The Obama campaign has 131 campaign offices in Ohio. 10 of these are in in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland); Cincinnati and Columbus have almost as many. I drove to the Shaker Square office, east of downtown Cleveland because I worked there in the 2004 election. Shaker Square is an island of hip in a city not known for hip with a good local coffee shop, a theater that shows indie films, an artists co-op shop, and restaurant choices which include Hungarian and sophisticated soul food. The blocks immediately around Shaker Square are racially mixed, and to the northeast towards Shaker Heights there are million dollar homes, but most of the area covered by the Shaker Square office is near 100% African American. These neighborhoods run the gamut from solidly prosperous, to low-rise downscale apartment blocks, to some streets with abandoned houses. The landscape is complex even within downtown neighborhoods, Rosehill Street looks well-tended, but two streets over two blocks of Grandview have multiple boarded houses.
Shaker Square is well-equipped and well-organized with a competent crew of predominantly twenty something paid staff and volunteer supervisors who have less turf jealousy than normal in campaigns. There were 3 staging areas for canvassing from the Shaker Square office this weekend, but what should have been a huge canvassing weekend was set back by a day of misting rain followed the next day by demoralizing, more than drizzling rain. One of those staging areas, which will be used on election weekend, is Polished Professionals, an African American barbershop not far from Shaker Square with a huge front room with a fireplace and sofas separated from the row of six barber chairs. They let us use their front room and most importantly, their bathroom. The staging area is supervised by two near thirty long-term volunteers, Alex, an Oregonian living in LA and Will, an African-American Cleveland native who could also be mistaken for someone from the Northwest. Both are friendly, helpful, generous, practical and competent. If Obama takes Ohio he will owe much to West Coast volunteers.
On Saturday there were 11 canvassers on a day it never stopped misting. My partner for the first two shifts was the instantly likeable and instantly credible Linda, a fellow baby boomer and semi-retired healthcare administrator who flew in from Seattle. She bravely went into neighborhoods where it takes a few minutes to get used to the iron grate doors, beware of dog signs, and front porches that look like they will probably hold your weight. The third and last shift I barely trudged up the steps while watching Clarence, an African American West Point graduate and Afghan War vet from Texas bounding up the steps at sunset. Clarence flew in from Houston for 2 days of campaigning, but after 15 minutes of campaigning he got us both invited to a birthday barbecue the next day from a man who said he was driving with his brother back to North Carolina on election day so his brother's vote would count. Although Clarence is only 3 years younger than me, he has run 52 more marathons than I have.
My canvassing partners illustrate the difference between 2008 and 2012. There are fewer younger people, fewer local people canvassing for the first time, and fewer local volunteers. Bad weather magnifies this problem. Local people living their lives have better things to do than walk through puddles and knock on doors. When you find someone home or talk to them on the street the community response is enthusiastic. The most common response to the question can we count on your support for President Obama and Senator Sherrod Brown is “Of course.” The 47% do not love Mitt and a woman volunteered that pregnancy through rape is not God's plan. Only a few voters respond with apathy, but even apathy is expressed politely. A harder sell is to get voters to commit to early voting at the single voting location in Cuyahoga County. Ohio Republican Secretaries of State have a long history of voter suppression in Democratic and African-American precints. In 2004 Democratic voters in Columbus waited hours to vote and Antioch and Oberlin students were forced to wait 6 hours to vote. The campaign is worried about Republican election day voter suppression and its solution is get voters to early vote. So far, early voting has not been subject to harassment. Early voting lasts until the Monday before the election but the Republican Secretary of State has cut back the hours in the last 3 days before the election compared to 2 years ago. The strategy has had some success. The number of early voters in Cuyahoga County was 5,000 votes ahead of a comparable period in 2008.
Canvassers are badly needed because many of the voters who could win this election are the hardest to reach, young people and infrequent voters move and change their telephone numbers. In poorer neighborhoods walk lists do not reflect reality. The four voters who used to live upstairs moved, but there are two voters who are not on the list. Mrs. Smith, who lives downstairs and is not on the list has already voted, but her 19 year old son on the list hasn't. No one in the campaign has talked to him. I tell young voters that older people are not going to win this election - everyone knows they are going to vote - young people will decide who the next President is. I informed a young man of 22 who was trying to attend college and wasn't sure that he was going to vote for Sherrod Brown, that Sherrod Brown favored Pell grants, his opponent wants to reduce them.
I do not know where in Ohio, or in Cleveland canvassers are most needed, but I do know that Nate Silver is not going to win this election and that the trillion dollar wasted on the war in Iraq would not have occurred if 600 more votes had been counted for Al Gore in Florida. There are voters to get to the polls around Shaker Square and I am sure that is true in Toledo, Cincinnati, Lorain County, Dayton and Columbus. Ohio is still “winnable” by Romney. A 70% chance of winning means you lose 30% of the time. If you live in Indianapolis, Louisville, Lexington, or Charleston you are minutes to a few hours from some of 131 Obama headquarters in the State of Ohio.
You may be able to repeat my one undeniable success. Instead of following procedure and persuading a voter to fill out and submit an early voting commitment card to the campaign, hope that someone would talk to her on the phone and confirm transportation arrangements (that's 4 steps if you are counting) I told Tia, a 40's single African American mom who moved from Atlanta because it was too congested, too country (i.e. racist) and voted for Hillary Clinton in 2008 because she “wasn't going to vote for Obama just because he's black” that I would give her a ride to the polls the next morning at 9:00. She agreed. I showed up at her house at 9:00, called her to tell her I was outside and before 10 she had finished voting. If Obama or Brown win Ohio by one vote, Tia and I will take all the credit.