January 8, 2009
Yes he can: UW student plans Obama’s premier inaugural ball
UW student Devin Hampton is just 10 credits shy of earning his undergraduate degree in political science, but he’s not worried about walking in a graduation ceremony anytime soon. He’s too busy planning a much bigger celebration — the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.
Hampton, 28, is event manager for the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball, the largest of 10 official inaugural balls to take place in Washington, D.C. and the first one Obama will attend as President. The ball will celebrate the Obama family’s new “neighborhood” — a number of tickets are set aside for D.C. residents — and tickets will be free or an affordable price, making this the most inclusive and accessible inaugural celebration in history.
So how did Hampton go from UW undergrad to planning the biggest party of an already historic inauguration? He kicked off his whirlwind journey rather unconventionally — by not going to class.
Hampton first attended UW out of high school, but left after a rough first year. He got a job as a union worker at Alaska Airlines and worked as a model around the country. “I was working full time and having fun just partying,” Hampton said in a phone interview. “I love to meet people and work in different environments all over the place, and I was just out doing that.”
When he was laid off from Alaska Airlines after five years of work, Hampton decided to use his severance pay to go back to school. The transition didn’t come easily. He went to school intermittently, working full time at various jobs and never focusing his complete attention on academics. In 2005, a mutual friend who knew Hampton was having trouble with school asked Professor David Domke to keep an eye on him in his American Press and Politics class, but Hampton didn’t do very well — he rarely even showed up.
Domke and Hampton met again in 2007 when they attended their mutual friend’s Stanford graduation. As they shared a ride back to the airport, Hampton sought Domke’s advice about pursuing work in politics.
“He was like a new person,” Domke said of Hampton. “He really seemed to have turned his life around and was really interested in getting involved in politics.”
“I just kind of slowly woke up one day and realized I had to get my life together,” Hampton said. He expressed interest in working for the Obama campaign in an e-mail to the Washington State campaign director, but got no response. “It made sense because I had no experience and didn’t know how to do anything,” he said.
Determined to find work in politics but lacking contacts, Hampton struck up political conversations with patrons of a Queen Anne wine bar where he worked as a bartender. It was there that he got to know a regular customer, Tim Burgess, who mentioned he was running for city council.
“He just lit up,” Burgess said in a phone interview. “He told me, ‘I don’t have a lot of money but I have a lot of time, and I would like to volunteer on your campaign.'”
Hampton did just that. As the self-proclaimed “lowest guy on the totem pole,” Hampton recruited other volunteers, stuffed letters for mailing and knocked on doors for Burgess, who won his council seat in November of 2007.
From that point on, Hampton’s budding political career went into overdrive. He worked for free as a legislative intern for Councilman Burgess and became a familiar face at the city council. “I met people and started getting my name around,” Hampton said. “Tim really helped me become part of the establishment.”
“I was impressed with his enthusiasm, his ability to focus, his character. He is a very likable guy and fits into almost any situation,” Burgess said. “I think people quickly recognized that he had the ability to get things done and do it in a very competent, professional way.”
Governor Chris Gregoire’s camp took notice of Hampton and tapped him to work for her reelection campaign as a field organizer in the spring of 2008. Hampton planned several stops on Gregoire’s statewide bus tour, managed volunteers and organized local campaign events.
“The guy has an incredible ability to connect with people,” Domke said. “There are very few people I know who can just walk into a room and immediately be friends with everybody in the room. That’s the whole art of politics — to be able to connect with people and still get things done.”
In May, Hampton received the e-mail he had been hoping for all along. The Obama campaign’s director of advance asked Hampton to help with a town hall event in Pendleton, Ore., to get a taste of advance work — organizing logistics for campaign events, planning the candidate’s every move and preparing for anything that could go wrong.
Fortunately for Hampton, the Pendleton event went right — so right that the Obama campaign called in June and had him on a flight to Unity, N.H., the next day to work on Obama’s first campaign appearance with Hillary Clinton.
From there, he did advance work for an event in Seattle, then Orlando, and then — well, Hampton can’t really remember. He spent the next four months racing around the country as part of the national advance staff, organizing events for Joe Biden, Michelle Obama and Howard Dean in addition to Obama himself.
When asked to describe what he did to prepare for any given event, Hampton’s answer is simply, “Everything.” He could only make a comparison: “It’s like if you have to plan a birthday party for 20 people in two days — except it’s for 10,000 people.
“Every single trip I did on the campaign, I had a moment where I was like, ‘I can’t do this — I need sleep, I need food,'” he said. “And then a second later I would find myself saying, ‘I can do this.’ When something seems impossible, it just means it’s going to be more fun.”
Hampton certainly had fun on Nov. 4. He watched Obama’s acceptance speech at Grant Park in Chicago, then immediately got to work on Obama’s first press conference and first economic advisers meeting as President-elect. Now, less than one week until the 44th President’s historic inauguration, Hampton is still running at full speed planning the Neighborhood Ball.
He said he will spend most of the historic day making sure things go smoothly at the ball, but will also make time to go to the swearing in. “My dad will be here and I really want to be there to experience the ceremony with him,” Hampton wrote in an e-mail. “I’ll never truly understand what it was like for him and his generation to grow up in the segregated South. I’m glad that we will be able to share the moment that symbolizes America has woken up.”
As for Hampton’s post-inauguration plans, he’s hoping to stick with what he’s learned to do so well this past year. “I definitely hope to work in the Obama administration,” he said. “I would like to do advance work for cabinet level officials, or be a special assistant and schedule appearances. That’s what I’ve been trained to do — manage people.”
“I am extremely proud of Devin,” said Burgess, who in late November held a packed party at his Queen Anne home in celebration of Hampton’s achievements. “It was a delight to watch him soar, and that’s what he’s done. He’s soared and used his gifts and abilities in an incredible, incredible way.”
Domke, who also stays in touch with Hampton, agreed. “To me, he’s indicative of what anybody who works really hard, relentlessly, and seizes opportunities, can accomplish,” he said. “He’s a real success story for the UW, someone who turned his life around. The trajectory upwards is very favorable for him.”
With boundless opportunities ahead of him, will Hampton soon be able add “UW graduate” to his impressive resume? There’s no way he can go back to school in person, he said, but with just two foreign language classes left to go, Hampton hopes to be able to finish online. “I just need to convince the University I can speak Spanish,” he said with a laugh.
Ask anyone who knows Hampton and they’ll probably say he will pull it off. That’s just what he does.
The Neighborhood Inaugural Ball will be broadcast live on ABC and online Jan. 20. Visit the Presidential Inaugural Committee Web site to learn more about this and other inaugural celebrations.
