Clinton Intensifies Ground Work in Ind.
Much Like Obama, She Focuses on Grass Roots

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 27, 2008; A08

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- At Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's headquarters here the other day, the campaign staff was brainstorming about ways to reach beyond the voters who appear on traditional Democratic Party lists. Did anyone know fathers able to distribute flyers at Little League practice? When do the farmers markets open?

"We spend a lot of time trying to find new people and get them plugged in," said Clinton regional field director Pete Hackeman.

That has not always been the case. As it continues to refine its tactics, the Clinton campaign is devoting far more energy to on-the-ground efforts in Indiana than it did in many of the early states she lost to Sen. Barack Obama, who deployed scores of young staffers to unlikely places and profited from the power of grass-roots organizing.

Driven by strategy and necessity as the New York Democrat's advertising budget runs low, the Clinton campaign has opened 28 offices in Indiana, where she faces another critical test on May 6. With 72 delegates at stake in Indiana, the Clinton family has made more than 50 stops in the state already, far more than Obama and his wife, Michelle.

"They've gotten religion in terms of on-the-streets activism and the importance of it," said South Bend Mayor Steve Luecke, an Obama supporter, of the Clintons. "They're working the streets a lot harder, and to their credit. It will help with her campaign in the final vote total here."

Clinton learned the hard way when the candidate who marketed herself as the inevitable nominee failed to knock Obama out of the race in its early stages.

The campaign erred, some strategists acknowledged, in assuming that name recognition, television advertisements and endorsements would be enough to put away Obama.

"A lot of those assumptions have been put aside, and that puts us in a more aggressive posture," said Indiana state director Robby Mook, who led the victorious Clinton effort in Ohio, where the dueling ground organizations neared parity. "It's a whole new ballgame."

The two campaigns each have four paid workers and an array of volunteers in South Bend, the heart of a region rich in Democratic votes about 90 miles from Obama's home turf of Chicago. The area features a diverse electorate that propelled a Democratic upset in 2006 when Rep. Joe Donnelly won Indiana's 2nd District over incumbent Republican Chris Chocola.

Obama carries key advantages in the state -- most notably his familiarity to voters in northwestern Indiana who receive Chicago television signals. Supporters are driving across the border by the carload to knock on doors for the freshman senator, who hopes to make up for his April 22 loss in Pennsylvania with wins here and in North Carolina.

Clinton, boosted in Ohio and Pennsylvania by support from popular governors, is tapping networks of Democratic activists loyal to Sen. Evan Bayh, the state's best-known Democrat and, briefly, a presidential candidate. Beyond introducing Clinton at rallies, Bayh has traveled the state on his own to build a small army of supporters.

"It was not a hard sell. He said, 'Here's why. This is her skill set,' " recalled Butch Morgan, the St. Joseph County party chairman, who received a call from Bayh, the two-term senator and former governor. "He is the most respected and successful Democrat we have had in Indiana for a long, long time."

Morgan signed on and soon showed why Bayh wanted him. In March, he gathered 60 to 70 people to hear Bayh's pitch for Clinton. The next morning, Bayh addressed a group of local mayors at breakfast. As Morgan put it, "He'd been ginning it up all over the state."

Details and door-knocking count, Morgan said, in a race that polls show is deadlocked: "There have been people I talked to last month who were solid Obama and are now for Hillary, and vice versa. There are households that are split."

As Morgan spoke, Gina Piraccini arrived with a cardboard box filled with the makings of campaign buttons and 500 circles snipped by hand from colored paper. She was getting ready for Saturday's Clinton rally at the local minor league baseball stadium.

One by one, Piraccini placed a round metal backing on a heavy press, then aligned a circle of paper on top. She leaned her weight into a long lever and produced buttons that said, "Homerun Hillary" and, especially for Michigan supporters, "My Vote for Hillary Should Count."

Piraccini, a school psychologist, finished one badge and said, "Green. Very grass-rooty."

Estelle Olson is the sort of campaign volunteer more typically found in the Obama camp. A Minnesota community college student, she is working in her fourth state as a Clinton road warrior. She started in Minnesota, then moved to Ohio and Pennsylvania before arriving in South Bend last week.

"My poor husband, he thought I was coming home after Pennsylvania," Olson said between telephone calls at the Clinton campaign's storefront office. "Once I saw how drawn along gender lines this campaign had become, I barraged my professors to please give me my finals online."

Olson comes from a conservative Christian household near Minneapolis. Her mother, she said, "is ashamed of me for being here." As she made calls asking people to attend Saturday's rally, she recorded successes and failures on an automated telephone system.

From offices in the likes of Fort Wayne, Kokomo and Evansville, staffers and volunteers focus on telling Clinton's story and trying to convince voters that she is best positioned to win in November and solve their problems. They run door-knocking operations to deliver early voters and produce crowds for Clinton and her surrogates.

Yet for all the recent effort by the Clinton campaign, Obama's campaign has broken more fresh ground in building grass-roots operations throughout the country. Obama's staff has harnessed the Internet to link supporters by shared interest and geography while giving them license to shape their own tactics.

"The Obama movement pushes local people to take the active role," said Oliver Davis, a South Bend city council member who drafted his supporters to campaign for Obama. "We went after the everyday Joe."

Davis, one of at least five Obama supporters on the nine-member council, credits ground-level organizing for his own victory. While he says Clinton's campaign "is catching up in terms of the ground game," he contends that Obama will benefit from a head start here.

While the Clinton campaign advertised 30 organized canvassing expeditions this weekend, the Obama team said it put together 55 "block parties" for supporters and undecided voters on Saturday, complete with food and music. At each, voters were encouraged to go straight to nearby government offices and cast their ballots.

Troy Watson fits the Obama campaign mold. A union electrician, he backed Obama early last year "when most people thought I was nuts." He printed literature from Obama's Web site and kept it with him wherever he went. He held his first meeting in August, when Obama was nowhere in the polls.

"We started doing events and putting them in the paper," Watson said. When Obama campaign workers arrived in mid-March, he was ready with names and ideas.

Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's deputy communications director, disputes the idea that Clinton's organization here is comparable to Obama's, calling it "a classic case of the machine versus the movement."

"The Clinton campaign has the entire establishment on its side, including the Bayh machine, which is legendary in Indiana," Pfeiffer said in an e-mail. "Barack Obama has thousands of grass-roots supporters who desperately want change and are willing to work their hearts out for it."

In South Bend, the Clinton team is feeling encouraged, despite the difficult delegate math and the vast gap in campaign funds. It helps that staffers and volunteers sense their ground game is humming.

"We'd like to have all the TV ads and the yard signs we could have," one staff member said, "but we think we can win with the volunteers we have."