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I took a woman who supports Bush but has never been active in politics and knows little about the process to a Bush-Cheney regional training session. She scanned the list of possible volunteer activites and found phone bank.ID GOTV and asked me what it was. I explained and her eyes lit up. "I can do that! I am a people person!". She has signed up 3 new Republicans for Bush so far: one calls himself an independant and one is a life-long Dem who cannot stand Kerry. The other has no idea what they are, but supports the POTUS. She is working on another person who has never voted, ever.

Her message is:"This is too important to screw around with. We have to vote and we have to vote for the President or we will lose everything. We can argue over the rest of it after the election."

I have described this session on other threads: February 15 in SW Wisconsin, a Monday night at 6:30. We got there at 6:20 and the line was out the entrance door. They had to open up the back of the meeting room and order more cookies. They had been expecting party chairs and chairmen. They easily had close to 200 people there. It was packed and some people were sitting in clusters to the side on chairs, but not at tables. There was excitement in the buzz of voices (I have done a lot of trade shows and it was the high energy sort of buzz that means that business is being done). Everyone listened intently as the training went forward. They were focused and serious. The presenters were people one step away from Mehlman (sp) and Rove and they were professional, enthusiastic w/o being fake and very approachable.

La Crosse went for Gore in 2000. This is a Blue area of Wisconsin. This was wonderful and bodes well for the campaign and election.

BTW, they have begun the phone banks and voter ID here. One extremely Green county already has over its quota of campaign workers and one area in the NE corner wasn't yet up and running, but that was a week ago.