Minnesota (DOES THE GOP HAVE PEOPLE DRIVING PEOPLE TO THE POLLS?):
"The state hasn't gone Republican in a presidential election since 1972, but the spreading suburbs of the Twin Cities are providing increasingly fertile territory for the GOP, and Bush campaign aides think they can win.
"We're going to be outspent, we might be outgunned, but we won't be outworked," said Peter Hong, the Bush campaign's Minnesota spokesman.
More than 50,000 Minnesota volunteers are on the rolls for the Bush campaign, which uses them as the basic building block in its get-out-the-vote operation. Bush's campaign has targeted 17 of Minnesota's 87 counties for special effort on Election Day, hoping to bring out the president's most ardent supporters.
Stearns County is a target, as are suburban counties around the Twin Cities and some rural parts of the state. The GOP has a full-time field office in Waite Park, supporting Bush and U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy, as well as local candidates.
Each of the state's 4,100 precincts has a Bush campaign volunteer in charge of organizing turnout. The other volunteers will be enlisted into calling voters and knocking on doors during the last weekend before the election, as part of the campaign's
"72 Hour Project."
"It's hard for me to believe there are so many people still undecided," Pamela Rieland, 35, of Avon said as she knocked on doors and dropped off literature Oct. 16. None of the dozen or so undecided voters she was looking for was home.
Both campaigns sent miniature armies of volunteers out during a recent weekend, combing the state for the few voters who haven't been identified as a Bush or Kerry supporter yet.
Each campaign sent out walkers with extremely specific lists, looking for no more than a handful of voters on each block.
The lists were so targeted that in some cases the campaigns needed only to contact the husband or wife of a voter they already had on file.
Democrats, allies
Democrats had get-out-the-vote conventions in five Minnesota cities on the same day, trying to prepare hundreds of volunteers for the work they'd be doing on Election Day.
Working from the late Sen. Paul Wellstone's old campaign headquarters in St. Paul, where some of Minnesota's best field operations were mapped out, the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party has signed up 10,000 to 15,000 volunteers for the final few days. They've given out 60,000 lawn signs and have offices in 16 cities, including downtown St. Cloud.
"This will be the largest GOTV effort in the state's history," said Stacie Paxton, Kerry's spokeswoman in Minnesota. "It's the first time it's been a battleground state."
The Democratic effort will get a major boost from America Coming Together, a group supported by billionaire George Soros that had a $4 million budget in Minnesota to make sure they find every sympathetic voter in the state.
The group's organizers say they've figured out exactly how many votes Kerry will need to win the state, based on past results and expected turnout: 1,319,747.
By Oct. 16, their paid and volunteer field workers already had knocked on 460,000 doors, and before Election Day they plan to hit 700,000.
Canvassers sweep through neighborhoods in the Twin Cities, Duluth and Eveleth with detailed demographic data on their Palm Pilots, uploading the answers to questions they ask every night to update the master voter file.
To help win over undecided voters, the Palm Pilots also are loaded with 30-second videos featuring Minnesotans talking about seven issues in two languages.
On Election Day, as many as 4,000 volunteers will help bring people to polling places. America Coming Together has even recruited a fleet of cab drivers who will give free rides to voters."
http://miva.sctimes.com/miva/cgi-bin/miva?CMN/Local/read.mv+20041024045644+1+
Pennsylvania:
"Republicans have been tasked by the national Bush/Cheney campaign with turning out 125,152 votes for the president, which would be a record...
Republicans have been tasked by the national Bush/Cheney campaign with turning out 125,152 votes for the president, which would be a record.
County Democrat chairman Bruce Beardsley said he thinks the party can produce 70,000 votes for Kerry.
Count on this: If you don’t vote by early afternoon on Nov. 2, some party will be looking for you.
Rolling out the big gun
One of the best GOTV tools in the Republicans’ arsenal is coming to town Wednesday.
The visit to the Lancaster Airport by President Bush is expected to fire up the GOP faithful, as his trip to Hershey last week did.
As Bush supporters entered Republican headquarters Saturday to pick up tickets for the Wednesday rally, some were asked if they would be willing to help by making calls to voters at the campaign’s phone bank.
Republicans, whose biggest margins are in the suburban and rural parts of the county, can be expected to rely on phone calls and neighbor-to-neighbor contact to encourage potential Bush voters to get to the polls.
Chad Weaver, a co-chairman of the county Bush/Cheney campaign, was cagey about GOTV plans. Poll watchers and workers are being trained, he said, and “hundreds of volunteers” will be mobilized for election-day efforts.
Standard GOTV tools on election day involve poll watchers armed with lists of voters identified as supporters. As each voter checks in at the poll, the watcher crosses off the name.
Periodically, other volunteers take names of voters who haven’t turned out yet and start phoning or visiting the missing voters.
“We’re going to do whatever we can to encourage as many Lancastrians to come out and support the president on election day,” Weaver said.
Republicans also are going door-to-door in the city and suburbs. Monday afternoon, a local celebrity – Manheim Township High School and Franklin & Marshall College alumna Jennifer Gareis, who plays Grace on the soap opera “The Young and the Restless,” will be out stumping for Bush and Specter. The trek is organized by Specter’s campaign.
“She wanted to do something for Sen. Specter and President Bush while she was in town,” said Jess Yescalis, a local consultant for Specter and friend of Gareis’.
The national Bush campaign also is encouraging Republicans to each recruit two new Bush voters before election day.
Republicans here are being asked to work harder than ever.
The GOP-dominated “T” in central Pennsylvania has to perform strongly to help offset Kerry’s expected big margins in Philadelphia and some of its suburbs.
U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, a statewide Republican leader, has said that part of the reason Bush lost Pennsylvania to Al Gore in 2000 was that Republicans were blindsided by a surprisingly strong Democrat GOTV drive in Philadelphia.
An army of 800
Look for some of the same tactics that worked in 2000 for the Democrats to be employed here too.
With county Democrats posting strong registration gains from April to November, the party is now looking to make sure they vote.
Democrats and independents are being bombarded with mailings from the “527” organizations – ostensibly independent, but leaning toward one candidate or another, like America Coming Together and MoveOn.org – on Kerry’s behalf.
Another 45,000 pieces of literature have been mailed by the local party, with another 25,000 handed out at homes and community events.
Last Sunday, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, of Hispanic descent, spoke in Lancaster to energize the Hispanic community. Tonight at the Conestoga Lodge of Elks on South Duke Street, former U.S. senator Carol Moseley Braun will keynote a rally from 4 to 9 as part of the mobilization effort.
And, since much of the party’s strength is in urban areas, house-by-house vote hunts are happening daily.
Beardsley, the county chairman, said about 800 volunteers will be on the streets by election day, including poll watchers at each voting district and a team of attorneys ready to battle any election problems.
The Democrats’ force will include local party workers and activists from out-of-the-area unions.
Beardsley said the party has identified 60,000 to 65,000 voters “who we expect to vote our way,” whether Democrat, independent or Republican.
“All of these people will be contacted one way or the other by election day,” he said, with phone calls, literature drops or mailings.
He thinks the Democrats can expect 70,000 votes for Kerry, in contrast to Gore’s 56,000 in 2000.
In a boost for the Democrats, a team from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has been doing voter contact work in the city in recent days.
ACORN held a registration drive in Lancaster just before the Oct. 4 deadline.
One resident described the ACORN workers as “really aggressively tracking down voters. They are all from out of town. I have never seen this intensity in my neighborhood.”
Wes Lathrop, an ACORN spokesman in Philadelphia, said he believes all or nearly all of the roughly eight people here are local. They’ll be working through election day on voter contact and turnout.
City voters also got personal visits Saturday from a team of Kerry/Edwards volunteers bused in from the Washington area.
In addition to going door-to-door, some of the activists lined the sidewalks in Penn Square on Saturday and waved Kerry signs at passersby.
Cindy Shogan and Alina Stefanescu, two of the sign crew, said D.C. teams from the Kerry campaign have been coming to Pennsylvania recently to work in a swing state.
The goal: to turn out voters.
“This,” Beardsley said, “is where elections are won or lost.
http://www.lancasteronline.com/pages/news/local/4/9297