mitch will talk about how they won the mission of organizing for america and how they plan to work with outside groups. please welcome mitch stewart. >> thank you all very much, and thank you for the gracious introduction and for putting this conference together. and for all the folks here participating. as roger said, i did start on the campaign the third week in january of 2008. i lived in iowa for a year and traveled to a number of different states -- nevada, minnesota, texas, indiana, and then spent about six months in virginia, which was a truly gratifying experience. there are a number of things that we le

please welcome mitch stewart.[applause] >> thank you all very much and thank you for the gracious introduction and for putting this conference together and for all the folks here participating. as roger said i did start on the campaign the third week in january of 2008, i lived in iowa for a. then travel to a number of different states, nevada, minnesota, texas, indiana and then spend about six months in virginia which was a truly gratifying experience. there are a number of things that we learned during the campaign that i think because of the president's unit background as a community organizer helped instill in us a new way to reach out and talk to people of bella lipitor campaigning -- electoral campaign and that is that people matter and all too often in campaigns people are paid less service but they are not taken seriously so we have a model on the campaign, respect and already includes and we took every person's point of view very seriously, their efforts, their sacrifice, and we fell into that empowerment