While Las Cruces is essential to the campaign, the Kerry forces are massed principally in Albuquerque, 240 miles to the north. Political experts say a big percentage of swing voters in New Mexico -- the X factor -- will be conservative Democrats, and it is these Democrats who've been targeted by the Albuquerque crew. Which was apparent right away.

In Las Cruces, the campaign office was located in an old bank building tucked behind a plaza. Money was short and the staff was green. But the Albuquerque headquarters seemed to look over the city like a beacon. It was next to the University of New Mexico campus, at the top of a hill, in a large, free-standing, white cinderblock building. In front sat a campaign bus with a Kerry-Edwards banner draped over it.

I arrived on a Sunday and inside the open, airy office was abuzz. Campaign higher-ups stalked in and out of open offices. A bespectacled man with a "Students for Kerry" pin led a seminar on door-to-door canvassing while volunteers perched at folding tables, archaic white corded phones -- the kind you get at RadioShack for $8.99 -- pressed to their ears. On the walls, sign-up sheets stretched to the ceiling: "Doctors for Kerry," "Veterans for Kerry," "Christians for Kerry."

The crowd was eclectic, to say the least. There were grandmothers, burly union guys, stately Hispanic men in suits, single moms with or without their kids, rock-climbing dads, yuppie preppies and middle-aged Navajos. Downstairs the young, attractive press staff spun away, trying to sell the local TV stations on an impending Chris Heinz appearance. Old pickups, SUVs, hybrid sedans and station wagons rubbed against each other in the immense dirt parking lot.

After two days of toiling away, I decided to check out the rival camp across town. The atmosphere there was decidedly different. As had been the case in several cities, including Las Vegas, in which I'd campaigned, the Bush-Cheney '04 office in Albuquerque was on an affluent edge of town, situated in a black-glass office park. Its neighbors included a software company of some sort and a healthcare company of some sort. Applebees was the convenient lunch option.

Inside, the much-vaunted money gap between the Republicans and Democrats became glaringly obvious. New Dell computers and freshly installed black cubicles lined the room. There were nameplates. Everybody was unfailingly polite, even those who'd noticed the Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker on my car outside.

What the office lacked was spirit and bodies. Two elderly women sat at the phones, looking hungry, while a few well-quaffed functionaries in pleated pants and button-down shirts typed at impeccably clean desks. What the office possessed, which the Kerry offices often lack, was an air of supreme confidence. Victory seemed to be a foregone conclusion on this side of town. I didn't meet Sheriff White, but while I was standing there, something he told me kept ringing in my ears. "It's not rocket science," he'd said. "The candidate that gets the most voters to the polls wins." He added: "This is a bare-knuckle fight for me."

With these words in mind, and the monolithic Bush machine chugging away silently before me, I got indignant and frightened and decided to hightail it back to my side of the aisle and get canvassing.

That afternoon, folders and clipboard in hand, I ventured into a dilapidated neighborhood bordered on one side by a highway and on the other by the desert. Many Albuquerque neighborhoods are home to old Hispanic families, who trace their roots to the conquistadors. This was one of them. However, it was not the sort of place I would have liked to be after dark, or even in waning light.

Some people I talked to thanked me profusely; others cut me off with a curt "Not interested," and closed the door. Some yelled when I mentioned Kerry's name. "Hell no!" "You got to be bullshitting me!" Those visits, needless to say, ended quickly. Others moaned when I mentioned Bush. "Are you insane? I detest that man!" Those visits ended quickly too. I encountered a Colombian firefighter named Ramon who, despite all the cuts being made to firehouses across the country and the fact that the war in Iraq was sapping his department of first responders, had pledged himself to Bush for one reason: He knew homosexuality to be evil.

Still, as I continued to canvass New Mexico and talk with the state's political scientists, I had to conclude that the smart money here was on Kerry. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 200,000 -- a ratio of 1.6-to-1 -- and nearly half of all the 140,000 newly registered voters are Democrats (25 percent were Republicans). What's more, experts on both sides agreed, about 65 percent of the state's huge bloc of Hispanics could now be counted on to vote Democratic. And ultimately that could tip the scales toward Kerry.

Jose Z. Garcia, a professor of political science at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, felt the Hispanic vote would come down to loyalty. "Hispanics born into Hispanic families are born into the Democratic Party too," he said. "Family values are strong here, and extended family is more prevalent. You're loyal to your family and to your party." Indeed, Hispanics in New Mexico are intensely loyal to Mexican American Gov. Bill Richardson, who served as chair of the Democratic National Convention this year.

That evening, as dusk waned, I knocked on the door of a house that belonged to a man named Juan, a barrel-chested, bearded veteran who worked as a janitor at the local elementary school. He'd come from Mexico as a child and had voted in every election since 1968, he said proudly. We talked about his years in the Navy and it struck me that he could have been Yolanda's father.

He asked me what I thought about Kerry -- what I really thought, not what I'd been told to think. I told him I thought Kerry was a good man, that he'd make a good president, that I'd been following his career for years and believed in him. I told Juan that I wouldn't be volunteering my time to walk mile after mile through the streets of Albuquerque if I didn't believe John Kerry could help people like him and me.

Juan looked at me and smiled.

"You really think that?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Good," he said, still smiling. He shook my hand and went back inside without another word.

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