Campaigns making a final push
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By Ed Tibbetts | Monday, November 06, 2006 |
Nick Loomis/QUAD-CITY TIMES Volunteer Larry Peinert of Davenport speaks to someone about volunteering for Scott County Democrats while his wife, Barbara, dials a number at the organization’s headquarters in Davenport.
In a room crowded with activists at The Hat restaurant in Davenport last week, Susan Frembgen, the chairwoman of the Scott County Democrats, pleaded for help.
“If you haven’t committed to 18 hours on Election Day, you haven’t committed enough,” she said.
On the other side of town, at county Republican headquarters, the message was much the same.
As a pair of national political figures exhorted GOP volunteers to work down to the very last minute, Judi Hanify of Davenport was taking the words to heart, putting together campaign books the party faithful will use on Election Day to eke out as many votes as they possibly can.
Stuffing envelopes and working the phones isn’t glamorous work, “but I know it’s important,” Hanify said.
For all the millions of dollars in TV ads — and the innumerable words spoken by the candidates — campaigns across the state are now in the midst of a last-minute door-knocking, literature-dropping, sleep-deprived, no-rock-left-unturned frenzy to get out the vote.
In Iowa’s 1st District congressional race, hundreds of volunteers are working the phones this weekend and will do so through Tuesday, hoping to reach regular voters, as well as a pivotal segment of the population: the thousands of people who vote in presidential elections but who tend to skip the midterms.
“Turning out soft Republicans is the key,” said Brian Dumas, an adviser to Republican hopeful Mike Whalen’s campaign.
There are 20,000 of those voters in the 12-county district. Democrats, meanwhile, are aiming at a pool of 25,000.
Even turning out 20 percent of those people can mean a swing of 4 percentage points, which could make a difference in a hard-fought election expected to draw more than 200,000 people to the polls.
The vast majority of those soft voters are clustered in Scott, Dubuque and Black Hawk counties, and that’s where phone banks are humming and volunteers are trudging through neighborhoods to drop mail.
They’re eating cold pizza, slugging coffee and soda and packing into newspaper-strewn offices, awaiting their marching orders.
“It feels like I’ve knocked on 90,000 doors,” Randy Donnelly, a union worker from Moline who’s working both sides of the river, said during a midweek break.
Like in races across the country, Whalen and Democratic rival Bruce Braley and their backers are emphasizing decidedly different messages to reach supporters.
Whalen is centering on economic issues such as taxes, and contrasting his career with Braley, a lawyer.
“This is a man ... who understands how you create jobs and run small businesses,” New York Gov. George Pataki said of Whalen at a GOP rally last week.
Braley’s campaign, meanwhile, is telling people that they can make a difference in the country’s direction, particularly in Iraq, and that Whalen would merely rubber stamp President Bush’s policies.
“On Nov. 7, we’re going to change the course in Iraq and send a message to this president it’s time for a change in Washington,” Braley told a crowd at a Bettendorf union hall Friday.
Most independent polls throughout the race have shown Braley leading in a district where Democrats have a registration edge of 19,000 voters over Republicans. That advantage has grown by 5,000 voters in the past two years and 15,000 since the last midterm election.
Still, Republicans have held the district for 30 years and are banking on a strong 72-hour get-out-the-vote effort, bolstered by a national party that is outspending its counterpart.
“We’ve got a great plan in place that’s being executed,” Dumas said.
Democrats are counting on their efforts to bank absentee voters and their own get-out-the-vote program.
As of late last week, Democrats held an edge of 11,000 over Republicans in ballots requested.
“We’re situated very well,” said Jeff Giertz, a Braley spokesman.
Since July, the two candidates and their parties have pumped $6 million into the race, much of it on television ads.
Those ads won’t slow down in the next couple of days, either. The parties have purchased millions of dollars across the country, and the 1st District airwaves are jam-packed.
But, as evidenced by the flood of national political figures coming to the district to urge volunteers to make one more call, knock on one more door and volunteer one more hour, much of who wins and loses Tuesday is now in the hands of people, not TV ads.
Ed Tibbetts can be contacted at (563) 383-2327 or etibbetts@qctimes.com.
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