Phone Calls, Home Visits Target Voters

With fewer than a third of Los Angeles voters expected to cast ballots in Tuesday’s election, Mayor James K. Hahn and challenger Antonio Villaraigosa have crafted elaborate plans to target supporters and goad them to the polls.

Hahn has hired a Texas telemarketing firm to supplement his local campaign workers in urging tens of thousands of precisely chosen L.A. voters to support his reelection. Responses are tracked by computer in preparation for follow-up calls to confirmed Hahn supporters before the polls close Tuesday night.

Villaraigosa operatives, all local, have tracked down 80,000 supporters of the city councilman through phone calls and home visits. In his South L.A. campaign office, the walls are covered with brightly hued maps of the city, including one that shows how many of those supporters live in each of 1,610 election precincts.

This weekend, the campaigns plan to dispatch hundreds of workers -- thousands if they can -- across neighborhoods from San Pedro to Sylmar to remind supporters to vote.

Strategists say the thousands of phone calls and home visits by Hahn and Villaraigosa forces could play an important role in deciding the election after a rancorous campaign that has turned off many voters.

“If turnout is low, a relatively small increment could make a very big difference,” said Democratic strategist Darry Sragow, who is not aligned with either candidate in the mayoral race.

For Hahn, the death last week of Miguel Contreras, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, cast uncertainty over his get-out-the-vote plan. Organized labor is the backbone of Hahn’s campaign field operations.

But unions already have spent more than $1.7 million on Hahn’s reelection bid.

And although the shock of Contreras’ death and memorials in his honor have distracted labor leaders, union officials said their plans to assist Hahn -- set in motion weeks ago -- would not be disrupted.

“Now we’re just working with heavy hearts,” said Pat McOsker, president of the city’s firefighters union.

At the mayor’s Miracle Mile campaign headquarters, bulletin boards are covered with scripts for Hahn’s phone crews -- some of them union volunteers, others employees of the Texas firm, the Tyson Organization, that Hahn has paid $150,000 to call voters during the runoff race.

Although the scripts promote Hahn, they also attack Villaraigosa.

One, targeted to Republicans, questions his former leadership of the region’s American Civil Liberties Union chapter. Another, geared to African Americans, accuses Villaraigosa of hiring too few black staff members and casts Hahn as a champion of diversity.

Another plays up the mayor’s residence in San Pedro. “In the harbor, we say the mayor lives here -- he’s a hometown boy,” said Hahn field director Donnie Fowler.

To track results from the calls -- and from home visits -- Hahn campaign volunteer Maria Molina waves an electronic wand across a list of voters. Her laptop beeps like a supermarket checkout register as she passes the wand across each voter’s barcode.

“I’m just scanning the ‘yes’ and ‘undecided,’ ” she said. Results added to Hahn’s database will enable his campaign to identify which voters are worth prodding to the polls on election day.

Similar activity is occurring this week at a strip mall at South Figueroa and West 51st streets, where Local 434B of the Service Employees International Union dispatches hundreds of volunteers and paid workers on field work for Hahn. Most of it is targeted to older black voters.

The union’s precinct walkers, who focus on South L.A., have encountered bitterness toward Hahn over the ouster of Bernard C. Parks, an African American, as police chief, said Frank Prater, who runs the office.

He said the walkers are trained to respond: “If you have any resentments about it, let it go.”

The SEIU local has reported spending more than $230,000 on Hahn field operations, concentrated in South L.A.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has put another $190,000 into field work for Hahn, also in South L.A. On Mother’s Day, union workers went door to door with roses to sweeten women’s feelings toward Hahn, said Adam Acosta, the union’s Southern California political director.

On the Villaraigosa side, the commander of field operations, Anthony Thigpenn, splits his time among campaign outposts in Boyle Heights, Pico Union, Van Nuys, the Westside and the Crenshaw district.

On Wednesday, Thigpenn and Councilman Martin Ludlow scanned the campaign’s latest maps at the Crenshaw Boulevard office, wedged in a strip mall between a nail salon and a karaoke supplies store.

On the biggest map of Los Angeles, labeled “The Runoff Battle,” bright green precincts are the ones Villaraigosa won in the March election. Hahn won the red ones, former state Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg the pink ones and Parks, now a city councilman, the blue ones.

Thigpenn points to a few “micro-battlegrounds” for the field campaign: the precincts that Hertzberg won in Cheviot Hills, Mar Vista and Westchester and the ones that Parks won in Pacoima and Lakeview Terrace.

Another set of maps, casting L.A. in shades of orange and yellow, illustrates how many voters showed up in March to vote in every precinct. It shows that relatively few voters turned out in the heavily Latino districts where Villaraigosa ran strongest, so a major goal in the runoff is to spur a higher turnout in those areas, Thigpenn said.

Another map, updated daily, shows how many of the 80,000 Villaraigosa voters located by the campaign reside in each precinct. It will help his field organizers decide which neighborhoods are dense enough with Villaraigosa supporters to make precinct walks on election day worthwhile.

“In a low-turnout election,” Thigpenn said, “the ability of a campaign to identify its voters and get them to the polls is going to be decisive.”

On Tuesday, Villaraigosa plans to dispatch 1,500 to 2,000 campaign workers to walk door to door to the homes of supporters. Starting at 4:30 a.m., they will hang election day reminders on doorknobs throughout the city, Thigpenn said.

About 150 more campaign workers will telephone known Villaraigosa supporters, cross them off the list once they confirm they voted or call them back later if they don’t.

For supporters who need a ride to the polls, the campaign is assembling a squad of cars and vans to take them.

As for Hahn, the Tyson telemarketing crews and local campaign workers expect to call 200,000 confirmed supporters of the mayor on election day, while 800 to 1,000 precinct walkers will hit the streets, Fowler said. Trucks with loudspeakers will roam the streets, and voters will be urged to cast ballots for Hahn.

“We’re going to beg with them and plead with them, and persuade them gently, and put them in a van, and take them to a polling place, and call them 12 times until they’ve voted,” Fowler said. “We’re just going to drive Hahn’s voters crazy until we’re sure they’ve gone and cast that ballot.”