25 October 2004
John Maggiore
Notes from a swing state visit
I went to visit my wife, Michelle Marto in Reno this weekend where she’s been working to elect John Kerry president for the past five weeks (more accurately, she’s been working for America Coming Together [ACT], which is trying to elect “Democrats and progressives up and down the ticket,” as its leaders make the volunteers recite before going out into the field).
Nevada, at least Reno, is not really a place where people were meant to live. From the sky, anything green looks—and is—fake. If there was any interesting architecture in the city, I didn’t see it (gaudy was as close as I could find to interesting). I also couldn’t really figure out any coherence to what kinds of buildings were supposed to go where. When I asked what counted as local food, I was told that there are a lot of Thai restaurants (I ate at two good ones). Still, the evidence of fierce political battles (up and down the ticket) was such that passions are high about defending Nevada’s way of life.
Billboards and lawn signs are everywhere, even though actual lawns were rare. Candidates were less ethnic, had fewer syllables in their names, and were less likely to be identified by party than in Western New York. Another difference between the political culture there and at home was the presidential campaign’s presence.
John Kerry was in Reno the day I flew in. I didn’t see him, but 11,000 people did. Bush had been there recently and both sides have been sending surrogates regularly. While I did not sit down to watch television on this trip, I saw presidential campaign commercials every time I passed a television that was on (I’m not exaggerating).
On Saturday I went with Michelle as hundreds of ACT volunteers gathered to hit the doors and the phone banks, again. I was struck that the Reno volunteers looked pretty much the same as every other group of political volunteers I have ever encountered. (There was one difference here – volunteers from the Sierra Club were operating within eyeshot of the Sierras). There must be a finite number of faces. Maybe there are just a finite number of volunteers – many of the Reno volunteers traveled in from other places, especially California.
The good news for those of us counting the hours before George Bush is privatized is that the volunteers were energized and optimistic. Their optimism was informed by their experiences. The reaction they had been encountering gave them reason to hope. There were also several stories circulating about the effects of their efforts thus far. Supposedly, Nevada (or was it the county?) went from having more registered Republicans to having more registered Democrats as a result of ACT’s massive voter registration effort. Nevada has early voting, supposedly people are lining up to vote in record numbers, and supposedly Democrats are outnumbering Republicans by wide margins. I don’t know if any of this is true. The headline of Sunday’s local paper was that the presidential race was deadlocked in Nevada.
Even that poll was received with a very confident hopefulness. “The pollsters are not reaching the people we’re turning out,” my wife said. The theory here goes that pollsters get their samples based on past voting patterns, but this year’s crop of Nevada voters are infused with new Democratic voters, defying past patterns. My wife, a seasoned political professional, is absolutely convinced that Kerry will win Nevada big.
I gathered that people in Nevada were voting mostly for one of two reasons deeply associated with Nevada: fear and loathing. Bush voters fear that the terrorists will hit the casinos; Kerry backers loathe Bush. There’s no arguing with either of these impulses. A race like this comes down to turnout. Turnout as a variable is an old way of people who work in politics to say, “I haven’t got a clue who will win” while still sounding like they are saying something professional. But the ACT operation certainly seemed to be acting like turnout was all that mattered. I didn’t see much effort to persuade anybody to come around, just to come out and vote. Voters, already identified as pro-Kerry, will get hit with calls and personal visits so often that they are being enticed to vote with the promise that they will stop getting calls as soon as they do (another story I heard was that this technique increased voter turnout by 10% the last time it was used).
I left Nevada feeling pretty good. Campaigns usually have palpable undercurrents two weeks out – you can usually sense a winning or losing effort. This one smelled winning. I could easily imagine what would have left me feeling depressed. Instead I left thinking there’s not much more our side could be doing, at least in Reno…
Copyright 2004 by Buffalo Report, Inc.