CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : Signing Up New Voters Is No Job for the Shy

Rowland Johnson knows you want to avoid him. He can see it in your eyes, from the moment you spot the clipboard in his hand or read his red, white and blue sign: “Democrats Register to Vote Here.” But Johnson is difficult to ignore.

“How you doing, ma’am? Are you registered?” He has placed himself between you and your destination--in this case the grocery store--and as you speed up, he matches your stride. “I know you want to get rid of Pete Wilson,” he says, smiling warmly and greeting all excuses with a polite shake of his head. “It’ll only take a minute.”

Johnson, who works nights driving a forklift, is by day one of the Democratic Party’s most persuasive registrars. To sign up just a few more Democrats, he carries groceries, comforts babies, even push-starts a stalled car. “I don’t have no time,” said the man whose car he helped revive the other day at Slauson and Vermont Avenues. Johnson refused to be denied. “You would have been here 15 minutes if I hadn’t come along,” he said, winking as he handed the man a pen.

*

What if the state of California held an election and nobody came? As the murder trial of O. J. Simpson threatens to eclipse the Nov. 8 election, the battle to energize voters has taken on a new intensity. And Johnson, 38, is on the front line.

He and 17 other men and women staff the Crenshaw office of the California Democratic Party’s Ironing Board Project, a statewide voter registration drive named for the ironing boards the workers carry with them as tables. The Democratic Party is paying several hundred people throughout California up to $8 an hour to do what Johnson does.

What if a Republican wants to register? “We train people to say, ‘We’re registering Democrats. Have a nice day!’ ” said Jim Alford, coordinator of the project, one of several party-sponsored registration drives that seek to sign up a total of 600,000 new Democrats before the Oct. 11 deadline. “We have to give a (registration) card to anyone who requests it. But we don’t have to assist them.”

Not to worry. The Republican Party has its own registration effort, called Operation Bounty, which is seeking to sign up 244,000 new GOP voters. Volunteers do most of the recruiting, said John Peschong, a party spokesman. But to provide an incentive, the state party pays its county organizations $2.50 per new registrant. And it has hired a professional firm to register tens of thousands more.

The two partisan armies tend to canvass different neighborhoods. GOP recruiters often head for the suburbs, while Democrats focus largely on urban areas, like Johnson’s turf: South-Central Los Angeles.

Lately, Johnson and his colleagues have signed up nearly 2,000 Democrats a week in neighborhoods both blighted and bustling. “Keys to Success,” says a handwritten list posted on the wall. “Positive Attitude. Eye Contact. Talk to Everybody.” There are easier ways to make a buck.

“If you’re shy and really quiet, this is not the job for you,” Y’Londa Pressey, the director of the Crenshaw office, told her colleagues the other day just before their six-hour shift began. “If you’ve got to swing your arm, swing it out. Get their attention.”

Turning to Johnson, who once signed up a whopping 58 people in a single day, she grinned. “Work your magic,” she said.

*

“I’ve never had a slow day,” says Johnson. “And I don’t plan to start.”

On this afternoon, his ironing board sits in front of the Boys Market at Slauson and Vermont. Clipboard in hand, Johnson paces like a carnival barker. Experience has shown that you cannot tell a Democrat just by looking at him. So he reaches out to everybody.

“How you doing, sir?” he calls, stepping up to meet a potential Democrat at the edge of the parking lot. “ Hola, amigo! Registered?”

Despite his friendly demeanor, some of the people Johnson tackles seem afraid of him. “Not a citizen,” said one man who ducked his head and hurried by. Other people mistakenly think that what Johnson offers is no longer theirs to take.

“I can’t vote,” said one embarrassed-looking young man--one of several who told Johnson they believed a prior felony conviction prevented them from ever voting again. Johnson was quick to correct them.

“As long as you ain’t on parole, you can vote,” he said, stopping this young man just as he reached the door. The man turned and stared as the words sunk in.

“I don’t have to pay no money?” he asked, his voice no longer ashamed.

“Noooo, huh-uh,” Johnson said, steering him toward the ironing board.

This scene played out several times during Johnson’s shift. “Penitentiary,” one young man told him. “Felony,” muttered another. When Johnson explained the rules--that as long as you are a U.S. citizen, 18 years old and not in prison or on parole, you can vote--their faces softened as if he had given them a gift.

But ignorance is easier to remedy than apathy. “Ain’t none of ‘em no good,” a heavyset woman told Johnson as she breezed by. Politicians, she said, “don’t do nothing for you.”

“Well, maybe if we got a new person in,” Johnson said, “that might change things.”

She shook her head. “They’re only for the rich, not the poor.”

An older man in a baseball cap, his hands full of groceries, said he had already registered. But he had little hope that his vote would make much of a difference.

“The only way it’s going to change is if we vote, right?” Johnson said.

“No,” the man said. “Faith in Jesus.”

Johnson flashed a smile. “Well, that too,” he said.

*

For Johnson, registering Democrats is not a mission of ideology. It is a job.

Johnson found that out two months ago, when a man with an ironing board persuaded him to register. “I could do that,” he said to himself, and when he learned that he could earn $320 a week for a few months, he was even more enthusiastic.

He is persistent and charming and possesses an instinctive marketing ability, a knack for using what works.

On this afternoon, he tells the unregistered about the new “three strikes” law and reminds young people of Wilson’s embrace of the death penalty. (“Wilson’s the one that’s gonna hang you if y’all get in trouble,” he says.) During nearly five hours on the street, he mentions the name of Democratic challenger Kathleen Brown not a single time.

In all likelihood, only a fraction of the people Johnson registers will actually vote Nov. 8. Democrats in general tend not to vote as faithfully as Republicans. Both parties are planning aggressive get-out-the-vote efforts to boost their numbers. But that is someone else’s job.

Johnson spots a woman hurrying to catch a bus. “There’s always another bus coming,” Johnson calls after her. “Here I come now!” he shouts, starting to sprint. “I’m going to come to you!”

Maybe his tenacity impressed her--or simply wore her down. But Johnson gets his way. “Now,” he says, handing the woman a receipt, “that didn’t take a minute, did it?”