Bringing people together

It’s hard enough to gain support for major changes in U.S. foreign policy, so you can imagine how those advocating more action for environmental concerns often feel shortchanged.

Even the greens, though, have gotten a boost from savior Al Gore’s attention to global warming.

But what’s a global anti-poverty campaign to do, especially in Nevada, where schools, transportation and health care for our own residents sometimes have a hard time finding center stage?

If you’re the ONE Campaign, elevating the issue will require some good old-fashioned political pressure — and Nevada is one of four places the Washington-based group will try to assert it.

Today, ONE officially launches its Nevada ONE Vote ’08 Campaign, hoping to show presidential candidates in both parties that support exists to fight global poverty and disease.

Elevating those issues here, where funding problems continue to plague K-12 and practically everything else, is as likely as Republican Jon Porter and Democrat Shelley Berkley reaching across the aisle to work on something other than Yucca Mountain. But that’s precisely what they will do, serving as honorary co-chairs of the Nevada campaign.

Jack Oliver, a GOP strategist, has been tapped to join the congressional members in forging the alliance in Nevada. The campaign is also launching efforts in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, other states with early primaries or caucuses.

“Nevada is extremely important because these four early states are where the voters get a chance to actually engage in retail politics,” said Susan McCue, president and CEO of ONE. “We’re organizing the ONE Campaign like a political campaign.”

McCue left her job as chief of staff for Sen. Harry Reid last year to head up ONE, so she knows a bit about how to run a political campaign for an issue.

The organization was founded by the best-known aid groups, including Oxfam, CARE, Bread for the World, International Medical Corps and Mercy Corps. It’s aligned with 100 nonprofit advocacy and humanitarian organizations, but gets its biggest exposure from celebrities such as U2 frontman Bono.

Berkley and Porter were expected to officially launch the campaign this morning — together — at a press event in the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy. McCue is unfazed by strange bedfellows, having seen them pop up all around the country for the cause. “It brings parties together and people together,” she said. “The ONE Campaign consists of punk rockers and evangelicals, so this isn’t unusual.”

ONE has emerged as the go-to anti-poverty campaign because of its name, Internet site and profile. The campaign has already identified 17,000 members in Nevada — people who signed up on its Web site using a Nevada address.

The campaign hopes to use its members as volunteer grass-roots activists who will fan out from Las Vegas to Reno to Elko and attend community events with presidential candidates. Global AIDS might not exactly be something a candidate expects to have to address in Pahrump, but ONE will try to change that.

The origin of the campaign here has been a true confluence of those concerned about poverty.

Political consultant Terry Murphy, who has been an avid personal supporter of the campaign and something of the Nevada group’s ambassador, suggested Porter would be a great advocate in Nevada.

“He’s been very supportive and very active,” said Megan Jones, ONE’s state director. Jones, who worked on the campaign for Porter’s last opponent, didn’t dole out the accolades wantonly. She said Porter has in fact been a leading supporter.

Jones is joined by Matt Higginson, who worked for Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson’s gubernatorial campaign last year and also ran the successful re-election campaign for Tessa Hafen’s father, Henderson City Councilman Andy Hafen.

Part of what makes the ONE Campaign stand out (beyond the obvious bipartisan support) is the true faith found in its staff members. These aren’t just people earning a paycheck to work on a temporary political campaign.

They are active in community and church service. They even work on micro-lending on the side.

Eradicating poverty or AIDS in Africa may seem an endless task. ONE hopes to increase the percentage of the U.S. budget spent to assist in the crisis. It lobbies for fair trade and debt cancellation and has about 2.4 million supporters nationwide.

McCue said the main way ONE hopes to elevate the issue is by stressing how extreme global poverty can impact our own national security. She said she left Reid’s office to work for the campaign because there has not historically been an effective anti-poverty lobby on Capitol Hill. ONE hopes to fill that void.

If you’re interested in finding out more about ONE Nevada, there’s a launch party this afternoon at Moon in the Palms from 4 to 6 p.m. Even better is the ONE.org Web site and its political offshoot — ONEVote08.org — where you can actually track the physical movement of each presidential candidate.

Pinning them down on global poverty may prove a bit harder.

Erin Neff’s column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at (702) 387-2906, or by e-mail at eneff@reviewjournal.com.