Oct 11, 2008 11:55 am US/Eastern
McCain Supporters Face Uphill Climb In Blue Jersey
WOODBRIDGE, N.J. (AP) ―
Walter Zjawin is trying to help John McCain do what no
Republican has done in 20 years: win a presidential general election in New Jersey.
But it's a decidedly
uphill battle in one of the bluest states in America. New
Jersey is far from the focus of either national campaign as the
days—and dollars—dwindle, and McCain has already pulled out of states like Michigan that once held
far more promise for him.
Still, Zjawin, a
retired postal worker and Vietnam
veteran regularly pulls into a nondescript office building, walks up a winding
staircase to a conference room and starts calling voters in solidly Democratic
areas, asking them to support McCain.
"Most Republican
candidates in this state put their headquarters in the heart of Republican
country, call all Republicans—and get 38 percent of the vote," said state Sen. Bill Baroni, McCain's New Jersey campaign chairman. "To win this election,
we need to talk to people other than Republicans."
Will any of this work?
Brigid Harrison, a professor
of political science at Montclair
State University,
doesn't think so.
"Given the electoral
performance of the state in recent elections and the number of new
registrations from the Feb. 5 primary, most of which were Democrats, it's not
very likely McCain can pull an upset here," Harrison
said.
A Fairleigh
Dickinson University
poll released Tuesday gave Barack Obama a 13-point lead in New Jersey. The same poll a month earlier
had McCain within 6 points of Obama.
While McCain has five
paid staffers in New Jersey,
Obama has five times that amount.
Across the state in
Obama's West Windsor headquarters, the Democrat's
campaign workers and volunteers don't seem worried about an upset.
"We're not taking
anything for granted, and we are fighting for every vote," said Obama spokesman
Andrew Poag. "But we're feeling pretty good about New Jersey."
History isn't on McCain's
side, either. New Jersey
hasn't supported a Republican presidential candidate since George H.W. Bush in 1988.
To try to cut into the
Democrats' natural advantage in the Garden State, the McCain camp has been
courting voters in blue-collar Democratic areas where Reagan did well, and who
went for Hillary Clinton in the primaries.
One recent day was "Bayonne
Day," in which 15 volunteers, including Zjawin, were given lists of registered
voters to call in the blue-collar Hudson
County bastion. He
connected with one voter who said he planned to vote for McCain, listing the
economy and national security as his main concerns.
Zjawin recorded that
information on an optical scanner sheet similar to school standardized tests,
categorizing the voter's preferences for a campaign database that would, among
other things, be used to remind him to get to the polls on Election Day.
"We're calling and
knocking on doors in places where voters may never have seen or heard from a
Republican," Baroni said. "You can't win an election with just Republicans in New Jersey. We're going
after the independents and swing voters that determine every election in this
state."
In addition to Bayonne,
Carteret and Sayreville in Middlesex County, Hamilton in Mercer County, and
Galloway in Atlantic County are among places the McCain camp says it is making
inroads with undecided voters.
"I hope I'm making a
difference," said Zjawin, whose son is a captain in the Marine Corps with three
tours in Iraq
already under his belt. "I hope the outcome is positive for America."
The Obama camp's
natural strengths lie in heavily Democratic areas like Essex, Bergen,
Hudson, Union, Middlesex and Camden counties. But it, too, is taking the
fight to the other team's stronghold.
One tactic the campaign
is using is training volunteers to become community organizers, following in
the nominee's own footsteps. The daylong sessions teach volunteers how to
canvass door-to-door, register people to vote, and try to make them feel part
of a larger movement for positive change.
"It's not just enough
to admire Barack Obama; we want you to be like Barack Obama and build
relationships to accomplish your goals," said Jocelyn Woodards, a campaign
worker who helped start the training sessions in Chicago and spread them to
other states.
One woman who went
through "Obama Camp," as they call it, is Kathy Frisch, who is now using what
she learned to help drum up support for Obama in heavily Republican Ocean
County.
"It was discouraging at
first; my initial efforts were so naive, but we kept at it, and we've
registered several hundred new Democrats in Ocean County,"
she said. "There's a lot more support for Obama than people might think in this
bedrock Republican county."
With New
Jersey and its 15 electoral votes seemingly safe in the Democratic
column, many of the Obama campaign's calls to voters in the Garden State
ask if they would be willing to help contact voters in swing states like Pennsylvania in support
of the Obama/Biden ticket. The campaign has organized what it calls "Drive For
Change" events in which caravans of Obama supporters drive across the state and
into Pennsylvania
to knock on doors of voters there.
(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
