Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
Paul Newman, Steve Buscemi, Matt Dillon and a cast of dozens dazzle Cleveland with a door-to-door drive to get out the vote.
Oct 31, 2004 | A silver-haired woman walked outside in her pink robe Saturday morning to find a cluster of actors on her driveway and TV cameramen everywhere. Actors Steve Buscemi and Chad Lowe, Rob Lowe's less-famous brother, spoke to her while Timothy Hutton walked down the street knocking on doors, urging Democrats to get out and vote and Republicans to reconsider. Next door, Paul Newman, wearing a white sweater with a Kerry-Edwards sticker on his breast, stood on the front porch of a lovely Tudor house. It was his childhood home, a place he hadn't been back to in decades, and he was there to canvass the new owners.
It was a spectacularly sunny day, and the leafy street in the affluent, liberal enclave of Shaker Heights was carpeted in auburn leaves. It all looked a bit like a movie set, a backdrop of archetypal fall suburban splendor. The trick was in figuring out whether the unfolding scene was inspiring drama or farce. Throughout the day on Saturday, as a busload of celebrities traveled through Ohio to rally Democrats to get out the vote, it was a little of both.
As the presidential campaign careens toward its world-altering climax, Ohio feels like the improbable center of the universe. Besides the candidates and their relatives and surrogates, hordes of political celebrities and Hollywood stars are descending on this resolutely unglamorous state. "The Lord of the Rings" star Viggo Mortensen campaigned along with Howard Dean on Saturday. Michael Moore gave several speeches. The right has less star power, but Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared with Bush on Friday, and Sean Hannity and Oliver North are in Akron today.
Meanwhile, battalions of progressive volunteers have come from all over the country, here to make sure that every Ohio voter is visited multiple times, often with literature specifically tailored to his or her particular concerns. Sometimes it feels like a circus, but sometimes it's beautiful, a political moment when everyone wants only to do all they can.
The celebrities were touring the state as part of a campaign called Bring Ohio Back, which has been organizing celebrities to get out the vote in Ohio. They spent the weekend traveling by bus, visiting offices of America Coming Together, the country's largest progressive get-out-the-vote operation, handing out pro-Kerry fliers at high school football games and supermarkets, and going door to door to talk about the election with voters somewhat dazed by the surreal spotlight shining on them.
The day began with a breakfast reception for ACT volunteers in Cleveland Heights, held in a lovely hall hung with chandeliers and Turkish carpets. Bagels and coffee were served in one corner, near a long table where new volunteers could sign up for duty. People wandered in and asked, "How do I get hooked up with a group?"
Many had taken time off from prestigious jobs to volunteer at the grass roots. Paul Spencer, a New York City advertising copywriter and Cleveland native who worked closely with Bill Clinton on his 1992 presidential campaign, was in town knocking on doors in the area where he grew up. "I called all my old high school friends," he says, as well as a high school teacher from 30 years ago. They formed a team of 13. "I feel like I've gone from the officers' club to leading a bunch of grunts through the trenches. I kind of like this better."
Paul Newman spoke only briefly to the group. "You guys are doing all the heavy lifting and I get my picture taken," he said. Someone in the crowd called out, "Bless you, your record speaks for itself."
Afterward, Newman told a small scrum of reporters, "This is the most important election of my entire life." Reports of voter disenfranchisement and harassment in the state had him especially worried. "If you can't have free and fair elections in America, where can you have them?" he asked.
Then the Bring Ohio Back bus -- along with lots of local reporters -- headed out to Newman's old neighborhood. At this stage of the campaign, the idea is to turn out Democratic voters, but while most of the actors went to homes with Kerry signs on their lawns, Timothy Hutton rang the bell of a house with four Bush signs. The man inside had printed up 50 photocopies of Osama bin Laden's recent remarks, which he planned to hand out that day, apparently because he felt they demonstrated that the arch-terrorist wants a Kerry victory. Hutton talked to him for a while, and by the end of their conversation, the man said he hadn't completely made up his mind who to vote for.
Perhaps he was simply cowed by being confronted with a movie star first thing in the morning. Still, Hutton said, "Why preach to the converted?"
Todd Stevens, a management consultant who grew up in the neighborhood but lives in Los Angeles, was walking his family's dog and looking around quizzically at all the commotion. "This is very funny," he said. "It's comedy." Politically Stevens is on the actors' side -- in fact, he was in Ohio for the weekend volunteering with the Kerry campaign. But the whole spectacle on Saturday struck him as preposterous. He pointed at Joe Pantoliano, who played Ralph Cifaretto on "The Sopranos," and said, "You can't wear what the Sopranos guy is wearing -- his shoes cost more than most people's mortgage! I can't believe this is happening in my town."
One Canadian reporter seemed to be thinking much the same thing when she asked Newman whether the stars' efforts might backfire. "I don't give up my citizenship just because I'm an actor," he said.
Many Ohioans seemed fine with that. Before Saturday, I thought locals might react like Stevens, or worse. Would swing voters really appreciate Eliza Dushku -- "Buffy the Vampire Slayer's" Faith -- or Hillary Swank trying to influence their choice? What would the parents at the high school football game in Massillon, Ohio, make of Julianna Margulies' T-shirt, which juxtaposed a woman's crotch and the president's face and the words "Good Bush/Bad Bush"?
In fact, they loved it. Massillon, near Canton, is an area with lots of steel mills and union men, and it's been hemorrhaging jobs. At a tailgate party before the Tigers game, a long line of people waited for the actors to serve them hot cider. A few of the locals wore Bush-Cheney stickers, but many more wore Kerry-Edwards buttons, or buttons that called the administration Asses of Evil. One girl's T-shirt showed Bush in a tall cowboy hat, with the words, "Idiot Son of an Asshole."
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