Determined Steps in a Tough Slog
In Two Pa. Cities, Clinton and Obama Supporters Work to Counter the Odds

By Kevin Merida and Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, April 21, 2008; C01

SCRANTON, Pa. -- Sometimes you don't know what you're up against until you're up against it.

Barack Obama's campaign opened a downtown office here on March 15, just in time for the annual St. Patrick's Day parade. It was not a glorious day for Team Obama. Some of the green signs the campaign had trucked in by the thousands were burned during the parade, and campaign volunteers -- white volunteers -- were greeted with racial slurs. More episodes would follow, according to staffers and campaign surrogates.

Lackawanna County Commissioners Mike Washo and Corey O'Brien, who represent the Scranton area, received hate mail after they endorsed Obama. But it only made them more resolute, they said. "It was a very jarring response from a select group of people," said O'Brien. "Some of the ugliest parts of our society shined at those moments." But he added: "Things are certainly moving in the right direction. Running out of time here, but moving in the right direction."

A two-hour drive south off Interstate 476 will take you into the heart of Hillary Clinton's campaign struggles. There, in the City of Brotherly Love, the Clinton camp has found a limited supply of sisterly love. Despite the aggressive backing of Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Gov. Ed Rendell (a former Philly mayor), Clinton's crew has run into an Obama juggernaut. He's got 10 offices in the city to her three, outspent her on television advertising 3 to 1 and drew the largest crowd of this campaign season -- 35,000 -- at an Independence Mall rally. All of which has left Clinton advisers like Nick Clemons blunt-spoken in their assessments of what will happen tomorrow when voters go to the polls. "Obama will win Philadelphia," said Clemons, adding, "Our goal is to cut into his margin."

The battles on the ground in Scranton and Philadelphia are two tales from the underdog narrative of American politics. Though worlds apart demographically and socially, both places represent distinct challenges to the candidacies of Obama and Clinton, respectively, and not just in Pennsylvania.

For Obama, he has had trouble in recent contests winning over working-class whites in towns and cities exactly like Scranton, once a vibrant iron and coal mining community that has lost nearly half its population since 1940. The median household income in the county is less than $38,000, below the state average. For the past two decades, Scranton has been renovating itself and its image, adding tourist attractions, an incubator center for start-up companies, downtown housing and celebrating its newfound glory as the fictional hub of the popular NBC sitcom "The Office." Clinton's roots here -- her father and grandfather lived in Scranton, she was baptized here, and the family built a vacation cottage on nearby Lake Winola -- has helped make this decidedly Clinton territory. Not so in Philadelphia, another in a long string of urban centers that have proved hard for Clinton to penetrate. Winning major cities has become her Achilles' heel, with the exceptions of Los Angeles and New York, both of which have sizable Hispanic populations that have been drawn to her candidacy. She also represents New York in the Senate. From Boston to Cleveland to Houston to Seattle, Obama has been able to outpoint Clinton with some combination of high African American turnout and allegiance from college students and upscale white professionals.

"This is what has been remarkable about their matchup," said G. Terry Madonna, the veteran Pennsylvania pollster who heads the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College. "They've been unable to win large numbers of voters from each person's demographics."

Not that they aren't trying.

Obama's Scranton Challenge

To run its headquarters in Scranton, the center of a five-county field operation in northeastern Pennsylvania, the Obama campaign tapped 23-year-old Gillian Bergeron. A graduate of the University of South Carolina, she had volunteered for a Draft Obama group way back when and ended up working the South Carolina primary from an office in Charleston. She did well there, and then did well in Mobile, Ala., and then did well in Houston, and all of a sudden she was dispatched to Scranton as a regional field director in perhaps the toughest place in the state for Obama.

Who followed her? A tight-knit collective of other 20-somethings, who, like Bergeron, had never worked on campaigns before Obama's and thus did not feel constricted by conventional political practices. They were urged on by the campaign's state field director Jeremy Bird: "Listen, put up a hell of a fight." Battle for every vote, get as creative as you need to be. On Saturday night, they staged an indie rock concert in the back room of their headquarters. On Easter, they canvassed at tattoo parlors. They walked malls with wrestler Mick Foley, a.k.a. "Mankind," who proved to be hugely popular here.

Help sometimes came from unusual quarters. An iconoclastic Irish history buff, apparently aware of the predicament in Scranton, offered to drive from Florida and work Catholic churches. Scranton is heavily Catholic with a large Irish American population. Two days later, the history buff phoned campaign aide John Davis from nearby Wilkes-Barre, ready to get busy: "Can you give me the name of an Irish bar? I want to go talk to some people and have a pint." And then there was Sister Adrian Barrett, the nun known as the "Mother Teresa of Scranton," who enlisted the starting five of the local girls' high school basketball team to make phone calls for Obama.

The team Bergeron is leading -- five paid staff and several hundred volunteers -- is a long-hours, no-worry, no-fear bunch.

They all have stories. Among the most interesting one is Anthony Simonovich's. Unemployed, he was downtown looking for work when he walked into Obama headquarters as it was just getting set up. "I was dressed Johnny Cash-style, all black with a blue tie, Windsor knot." He saw Bergeron and two other organizers who asked if he wanted to help them register voters in Scranton public housing tenements. He had grown up in Scranton, and had just returned to the area from San Diego. The women were beautiful, he thought, he was single. Why not? The next day he got a call, and was told he had a job until at least April 22. Though he had no college degree and no political experience, he had worked as a telemarketer. He was made phone bank director for three counties.

Simonovich, 27, also could relate to Obama, having been the product of a biracial marriage. He has a curly Afro, 18 tattoos and likes Pink Floyd and Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes and the Doors. "I actually think biracial people are their own group: Zebrahead Posse."

On one day last week, Simonovich and his team made 1,533 calls to registered Democrats over a 10-hour period. The goal is 1,000 calls a day.

"Sure, there are long hours," he said. "But we're like a family here. Everybody's last name is Obama."

The Obamas have been aided by a squad of energetic surrogates. "We don't mind that uphill climb," said commissioner Washo, "but that climb is steep, I gotta tell you." Someone from the Clinton family, it seems, has been in the area every week for the past six weeks. Hillary Clinton herself was scheduled to make her fourth appearance in Scranton this morning.

Obama was given a big boost with the endorsement of Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who lives in Scranton along with other members of his well-regarded political family. Yesterday evening, Obama campaigned with Casey and Caroline Kennedy at Scranton's Riverfront Sports complex, the Illinois senator's second visit to the area. The Kennedy clan, though, have been mainstays for Obama in the Scranton region. Last week brought two of Robert F. Kennedy's children, Max and Rory, and their mom, Ethel, plus actor Joe Pantoliano (a.k.a. "Joey Pants," a.k.a. "Ralphie" from HBO's "The Sopranos").

Max took the early-early shift, part of a two-car caravan that included his wife, Vicki, commissioners Washo and O'Brien, and Sen. Casey's brother, Pat, a local attorney. They started at 6 a.m., hitting a string of landmark diners and Dunkin' Donuts shops, two senior centers and a veterans center. Max led seniors in singing Irish songs, and they all tried to persuade voters one at a time. Literally, there were moments when a single diner was surrounded by five surrogates trying to make the Obama case. This is what happened with Thomas Basta, 58, who is legally blind, on disability assistance and worried that Social Security will be privatized and Medicare benefits reduced. He didn't think much of Obama or any of the candidates, for that matter. But the surrogates kept talking to him, and Basta started reminiscing about the Kennedy years, telling Max how his father had been a JFK delegate at the 1960 Democratic National Convention. Next thing, Basta had come around and was promising to give Obama a shot. Some in the group yelled: "Break out the champagne!"

They got Basta, but they have a long way to go from there.

"If he loses by under 30 points here," O'Brien insisted, "it's a big victory. It really is."

Clinton's Philly Targets

Polls show Clinton with the overall lead in Pennsylvania and her strategists are hoping for a big victory that will redefine the race. For Obama to have a chance, political experts say he needs to win Philadelphia by a margin of 75 percent to 25 percent and its suburbs by 60 to 40 to offset Clinton's advantages in northeastern Pennsylvania and elsewhere in the state. There are about 4 million registered Democrats in Pennsylvania, and some 1.5 million of them reside in the southeastern portion of the state where Philly is located. Clinton can't afford to get drubbed there. Which is why Maria Monte has been working 9 a.m. to midnight shifts out of Clinton's Mayfair campaign office in northeast Philly, snacking on almonds and Diet Coke. She is a 21-year-old field organizer, an English major who took the semester off at Cornell and has been spending her days looking at a computerized map, trying to figure out where canvassers should go. "My bubble," she explains.

Clinton staffers expect Obama to take West and North Philadelphia, predominantly black neighborhoods, as well as most parts of Center City, home to largely upscale, white dwellers. The opportunities, they say, lie in South and Northeast Philly, both blue-collar, working-class neighborhoods heavily populated by Italians, Irish and Russians.

For a month, Monte has been driving her beat-up Saturn back and forth across town, sleeping in the guest room of her best friend's mom's house, determined to give her candidate every chance to shock the pundits in Philadelphia. "We're trying," Monte said, "to fight for every vote."

But fighting ain't always easy.

To get a whiff of Clinton's climb in Philadelphia, just stroll down, well, Clinton Street. It is just two blocks long, near the geographic heart of Center City. On Clinton Street, you will find Kathy Cushing, 61, owner of a four-story, nine-room bed-and-breakfast and the informal mayor of the street. She also happens to be an expert on all things Hillary, citing as evidence the 10 books she's read about the former first lady. Expert or not, she had been planning to vote for Obama until last Thursday's debate in which Clinton's performance gave her second thoughts. Not that it will make any difference, she believes. Obama is simply too strong here, Cushing said.

Sitting on her stoop, pointing to newly planted orange and yellow marigolds, Cushing marveled at an Obama mailer that just hit her doorstep Friday afternoon. "It came with an eight-minute DVD! A DVD! I mean, this guy's pulling out all the stops!"

Clinton has countered by spending more time campaigning in Philadelphia than Obama, including announcing her $4 billion anti-crime plan in West Philly. She has also rolled out celebs such as Puerto Rican salsa star Willie Colon, and as usual, her all-star family -- former president Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea, who was mobbed when she dropped by some of the city's popular gay clubs.

But as some Clinton staffers readily conceded, their events drew only a fraction of the crowds that Obama's seemed to draw effortlessly. And there seemed to be nowhere to escape his face -- on television all the time, on the cover of Philadelphia Weekly. "How do you run against that kind of press?" asked a frustrated Mark Nevins, the Clinton campaign's state spokesman.

Monte, who started with the campaign in New Hampshire and went on to Missouri and Ohio, assures that she will hustle until the last Clinton vote is found tomorrow. But some wonder if the Clinton team did enough. Brittany Mason, a senior at Temple University, said it seems as if the Clinton campaign all but decided not to challenge Obama's strength on college campuses. A mistake, she said.

"There are many young Clinton supporters like me," said Mason. "They could have done much better reaching out to us."

Jose Antonio Vargas reported from Philadelphia.