The Organizers: Like a monk, for Edwards

By J. Patrick Coolican (contact)

Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2007 | 6:56 a.m.

In the rest of this three-part series, the Sun will profile two more organizers - one each from the campaigns of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

Andres Mantilla played left tackle on his high school football team in Orange County, Calif., a 250-pound dexterous wall protecting the quarterback's blind side when he dropped back to pass.

Football experts know the left tackle is the most important player on the field aside from the quarterback, though rarely seen or heard from by casual TV viewers.

Mantilla is now playing the equivalent of the left tackle position in the Nevada presidential caucus, this time as a paid organizer for former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

While the media focus on the candidates and their highly paid consultants, the TV ads and the political endorsements, the organizers are doing the most important work, political analysts say.

"A caucus is all organization," said Dan Hart, a Nevada Democratic consultant who has worked the Iowa caucus in past presidential campaigns.

To get people to show up on time at its caucus site Jan. 19, the campaign must develop a committed following. To do so, it develops personal relationships with supporters and potential supporters.

"The dialogue between the campaign and the caucusgoers is very important," Hart said. "And it's personal. So these organizers, they have to be missionaries. There's more passion in this than sales. They have to be believers in a cause."

More than 100 political organizers have arrived in Nevada in advance of the Democrats' presidential caucus.

They come to evangelize their passion to caucusgoers because, as Hart said, "there are very few casual caucusgoers."

And few casual organizers, if Mantilla is any guide.

His job: to essentially run the Edwards campaign in two Assembly districts by recruiting, overseeing and training volunteers. He goes about it with a quiet, almost monkish intensity.

Mantilla, 24, has a Mexican-American father and a Cuban-American mother. He learned Spanish before he learned English.

Like many Cuban-Americans, his mother is a Republican. His father is a Democrat.

The dinner table was often a venue for intellectual combat. (His first convert to Edwards this year: Mom.)

But until recent demographic changes, Orange County was known as the "Orange Curtain," a place unremittingly white and Republican, where former President Reagan once began his campaigns.

"Growing up in that atmosphere helped define the issues for me," Mantilla said. "It's one of those things when you're in a room with people who disagree with who you are - you start agreeing with them, or you define your own values and views."

Mantilla said he was drawn to the Democrats' 2004 vice presidential nominee because of Edwards' support for working-class people and the impoverished.

Edwards ran for president in 2004 as the inheritor of the moderate, Southern New Democrat tradition of former President Clinton, but he seems to have been radicalized by President Bush's policies, as well as the picket lines across the country that he walked and the anti-poverty work he performed at the University of North Carolina after 2004.

Mantilla said he's thrilled to represent this new Edwards: "In this job, John Edwards is on TV, but you get to be the face of the campaign. What you say helps people decide who to vote for."

A recent day of organizing began at Starbucks with a meeting with one of the Edwards' most committed volunteers: UNLV history professor Greg Brown.

Mantilla drinks an unfathomable amount of espresso, because of his frequent Starbucks meetings and his 14-hour days, for which he is paid not much more than $6 per hour despite his college degree in Latin American politics and Spanish literature and experience on other campaigns.

It's not clear whether Mantilla has any hobbies, or takes joy in anything other than bagging a new Edwards supporter.

Brown and Mantilla talk about recruiting volunteers for Saturday's door-knocking effort, addressing the frustrating issues every campaign has to contend with despite seeming so trivial when matched against electing the next leader of the free world.

Brown laments to Mantilla about a favorite if temperamental volunteer: "The first thing he says is 'Your office is too far away.'"

Mantilla deals with issues like this all day.

He drives to the north part of the valley for a meeting with Jim Lucas, who knows all his neighbors, many of whom are Hispanic. Mantilla gets a lot of unsolicited advice, though he soaks it all in graciously. The key to winning, Lucas says with a flash of insight, is "neighborhood leadership."

Mantilla agrees, which is why he has so carefully cultivated relationships with people such as Lucas.

After that meeting, it's off to another Starbucks for a meeting with an active volunteer, Cassandra Vigil, a 25-year-old student at the College of Southern Nevada who believes Edwards is the most genuine and most electable in a general election.

And the day has barely started.

Another Edwards organizer, Erik Bal, arrived to work for Edwards in October. Mantilla showed him the ropes, and they ate dinner together every night. Bal said Mantilla's commitment is impressive.

As the recent CNN Democratic debate neared, Mantilla complained to Bal that Edwards' chief opponents, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, would have more money to put on flashy demonstrations outside the debate hall at UNLV.

So Mantilla dreamt up something out of a high school spirit week: Let's build 6-foot-tall letters that spell out "EDWARDS." Most of the letters were 3 feet wide, though the W was 6 feet wide.

After Mantilla came up with the idea, he led a construction team every night. They began work at 10:30, when the regular day's work was done, and sawed and hammered and painted until 1 a.m.

Night after night, because that's the life of an organizer.