Election 2004

Bush-Cheney campaign puts Fla. shoe leather to work

Personal and prompt attention drives the Republicans' re-election campaign this year, especially here.

As the Democratic presidential candidates fight one another hundreds of miles from Florida, President Bush's re-election campaign is mounting an unprecedented grass roots campaign in America's biggest battleground state.

The Bush-Cheney team has been quietly training more than 2,000 Florida campaign volunteers, reaching out to tens of thousands of swing voters through phone banks and preparing to field an army of activists to maximize Republican turnout on Nov. 2. It's all aimed at avoiding another photo finish in the state that nearly cost Bush the White House in 2000.

Consider some daunting numbers for Democrats hoping to compete for Florida's 27 electoral votes:

The Bush-Cheney campaign expects to register more than 75,000 new Republican voters in Florida by November.

In addition to the more than 2,000 trained operatives, at least 65,000 campaign "team leaders" will be recruiting more volunteers and reaching out to other voters in a host of ways.

About 7,000 paid and volunteer precinct organizers will be on the ground in the fall, feverishly trying to get 80 percent of Republicans in every county to the polls.

"You're going to see the greatest grass roots undertaking by the Republican Party in modern political history," said Ralph Reed, chief of the Bush-Cheney campaign in the Southeast.

The people-power emphasis is relatively new for the GOP, which traditionally has relied on its fundraising advantage over Democrats to saturate the television airwaves and flood mailboxes with direct mail.

"The election of 2000 was kind of an eye-opener for us," said Al Austin, a Tampa developer who is the state GOP finance chairman. "We were a little complacent ... and now we're re-emphasizing grass roots organizing. You're going to see a major, major difference in the voter turnout we're going to have."

The grass roots GOP effort in Florida and other battleground states is extraordinary not only in its scale, but also in its early timing. Without a serious primary challenge, the president's campaign has had the luxury of building a sprawling ground organization and amassing a primary season campaign account that will top $170-million while Democrats spend money and energy fighting for their party nomination.

"It gives us the opportunity to start organizing now for the full-on general effort without having to worry about how the campaign is doing in early primary states," said Brett Doster, chief of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida.

The Bush-Cheney state campaign begins the new year with campaign organizations nearly complete in all 67 counties. Volunteer outreach committees already are actively targeting specific groups, including young professionals, firefighters and Jewish voters.

It has completed 10 of 12 training sessions, 21/2-hours each, for organizers across the state. By the time the last one is held Jan. 31 in Miami, more than 2,500 activists will be ready with detailed marching orders.

"I don't think we've ever been this far ahead this early," Reed said.

Florida Democratic Party Chairman Scott Maddox acknowledged the Republican advantage in money and early organization, but noted the Democratic nominee likely will be decided by early March.

"We're talking just 60 days, and then you'll see us start to mobilize," said Maddox, adding that Democratic candidates aren't helping by aggressively attacking front-runner Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont.

"There's no question (Bush-Cheney) will have the best campaign money can buy. But the people of the state of Florida will see slick campaign ads and paid canvassers and will want to know what's going on with the economy, what's going on with our foreign policy," Maddox said.

The new year quickly will bring a higher profile for the Bush re-election campaign in Florida. The Florida campaign staff will grow from two paid employees to at least eight by February, and prominent national Republicans will appear in the state to regularly extol Bush's record and agenda.

Bush is expected to be in Florida on Thursday for a fundraiser in Palm Beach. Republican state Rep. Leslie Waters of Seminole - a top Bush-Cheney campaign leader in Pinellas, which voted Democratic in the past three presidential elections - expects the president will visit the county at least three times before Election Day.

But what campaign officials see as the most critical element of ensuring another four years in the White House is old-fashioned shoe leather.

"The presidency is won state by state," Doster said. "In the state of Florida, it's won in every neighborhood."

For all the attention Dean has received for his Internet-driven grass roots campaign, the Bush-Cheney effort could dwarf it. The president has more than 6-million people registered as supporters on its Web site, 10 times what Dean has.

In 2000, internal Republican polls showed Bush ahead or about even in every battleground state on the Friday before election. But superior voter turnout efforts by Democrats eroded that advantage, and Al Gore wound up winning the popular vote nationally and coming just 537 Florida votes shy of winning the presidency.

Since then, Republicans have embarked on an ambitious effort to improve voter mobilization, dubbed the "72-Hour Program" in reference to the crucial final days of the campaign. It helped Republicans sweep most elections in 2002.

Reed, former leader of the Christian Coalition, proved his voter turnout skills as Georgia's Republican chairman in 2002, when Republicans unseated Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes and Sen. Max Cleland.

In 1996, 1998 and 2000, Reed said, Democrats accounted for 41 percent of the vote; Republicans, 38 percent. In 2002, even with heavy turnout in Democratic strongholds, Republicans accounted for 45 percent of the vote; Democrats, 38 percent.

Bush campaign officials are hoping for similar results in Florida. With overall turnout of about 70 percent expected, the campaign is aiming for Republican turnout of 80 percent.

To get there, the campaign will mix unglamorous grunt work - knocking on doors, phoning voters - with high-tech reinforcement.

Some organizers will have hand-held computers telling them which homes to target and what issues are important to that voter, based on intelligence culled from phone banks and other sources. One house might get a pitch focused on Bush's environmental and education efforts. Another might get information stressing national security. Yet another, tax cuts.

Local volunteers will have access to databases to look up neighbors or fellow garden club members to see who is not registered and who needs an extra push to vote. The campaign already is compiling data on which voters are likely to vote early or by absentee ballot.

At a time when Internet and cable news have fragmented the traditional avenues for reaching voters, the campaign is putting more emphasis on personal contact to motivate voters.

In Pasco County, where Republicans recently completed a phone bank that reached 15,000 independent and swing voters, Republican Chairman Bill Bunting said the personal touch paid off.

"A lot of the younger, non-party-affiliated voters we reached said, "You know, nobody ever asks us our opinion. I really appreciate that,' " Bunting said.

The new emphasis on local grass roots organizing has an added benefit for Republicans: It is further energizing local activists for the campaign.

"The importance of grass roots coming from the (Republican National Committee) and the Bush campaign nationally is very motivating to us locally," Pinellas Republican Chairman Paul Bedinghaus said. "Sometimes in the past, people who do grass roots felt like second fiddle to the money raisers. That is definitely not the case now."

The campaign is not merely encouraging grass roots supporters to work for Bush; it's checking up on them, too. Each volunteer who commits to a certain task, be it courting Hispanic voters or registering people to the campaign Web site, must account for the goal. Someone who commits to getting 10 pro-Bush letters published in the newspaper, for example, will have to produce copies of the published letters.

There are perks to the job. Volunteer team leaders who accomplish tasks earn "GOPoints," which can be cashed in for merchandise ranging from canvas tote bags to folding chairs.

Recruiting thousands of volunteers to work on the campaign is a tough job, but party leaders say they find it much easier than expected. The Republican base, they say, is as fired up as they've ever seen. The polarizing Florida recount of 2000 is as much a battle cry for Republican activists as for Democrats.

"The 537 number is like an albatross around our necks," Bunting said of Bush's razor-thin victory. "We don't want that to happen again."

- Adam C. Smith can be reached at 727 893-8241 or adam@sptimes.com

Get 80 percent Republican turnout in all 67 counties.

Register 75,000 to 100,000 new Republicans in Florida.

Enlist 65,000 "team leaders" to court voters.

Mobilize about 7,000 precinct organizers to drive up turnout street by street.

Recruit five other team leaders.

Host a block party to tout Bush to friends and neighbors.

Sign up 10 people to receive Bush e-mails.

Write letters to newspapers and call radio shows to tout Bush.

Volunteer at local political events.

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