When the Democratic candidates signed a pledge not to campaign in
Florida for the presidential primaries this year, as punishment for the
state's decision to move up the state's primary ahead of the official
date, that didn't faze veteran volunteer Linda Bird. The successful
realtor from Fort Lauderdale, Florida knew she could rally grassroots
support for her favorite candidate without any help from the national
campaign.

Linda's personal e-mail list reads like a who's who of
movers and shakers in South Florida. Head of Bird Realty for 22 years,
she's found homes for the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and other
powerful folk. She's been named Woman of the Year by the American
Cancer Society and won awards for her volunteer work with the NAACP and
Planned Parenthood. Currently, she's president of the board of
directors for Friends of OUR House, raising funds for a treatment
center for child victims of sexual assault.

A member of the
DNC's Women's Leadership Forum and a board member of the Florida
Democratic Professionals Council, Linda's been a foot soldier for Dems
in every presidential contest over the past 16 years -- even as she
raised two daughters. She wasn't going to let a little setback like a
ban on campaigning in her home state hold her back this primary season.
Do-Gooder caught up with Linda in between rounds as she shuttled voters
to the polls for early voting in the state's primary.

How did you get involved in political organizing?

During
the Clinton-Gore campaign,
I volunteered a little bit when my children were small. I would stuff
envelopes and I would bring food to the campaign center. All these
college kids looked hungry and as a mother I had to feed them.

Then with Gore-Lieberman, I took a month off work and got very involved
in that campaign. I was a jack of all trades at that point.

The
next campaign was Kerry-Edwards. I was working as a
volunteer with Women for Kerry. I helped organize some women’s events
around town.

Later I became president of a Democratic club, Broward Democratic Women, and I
increased the membership of that group.

What exactly are you doing for the Hillary Clinton campaign?

Nothing!
I’m not a member of a campaign. [See, she's not violating the ban on
official campaigning.] But as a volunteer activist, I’m doing a lot. We
have organized a lot of events that are just so much fun. Most of it
has been sign waving on street corners, with home made signs, and
getting some elderly people out to vote. We had a little house party
where we had everyone come and talk about the issues.

I’ve
raised close to $23,000 as a Hillary volunteer by encouraging
others to donate.

How have you managed to organize without help from the national campaign?

As soon as the candidates signed the agreement and it
became clear they were not going to be able to campaign, I said, You know
what? We can do this. I had gone to a Hillary summit up in Washington DC, so I had some literature.

We
started with a nucleus of about three of us. One
woman recently retired from American Express; she brought her
capabilities and mailing list and business sense. We were trying to get
people out to early voting, and she would call me and say: "I had 60
percent of the polling places completely filled."

I’m the sales person; I did the phone
calling. I have a ton of lists from my volunteer work in Broward County.

The third is a woman who is retiring in the next month. She had
the place where we meet. She had about 20 people come to a meeting. Then we had a
visibility event on a street corner, and 16 people volunteered. I had
a holiday house party at my house and we had 65 people come to that.

With that little group of women, we
grew and grew and grew. Now we have a
group of 211 women. It’s a wonderful group of professional women who said, We
can organize on a grass roots level.

Why
bother, when the DNC has taken away Florida's delegates at the national
convention in Denver in August? Does this primary even count?

The candidate who is elected after Super Tuesday will actually take
over the convention; they will be able to make the
decisions about who will be seated. I don’t know
any candidate who will say, Florida and Michigan will not be seated.
Hillary has said she has pushed for the delegates to be seated.

Apart from the delegates, Florida is a
referendum; it’s a slice of America, much more than Iowa or South
Carolina.

What are the big issues for voters in Florida?

We’ve got a lot of support in the community because people are hurting.
They’re hurting every time they go to the gas station and pay $3.19 a
gallon.

For
example, myself, I have a $12,000 price tag on my health care and a
$2,000 per person deductible in my family. We need to have universal
health care just like the congress has.

Why Hillary?

Because she’s a
mother and she’s a professional woman -- a professional who happens to
be a woman. She can build coalitions across the aisle. She’s taken
every issue and worked hard on it. She’s a work horse, not a show
horse. All the other senators totally respect her.

When if comes to children's welfare, it’s important that we have a president who understands the issues. If
you elect the right person you don’t have to beg them to do what’s
right. Hillary has been a children’s advocate and she absolutely
understands as a mother that the least of us have to be taken care of.

How does it feel to be volunteering for a woman presidential candidate?

It
is so exciting that we’re making history. This group of women I’m
working with all faced discrimination in the work place. We all hit the
glass ceiling. We’re enjoying seeing a competent woman go as far as she
can go.