Volunteers do the real end-game work of campaigns

Exactly 100 hours before the polls were to close in Tuesday's gubernatorial election, Jim Kalanges stood in a leafy Richmond suburb scanning a sheaf of maps and data sheets for the addresses of known Republican voters.

The 70-year-old military retiree had just started six hours of walking and door-knocking that would take him about two miles Friday afternoon. Across Virginia, hundreds of activists -- Democrats and Republicans -- were doing the same thing.

It's the true endgame of the campaign that political pros call GOTV: Get Out The Vote.

Forget who's up or down in the polls. Forget the TV ads, the pundits, the press and the blogs.

Without unpaid volunteers like Kalanges canvassing door-to-door for Bob McDonnell and the GOP ticket or Democrat Alberta Carrington telephoning backers of R. Creigh Deeds and her party's ticket, many voters stay home on Election Day.

"We were doing this in the heat of summer when we thought we were going to die, but this is something we believe in, and we have fun," said Brenda Hill, 55, who is taking vacation time from her job as a Virginia State Police computer programmer to walk a neighborhood for Deeds in reliably Republican Chesterfield County.

To her and the other volunteers at the Democrats' coordinated campaign office in Chesterfield, it's immaterial that polls show Deeds trailing McDonnell by 11 to 18 percentage points.

"We don't believe in polls until the one we see on election night," Hill said.

She had never volunteered for Democratic field operations until she was drawn in by the appeal of Barack Obama. She said she never believed polls last year that accurately predicted Obama would hand Republicans their first presidential defeat in Virginia since 1964.

The story was the same 15 miles away at Chesterfield's GOP campaign office. Republican volunteers there were just as wary of the polls, even though they portend success for this year's Republican slate. Bill Flanagan, a legislative aide to Del. M. Kirkland Cox, R-Colonial Heights, said he's seen sugary polls lull front-running campaigns into complacency before.

"Just look around," he said, standing in an office crowded with volunteers and high-tech phone consoles hardwired into a computer database of verified GOP-friendly phone numbers. Maybe it's a measure of Republican caution born from eight years of statewide election losses to the Democrats, he said, but if those volunteers truly believed the polls, many wouldn't be there.

Though worlds apart ideologically, there's little functional difference in the field offices. Strewn with yard signs and campaign literature, they're chaotic, filled with computers and phones. They're Spartan, occupying offices or retail space that was vacant as recently as summer and will be for rent again by December. Coffee cups, soda bottles, pizza and fast food boxes plus caches of candy for a quick sugar rush are a staple.

In years of statewide elections, "coordinated campaign" offices like these spring up in the late spring and summer, funded jointly by the candidates and the national and state parties. Activity ramps up after Labor Day and becomes frenzied in the week before the election, with shifts of volunteers toiling into the evening. There are dozens across the state, and most of them make thousands of calls daily.

Field operations and GOTV are the invisible secret to victory. They rarely show up in news stories and, unlike cash contributors, there is no accounting for the legions of unpaid activists in the finance reports that candidates, parties and political action committees file with state and federal election authorities.

Yet the strategists who have the candidates' ears and decide where millions of political dollars are spent agree that their volunteers are perhaps the most persuasive element of campaigns.

Last year, Obama's regimented, meticulously organized campaign not only registered more than 400,000 new Virginia voters, it turned many of them into new volunteers, and they delivered an overwhelming election day turnout.

For both sides, these foot soldiers are credible because they're ordinary people giving their time for their beliefs and for the candidates who most embody them.

Arthur Bishop was in his gravel driveway when Kalanges walked up, and he spoke the words that made the chilly, cloudy afternoon of work worthwhile for Kalanges.

"I'm voting for McDonnell," Bishop said between puffs of his cigar. He didn't need the cardboard door-hanger Kalanges offered him that exalts McDonnell and the GOP ticket. His mind was made up.

"Now that was a good one," a smiling Kalanges said afterward.

In black ink, Kalanges noted Bishop's answer on his bar-coded response sheet, then began flipping through pages on his clipboard for the next address, the next voter on his list.

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Bob Lewis has covered Virginia politics and government since 2000.