Political operatives flock to swing states in 11th hour

Benjamin Grove

Friday, Oct. 22, 2004 | 11:03 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Where is everyone?

With 11 days until the election, the nation's political epicenter has shifted away from fast-emptying Washington to the battleground states.

Washington's vast legion of political operatives -- from lowly interns to high-powered suits -- have largely vanished from the nation's capital.

Toting laptops and rolling suitcases, the 11th-hour armies have temporarily encamped in Nevada and a short list of other states for final assaults on behalf of President Bush and challenger John Kerry.

The close race, early voting, concerns about voter fraud, and new voting machines have made the Silver State one of the hottest places to be this election season.

"Nevada has not disappointed," said Kevin Griffis, Nevada spokesman for America Coming Together, or ACT.

Griffis, a former journalist turned Georgia Democratic activist who arrived in Las Vegas on Aug. 25, said the best way for political operatives to make a difference in this election was to make camp in a swing state.

Griffis' group is the Democratic outfit organizing a $125 million nationwide voter mobilization campaign. The group, largely bankrolled by wealthy Democrats, has roughly 130 canvassers knocking on doors in Las Vegas this week, Griffis said.

Many ACT workers are armed with hand-held computers paid for by the organization and loaded with information about voters in the neighborhoods where they are knocking on doors.

ACT is targeting newly registered voters and occasional voters, Griffis said. The group also has recruited workers from "non-battleground states." ACT workers in recent weekends have come to Las Vegas from California, Griffis said.

On Nov. 2, untold numbers of volunteers will knock on doors, make phone calls and drive voter vans, Griffis said.

"If everybody hits their goals, Nevada will have never seen anything that will approximate what they are going to see on Election Day," he said.

State and national Democratic and Republican party officials were reluctant to divulge specifics about their out-of-state help.

But GOP workers from Washington and other states now working in Nevada number in the "hundreds," according to Kevin Sheridan, a Republican National Committee communications specialist.

Sheridan flew from Washington to Las Vegas on Saturday. Many RNC officials from Washington will be in battleground states for the final three days of the campaigns, he said.

In the final hours, even high-powered operatives will find themselves working at unglamorous telephone banks, Sheridan said.

"People are coming in at all levels to assist," Sheridan said. "They check their credentials at the door."

Tracey Schmitt, who travels regularly as the Western states campaign spokeswoman for Bush, found herself recently based in Nevada and said the GOP's troops in Nevada were impressive.

"We have been working for over a year to put together the most aggressive, extensive ground operation the state has ever seen," she said.

But Republicans have not had outside groups working for their candidates the way Democrats have, observers said.

There have been a few appearances, notably the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which aired commercials in Nevada. A group of Brigham Young University students for Bush canvassed Las Vegas neighborhoods one weekend last month.

But Republicans are leaning heavily on their own state and local party workers, GOP officials said. That helps maintain structure and accountability, said Yier Shi, another spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

"We do a lot of grassroots stuff within our party, whereas the Democrats basically have ceded grassroots operations to third-party groups," Shi said.

Some staffers from Nevada's Republican congressional offices are among those taking holidays from their regular jobs to work for Bush. At least seven aides to Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., are working for the president and Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., Ensign spokesman Jack Finn said.

But Democrats also have their own legion of volunteers, said Sean Smith, Kerry's Nevada spokesman.

"We have a lot of people who have come from all over," Smith said. "It's an important state. It may even decide the election. People want to be where they can be the most useful."

The fact that outside groups are working for Kerry indicates deep dissatisfaction with Bush, Democratic National Committee spokesman Nick Shapiro said. The DNC dispatched Shapiro to Reno on Monday, possibly until the election and other operatives are joining him in Nevada, including the top Kerry spokesman in Virginia, a solid Bush state.

"We were looking at where we have a real chance," Shapiro said. "Now we are adding firepower to it."

Among the Kerry-backing groups now "on the ground" in Nevada:

The Washington-based Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay and lesbian organization, sent 25 staffers to battleground states, including two to Las Vegas. The volunteers will help Nevada volunteers lead grassroots get-out-the-vote efforts, said Christopher Labonte, legislative director.

In July the group hired field organizers in six battleground states, including Nevada. The group is spending $10 million on their national voter drive, the largest expenditure ever, Labonte said.

"We felt we really needed to ratchet up our election efforts," he said.

21st Century Democrats is focused on young voters in four states: Oregon, Ohio, Minnesota and Nevada, said Amy Reger, director of the two-person Las Vegas operation.

Reger, who arrived Oct. 2 from Virginia, and recent UNLV graduate Julie Chapman have been recruiting voter-drive volunteers and collecting cell phone numbers and email addresses on campus at UNLV.

About 100,000 e-mail addresses and 50,000 cell phone numbers have been collected in the four states, according to the group. The group plans to contact students -- even by text messaging cell phones -- in the final few days before the election.

"Reaching out to youth is a little different than reaching out to the typical voter," Reger said.

Planned Parenthood's political arm early this year set its sights on an audience of 22 million single women nationwide who did not vote in 2000. The group initially intended to focus on eight battleground states but added a ninth -- Nevada.

"People sense that the race there has tightened up a lot and even small states count when it comes to the electoral count," Susanne Martinez, Planned Parenthood's vice president for public policy.

Planned Parenthood for the first time ever endorsed a candidate for president -- Kerry -- because of Bush's record on women's reproductive rights and concerns about Bush appointing Supreme Court justices, Martinez said.

The group is using mailings, phone banks, door-to-door voter drives and cable television commercials in Nevada. A commercial featuring actress Helen Hunt will run Monday through Election Day in Las Vegas and Reno.

The 1.7 million-member Service Employees International Union sent several people to Nevada to help coordinate labor voters, said Allen Thornell, a union political coordinator from Atlanta. He started work in Las Vegas on Tuesday, calling volunteers and voters.

The voters Thornell has contacted so far are "all over the map" -- some highly tuned to the campaigns, others not, he said.

"I think it's neck-and-neck" between Bush and Kerry, Thornell said. "We'll know on Election Day how it turns out, and not before then."

The Sierra Club, too, is working in Nevada. The nation's largest environmental group this week began running radio ads in Nevada to emphasize Kerry's opposition to Yucca Mountain. Can these groups put Kerry over the top in a battleground state that may be titling to Bush?

Observers disagree.

The Democratic groups have had an advantage in numbers nationwide and have succeeded in energizing voters, said Neil Newhouse, a GOP pollster and co-founder of Public Opinion Strategies, said. They may turn out more Democrats to vote, but they won't sway voter decisions, Newhouse said.

Don't discount the GOP grassroots operation, he said.

"The Republicans have never engaged in this kind of effort in their on-the-ground activities," he said.

But Peter Hart, a top Democratic pollster who conducts the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, said the groups "can have a tremendous impact on the final numbers" in Nevada.

Hart said the influx of help for Kerry in Nevada will have a bigger effect than in battleground states with bigger populations, like Florida.

The groups will help turn out the vote of new residents, especially transient residents who have been missed in previous elections, Hart said.

Republican strategist and former Ronald Reagan adviser Frank Donatelli cautioned that it was difficult to predict which side will have the most success getting voters to the polls.

"There is no way to know right now who has the better ground game," he said.

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