There are many smaller initiatives, but nearly all of the advocacy groups outside the campaign come together under the umbrella of America Votes, which is also linked to the Media Fund, a 527 group that runs TV advertising. "What I try to do is make sure they're talking to each other, sharing information and resources and not duplicating in ways that don't make sense," says America Votes state director Peter Shakow. "You don't want the League of Conservation Voters knocking on a door and 10 minutes later the Sierra Club knocking on the same door."

Besides environmental groups, America Votes coordinates with ACT, pro-choice organizations (Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America), MoveOn.org, organized labor, Citizen Action (a 76,000-member consumer and citizens' rights group) and other groups focused on minority voters, youth and students, and gays. Even groups with similar agendas divide up the electorate. For example, the League of Conservation Voters is targeting more than 150,000 households with a broad message on jobs, healthcare, energy independence and the environment. The smaller Sierra Club Voter Education Project is targeting undecided voters with a comparison of the two presidential candidates on national environmental issues in areas where there are strong local concerns about the environment, such as working-class south Milwaukee, situated near a sewage-treatment plant, a neglected Superfund site and four coal-fired power plants.

Even though Wisconsin voters can register on Election Day, there has been an extensive effort to pre-register young voters (especially on campuses), minority communities and union members, often by officially nonpartisan groups that simply register and turn out voters. But when these efforts target heavily Democratic constituencies, like African-Americans, Democratic candidates disproportionately benefit. Citizen Action Fund, for example, works independently of its parent organization and has registered 28,000 new black and Latino voters. It will contact them and an additional 100,000 infrequent-voter households as many as nine times with literature and calls about the issues at stake -- "schools over jails, stopping racial profiling, ending unfair immigration laws, choosing healthcare over drug company profits, or creating an economy that creates good jobs," according to fund director Larry Marx. ("Peace over war" was too partisan, lawyers advised.) In one imaginative twist, the fund has created a service-learning project in 70 schools involving a curriculum on voting rights. As part of the curriculum, 2,000 schoolchildren in wards with low voter turnout have been spreading a message to adults throughout the ward: "Vote for me. I can't."

But the biggest boost for mobilizing African-American voters in Milwaukee -- and thus a bonus for Kerry -- may be the primary victory of state Sen. Gwen Moore, who will become the state's first black representative in Congress if she wins. Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to suppress the black vote, Walzack charges, for example, by backing a previously unknown group called People of Color United, financed by a white Republican millionaire insurance magnate who promotes health savings accounts and school vouchers, which has taken out ads in the black community denouncing both tickets as composed of "superwealthy white men" with no interest in blacks.

In rural areas of the state, both the Kerry campaign and independent groups are working to mobilize Native Americans, who traditionally have not participated strongly but lean Democratic, and rural voters, who are often abandoned to the Republicans. "We're putting organizations on the ground in north-central and southwest Wisconsin, finding media in town newspapers and seeing if we can get voters interested in self-interest economic issues instead of the social issues of guns, God and gays," says League of Rural Voters director Niel Ritchie. Still, the Kerry campaign plays up his interest in hunting in an attempt to neutralize the fears of gun owners. (The NRA and Republicans have scoffed at Kerry for trying to bolster his credentials by participating in a skeet shoot in Wisconsin.)

There are limits to even the best grass-roots efforts, however. The character of the candidates and the campaigns, and external developments with the war, the economy and even terrorism, are all potential limiting factors. Although Wisconsin's economy has rebounded more than that of other Midwestern battleground states, there has been no net job growth; 75,000 manufacturing jobs were lost from March 2001 to January 2004, while median family income has been falling and inequality rising, according to the Center on Wisconsin Strategy.

The pro-Kerry troops think they will prevail if Kerry can present a credible alternative to Bush on both the war in Iraq and the fight against terrorism while giving more of a populist jolt to his message about jobs and healthcare. "Our war is for those Republicans in our membership who otherwise agree with us on health and jobs issues," says Citizen Action's co-director Bob Hudek. "The war is probably what's keeping them with Bush. We've seen some data that the war is helping the president a little bit more in Wisconsin than in some of the other swing states." But if the war news continues to worsen, the post-debate response suggests there are anxious voters ready to turn away from Bush.

"The ultimate question is that we have to be close enough for the field operations to win it, within three or four points in the polls," says SEIU state political director Robert Kraig. "If Kerry gets slaughtered on issues, it's hard to win with a ground operation. But I don't think the fundamentals of the race have changed. It's a closely divided state that should go Democratic. We've done everything to lay the basis for a ground operation -- better than we've ever had. It will be close, but it's there for the taking."

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