Obama Backers From D.C. Go West

Volunteers Target Voters in Winchester

WINCHESTER, Va., Sept. 20 -- Howard University student Aaron Johnson knew he'd be out of his comfort zone when he volunteered to sign up voters for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in this western Virginia hamlet. But he never thought he'd be standing on Gun Club Road as a man with a shotgun strode toward him.

"Are you registered to vote?" asked Johnson, 31, a tall, lean mechanical engineering major who grew up in the District.

"Yes," the man replied. He reinserted an earplug and headed back to the gun range.

"I'm pretty sure he's for McCain," Johnson said with a shrug.

Johnson was among 82 Washingtonians who had come by bus and car to this city of 26,000 about 75 miles away. Among them were a lawyer, a marketing executive, a foreign policy professional, a former Capitol Hill intern, two teenagers too young to vote, an Australian, a Montgomery County schoolteacher and 29 students from Catholic University.

If Obama is to beat Republican John McCain in Virginia, which has not voted for a Democrat in a presidential election since 1964, and use the state's 13 electoral votes to clinch the White House, he will rely heavily on a grass-roots network of thousands of volunteers statewide. But he'll also need the supporters from the District and Maryland, safely blue jurisdictions that can offer extra manpower.

As the D.C. caravan rolled onto Interstate 66 at 9 a.m., two more buses and several cars were leaving Howard County for Fredericksburg, courtesy of the Maryland Democratic Party. More cars, carrying almost 300 people in all, fanned out to seven other sites, including Leesburg, Manassas, Centreville and Woodbridge, said Gregory Jackson, 23, an organizer with D.C. for Obama.

The effort was part of a push this weekend by the Obama campaign to knock on more than 80,000 doors in Virginia.

"It's different than other states, where our out-of-state-program comes for an entire weekend," said Anuj Gupta, who organizes the volunteers and decides where to send them -- usually to more rural areas where campaign workers are scarce. "We're fortunate to have D.C. and Maryland be within an hour or an hour-and-a-half drive."

The Obama team's effort had drawn notice from the McCain campaign, which is doing phone-banking and planning some bus trips of its own with out-of-state volunteers, said Virginia campaign spokeswoman Gail Gitcho, who did not give specifics.

Some McCain supporters acknowledged that they could not match the door-knocking effort but were unconcerned.

"They have to knock on more doors to get the same effect," said Chris Cavey, chairman of McCain's Maryland campaign. "They have to work much harder the way everything's trending. They assumed they were on top of everything, but now they're playing catch-up."