Damian Bednarz

Obama Campaign State Director Mark Alexander. 

The campaign was about to change.

On Oct, 9, 2007, an announcement came down from Chicago regarding New Jersey operations. 

Mark Alexander, a Seton Hall University law professor and Obama’s senior policy advisor, would be the campaign’s official state director.

"I am grateful that he is going to carry the fight forward to and through the Feb. 5 contests," Obama said of Alexander. "He is a valued and trusted advisor, and at the same time has deep ties in his home of New Jersey that will be invaluable to our efforts. 

"I am proud of the policy work we have done on this campaign and through Mark’s leadership we have built a team of key advisors from the ground up that will continue to offer new and innovative approaches to the challenges this country faces," added the presidential candidate.

A personal friend of Barack and Michelle Obama’s going back a dozen years, Alexander as a child worked on the 1974 Washington, D.C. mayoral campaign of his father, Clifford Alexander, former chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission. Later, he ran Sen. Bill Bradley’s 2000 presidential campaign and served as counsel to Cory Booker.

NJ for Obama organizers Julie Diaz and Keith Hovey.

The Obama campaign started small here, with handfuls of coffee house organizers lining up behind a grassroots operation called NJ for Obama in the face of a big party machine backing Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), and an unpopular war in Iraq.

Founded in an Edison coffee shop in December of 2006, the group’s leader was Damian Bednarz, 25, a Master’s student in international relations with Seton Hall University’s Whitehead School of Diplomacy.

"Obama has something that Hillary Clinton can’t buy or reproduce, and that’s a sense of inspiration," Bednarz said at the time. "If anything, I’m encouraged by Clinton’s frontrunner status because I know our work is so special."

In the months following, some elected offiicials endorsed the Illinois senator, among them Assemblyman Neil Cohen (D-Union), who came out in favor of Obama in April of 2007, followed by state Sen. John Adler (D-Camden) a couple of weeks later.

"At this time we need someone special... someone who is going to build a bridge brick by brick to peace through negotiation," said Cohen, a graduate of Howard University who arrived at politics through the Civil Rights era.

Bednarz was still in college and doing grassroots NJ for Obama work when Obama appeared at the War Memorial in Trenton.A year ago, Damian Bednarz was completing his Master’s Degree at Seton Hall University and sending g-mails out to fellow backpack-clad, 20–something political junkies as a grassroots Barack Obama organizer.

The campaign liked what it saw of the Paterson product, and snatched him up to handle GOTV efforts in New Hampshire, months before the primary there. He worked all summer and fall in the Granite State, and on primary night found himself in the boiler room, taking down polling information as his presidential candidate came up short of knocking out rival Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton's New Jersey campaign co-chair, John F.X. GrahamI walked into Pal's Cabin, that West Orange watering hole where the Irishmen who run the state go when they want to tie one on.

On this particular summer night, John F. X. Graham was at the front of a room full of heavyweight Hillary Clinton supporters, some of whom, however weighed down with gold bars, were evidently still in the throes of John Kerry fatigue.

"Hillary's a winner," Graham assured the group. "She's a centrist, and the Democratic Party wins with centrists."

The Obama ’08 campaign has hired grassroots New Jersey volunteer Damian Bednarz to work in the organization’s New Hampshire office.