Foot Soldiers Fight to Boost Turnout

From political lieutenants plotting precinct walks to campaign grunts bunkered in phone banks, party activists are waging an expensive and sweeping ground war to turn out votes here and in other battleground states as the closest presidential fight in four decades heads toward its final week.

Republicans and Democrats alike appear poised to shatter spending records to boost voter turnout, and party elders say the ferocity of grass-roots activity around the country is at a level unseen for a generation.

With George W. Bush and Al Gore virtually deadlocked in national polls, the next president could well be decided by the true believers of the trenches, the political volunteers and low-paid activists fighting block by block in battlegrounds like Beaverton, a leafy community on Portland’s suburban rim.

Pundits and polls count less in these final moments of the presidential campaign than die-hards such as Carolyn Lee, the Democratic field coordinator in Beaverton. The 22-year-old history buff unabashedly calls Al Gore her Robert F. Kennedy.

Across the suburban front lines is Scott Bruun, 34, a Portland bank executive and Republican regional campaign chairman. In George W. Bush he hears echoes of the Ronald Reagan years.

Lee and Bruun are among thousands of party faithful around the country pushing hard until 8:01 p.m. election day.

While national polls are essentially even, the more important competition is the state-by-state contest to garner the 270 electoral votes needed to take the White House.

Florida remains the biggest tossup state. At the same time, more than a dozen other states still are effectively in play--a list that has defied convention by expanding rather than shrinking as Nov. 7 nears. The race is the closest in decades, and that’s where people like Lee and Bruun come in.

Republicans are jazzed by the prospect--after eight years outside the Oval Office--of fielding a winner. Even states like Oregon, long a Democratic presidential stronghold, are up for grabs.

“For the first time in my adult lifetime, we can take this state,” says Bruun, one of Bush’s first Oregon volunteers. “Republicans are fired up.”

Nationally, the Republican Party has upward of $70 million to spend to get out the vote, roughly triple 1996’s war chest. And that’s just the start. The National Rifle Assn. talks of spending as much as $15 million, much of it to nudge people to the polls. The Christian Coalition is expected to distribute millions of voter guides boosting Bush.

Tom Cole, Republican National Committee chief of staff, calls it “our most extensive and intensive turnout effort in modern history.”

Though devoted to Gore, rank-and-file Democrats seem prodded as much by fear, by the abyss, of the loss of the presidency and the ideological shift that could follow.

“We’d like to see him 20 points up,” says Lee, who returned home to Oregon after college and campaign stops for Gore in New York and Iowa. “But it energizes us knowing that this race is basically in our hands.”

Her party may be outspent nationally 2 to 1 by the GOP. The Democrats figure to even the ledger with help from organized labor, environmentalists and abortion rights advocates.

This fight for votes is particularly frenzied in the suburbs of America, the edge cities near Detroit or Pittsburgh or Seattle. Catherine Hanaway, the GOP campaign director in St. Louis, a key battleground, says, “We’re running like we’re running for a city council seat.”

Looking for Support at $3 a Head

In the South, Democrats are scratching to gain ground. The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People chapter in Huntsville, Ala., is offering $3 for every new voter registered by churches or civic groups.

Both parties are pouring activists and money into Florida. Liz Lubow, a Gore campaign spokeswoman, suspects that the biggest turnout effort in state history is unfolding.

But the earliest start to election day is in Oregon.

The state has the nation’s first all-mail election, with ballots dispatched 18 days before the rest of the country votes. As a result, Oregon GOP executive director Darryl Howard feels like Bill Murray’s character in “Groundhog Day.”

“From now through Nov. 7,” he says, “we’ll wake up each day, look at the alarm and say it’s election day.”

Though Oregon has a scant seven electoral votes, the fight is intense in places like Washington County, a mix of rural enclaves and prosperous suburbia. Nike’s world headquarters is in Beaverton. Intel has a plant in nearby Hillsboro. The county is an edgy mix of Republicans, Democrats and independents.

Carolyn Lee wants any she can get.

At the Democrats’ Beaverton headquarters, tucked between a hair salon and a skateboard shop, Lee cracks open a Diet Coke and settles in for another 17-hour workday.

Lists written on butcher paper of precinct walkers and phone bank volunteers cover a wall. A multicolor construction paper sign reminds: “Get Out the Vote.”

This is her life.

“The real election is going to be the war door to door,” she says. “It’s what campaigns should be about.”

Recruits are rolling in.

Bill and Joan Hawkesworth are old-guard Democrats but haven’t volunteered in years. They see that Gore’s in trouble and they want to knock on doors, turn out the recalcitrant.

“Give us all the undecided voters,” Joan Hawkesworth says. “I’ll talk them into voting for Al Gore.”

Lee smiles. Her team already has knocked on 4,000 doors in this county. But many more await. The Hawkesworths can help.

Earnest and quick to smile, Lee grew up just down the Willamette Valley. Her family bought a Christmas tree farm in Albany, about 60 miles south of Beaverton, then couldn’t bring itself to fell the firs. On a shelf in her office is a well-worn copy of Gore’s environmental book, “Earth in the Balance.” She read it as a teenager. Lee was among the Gore campaign’s first interns, rising up through the ranks.

“Al Gore isn’t flashy,” she says, “but he gets it done.”

Breaking With Family Tradition

Across the great divide of this presidential campaign, Scott Bruun didn’t seem destined to be a Republican.

His grandfather was John F. Kennedy’s Oregon finance chairman; his father was a devoted Democrat.

Bruun broke the mold, going Republican in college. He ran for Congress in 1996--and lost--in a Democratic district. In 1998, he joined with Bush.

“George W. Bush captures the best of his dad and Ronald Reagan,” Bruun says. “He combines the warmth, the folksy quality. And the vision thing.”

Campaign work is wedged into scant free time, between work and a 2-year-old daughter at home. But he has helped forge a formidable machine. Like activists around the U.S., the Oregon GOP has used e-mail to assemble a pyramid of volunteers--2,000 in Portland’s tri-county area.

Over at Sailor’s Old Country Kitchen, 100 of the best have gathered for a Saturday precinct walk. It is double the expected turnout.

In an overheated back room, Tommy Merritt, up on a chair, fires up the faithful.

Merritt, a lawmaker in the Lone Star State and a second-generation oilman, is here with the “Texas Strike Force,” a team of Bush loyalists. Like some high school football coach at halftime, Merritt talks of victory. And of changing America.

“We’re going to turn this country over!” Merritt roars with a Texas twang. “We’ll work these neighborhoods hard!”

The crowd hoots and claps.

“Let’s go show them!”

Gore has his own home state team, the “Gore Corps.”

Clad in red shirts, a dozen of these political soldiers from Tennessee have come to the Portland suburbs to help Carolyn Lee pitch for votes at Beaverton’s Elsie Stuhr Senior Center.

It doesn’t go as planned. Though the event was cleared days before, the center’s top staffer on duty is balking.

As Lee haggles, the Gore Corps disperses, getting the job done on the sly.

Luvenia Butler stops in on four elderly women playing pinochle.

“What can we do for you, dear?” one woman inquires.

The four ladies of the Pacific Northwest and this woman from Nashville hit it off. It turns out they like Gore. The visit helps cement their votes.

“All I hear Bush say is he doesn’t trust government,” says Lucile Miller, laying down a winning hand. “If he’s going to be part of the government, why doesn’t he trust it?”

Out in a Beaverton neighborhood, Bruun also is trolling for votes. Half a dozen campaign walkers are there. Tina Dickerson sports a button: “Friends don’t let friends vote Democrat.”

The campaign computer has spit out a list of balky Republicans who haven’t voted lately and independents still liable to be swayed.

Up a narrow street, Bruun knocks on doors.

One woman answers in her stocking feet, a slab of coffee cake in hand. She admits she hasn’t voted in a decade, saying she is disgusted by the Clintons. At several other houses, people say they plan to vote for Bush. Some have already mailed back their ballots.

“A human contact can help,” Bruun says.

But human contact is rare, despite the hordes of volunteers in campaign 2000. The most prevalent voice this election season will be an automated phone call to targeted voters.

Simple Math Dictates Strategy

It is simple campaign math. A recorded phone call costs maybe 15 cents, one-third the price of a live call. Campaign strategists can have recorded messages from prominent people such as Barbara Bush, President Clinton or the Rev. Jesse Jackson automatically dispatched to a million of their closest friends in a single evening.

Bruun turns onto a dead-end street of new homes. A blond woman answers his first knock. She’s holding back a tiny yapping dog.

The Republican asks if she would be interested in some Bush literature.

Her lips purse.

She shakes her head no.

“Sorry.”

The door closes with a definitive thump.

Bruun shrugs.

Across the street, an Oregon Duck fan is loading his car to head down to Eugene for the football game.

“You may have swayed me,” the Duck fan says after hearing the Republican’s spiel. “I haven’t seen any Gore people yet.”

He obviously wasn’t in rush-hour traffic on Highway 217 the evening before.

Lee and her gang were gathered at an overpass, placards in hand. Traffic was at a crawl below; a perfect audience.

A Volvo driver tooted his horn, blinked his lights and gave a thumbs up to the Democrats. Two guys in a Honda gave a double thumbs down. The driver of a Cadillac, more demonstrative, opted for a different digit.

“At least we got a Mercedes,” noted Lee’s older sister Chris, who toted a sign.

The cars kept coming. Drivers gestured: thumbs up, thumbs down.

A Buick: yes.

A BMW: no.

If the overpass poll is any indication, the electorate of Washington County is--just like the rest of the country--profoundly divided.

Lee doffed the sign and headed back to make phone calls and juggle details. Her day didn’t end until after midnight.

She will fight from the trenches right up to election day; she and Scott Bruun and a million other activists like them.

Because this year they know that that trite old saying could prove true.

This year, they might be the difference.