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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Most of the Republican ground game is being organized by the party and the Bush campaign, which claims 41,000 volunteers so far in the state. (The number includes people working in offices, disseminating signs and attending parades as well as canvassers and phone bank operators.) There are some complementary efforts by sympathetic groups but little on the ground. The National Rifle Association has run long infomercials and is mailing material to its supporters.
Although there is a strong and influential antiabortion movement, it seems disconnected from the presidential race. Christian Coalition national president Roberta Combs says, "We are very focused on Wisconsin. We plan to do voter guides. We're putting together a pretty massive grass-roots organization precinct by precinct." But other conservatives and some Republicans are skeptical. "The Christian Coalition is kind of anemic" here, says Matt Sande, spokesman for Pro-Life Wisconsin, which criticizes Bush for supporting any exceptions to abortion. "It's not existent in Wisconsin."
Kerry supporters working on the ground, however, are legion, though they often involve a bewildering array of groups that are related but distinct because they were established under the tax code as 501(c)3, 501(c)4, 527 or other types of organizations, limiting both any coordination with the Kerry campaign and to what extent -- if any -- they can advocate for a candidate.
There's also the traditional coordinated effort of the Kerry campaign itself and the Democratic Party, which claims 100 staff, 23 offices and 1,600 trained war leaders around the state, many of them working on phone banks, canvassing and providing support for the frequent trips of the candidates and surrogates to Wisconsin. But the efforts beyond the campaign are even more substantial.
The labor movement -- representing 18 percent of the state's workforce, nearly half again above the national average -- has played the largest and longest role in direct mobilization. In 2000, polling indicated that 32 percent of Wisconsin voters came from union households. And union members vote more Democratic than people just like them who are not in unions.
"What we've been doing this year is just so far beyond anything we've ever done or attempted before that there's just no comparison," says state AFL-CIO president David Newby. "That includes the amount of communication taking place, the number of staff that unions have released to work the plan, the degree to which contact with union members is direct rather than indirect through mail." And labor leaders, including international union presidents, are doing much more than previously to keep track of who's doing what and spur laggards on, state federation executive vice president Sarah Rogers says.
The unions' grass-roots campaign started much earlier, too. "Activity hasn't really stopped since four years ago," says Seth Johnson, political director for Wisconsin AFSCME (public employees). "We've been campaigning for four years." Unions are sending members lots of literature, emphasizing the Bush records on jobs, healthcare and issues such as the right to organize unions and the elimination of overtime protection for millions of workers, but with only oblique criticism of the war in Iraq, which the Wisconsin AFL-CIO recently condemned. The Service Employees International Union, which nationally is spending $65 million on its political work, has also run television ads about healthcare.
But the heart of the effort is having union representatives talk to members at work and union members go door-to-door to talk to fellow unionists. By September more than 2,000 labor volunteers had reached at least 65,000 out of roughly 300,000 members at their homes, including a canvass that took place the evening of Bush's convention acceptance speech.
The other major ground effort is a newcomer, America Coming Together, a 527 group that has benefited from the largess of financier George Soros and other big Democratic donors. ACT's operation is larger than even labor's, but it also benefits from union support, like the SEIU Heroes assigned to its canvassing. "We have scores of canvassers, knocking on doors, dropping literature, taking the pulse of voters," says ACT spokesman Phil Walzack. "This allows us to come back and show how the Bush administration has failed on jobs, healthcare and education. We've aggressively pushed information about how Bush shortchanges homeland security, like cutting funding for air marshals." By late September, according to one account, ACT representatives had knocked on 900,000 doors in Wisconsin.
