By The Huffington Post News Editors

(Repeats without changes to headline or text)
* Jon Carson is entrusted with Obama‘s grassroots machine
* Low-profile aide leads outside effort to pass Obama agenda
* Organizing for Action holds major D.C. meeting Wednesday
By Samuel P. Jacobs
NEW YORK, March 12 (Reuters) – On Wednesday, some of President Barack Obama‘s most dedicated donors will fly to Washington and pony up $50,000 to attend a fundraiser for Organizing for Action, a progressive new kid on the block trying to counter the likes of Karl Rove and the Koch brothers.
Obama will give a speech to the group, an independent non-profit that is trying to use the data, know-how, and connections of the president’s campaign to improve the chances of passing new gun laws and immigration reform.
Their host will be Jon Carson, a soft-spoken political operative who trained as a civil engineer. As the group’s executive director, he has been given the task of reviving one of the most successful campaign machines in history, and providing a counterweight to the multimillion-dollar empires managed by Republican strategist Rove and conservative billionaire activists David and Charles Koch.
On the face of it, Carson, a former Peace Corps volunteer, seems an odd fit for the snarling world of deep-pocketed, partisan organizations that came into their own in the 2012 campaign, unbridled by a Supreme Court decision allowing unrestricted amounts of money to flood into U.S. politics.
A survey of colleagues and even political rivals tends to bring back one word for Carson: “nice,” not necessarily the most desirable trait in politics today.
Compared to other top campaign advisers, Carson, 37, has maintained a low profile throughout the last four years working at the White House as an environmental adviser and then as director of the Office for Public Engagement.
Through a spokeswoman, Carson declined a request for an interview. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post