The ground game in a presidential campaign is the locally based network of field offices, paid staff and the volunteers who have come forward to aid their candidate.
If you've followed the presidential election to any degree at all you've heard a lot about the so called Obama 'Ground Game'. The ground game in a presidential campaign is the locally based network of field offices, paid staff and the volunteers who have come forward to aid their candidate. The consensus is that the Obama campaign has put together a much better ground game than the McCain/Palin campaign. But I wanted to see for myself whether this was so. So I set off to see whether this is true or just of more campaign 'spin'.
I'll focus on Virginia because it has become a battleground state. I also live here. No Democrat has won the state of Virginia in a presidential election since 1964. This year things are different. Polls indicate that Virginia could go either Republican or Democratic. The two campaigns are engaged in a terrific battle to win the state.
The fight for Virginia is especially intense and nowhere is that fight more intense than in Loudoun County, located some 40 miles west of Washington DC. It is here that the battle for Virginia may well be won or lost. Many observers believe that as Loudoun goes, so goes Virginia.
Loudoun County dates from 1757 when it was formed out of the western part of the Lord Fairfax Land Grant. The capitol seat is Leesburg and it has been the capitol of the county 249 of the last 250 years. Loudoun County reeks of history and the western part of the state features some of the most beautiful horse country in the entire United States. The rolling hills and stone fences so prominent along the Snickersville Turnpike remind many visitors of the English countryside. Its not unusual here to see fox hunts, horse shows and some of the best fall fairs to be found anywhere.
To see what's going on in Loudoun County I'll start with the Internet. Both the McCain and the Obama campaigns have robust web sites that aid visitors wishing to help their campaigns. Both allow people to volunteer to help the campaign, to find local events, make friends or donate money. Both web sites make it easy to find out what's happening with the campaign in different regions of the country.
My starting point was the McCain web site. The mission is to find local events to attend to support the McCain/Palin ticket. A quick search of the McCain web site turned up one event located within a radius of 25 miles of Purcelleville, Virginia in the heart of Loudoun County. The event was a debate watching party at the home of a McCain/Palin supporter. That's just the kind of event both campaigns encourage their supporters to attend.
The next stop was the Obama web site. I performed an identical search for events located within 25 mile of Purcellville. Here I turned up 41 events in the scheduling queue. Wow! This certainly confirms what what was reported at sites like fivethirtyeight.com . Online at least, it appears the Obama campaign appears to have a lot more local activity than the McCain/Palin campaign.
But let's not take this as gospel proof. I decided to pay a visit to a few Obama and McCain field offices in Loudoun County to assess the level of activity going on. The Obama campaign has five field offices in Loudoun County. The McCain campaign has one.
The trip begins in Philomont, halfway between the village of Aldie in the southeast and Bluemont in the northwest. Philomont is where the rear of Oh! Oh! Howard's XI Corps was routed in 1864 in the Civil War by Mosby's Raiders. Aldie is where George Armstrong Custer tried to jump the Little River on a bet in June of 1863. He didn't make it. Bluemont was once named Snickersville, a name that has nothing to do with candy bars and everything to do with Edward Snickers' ferry on the Shenandoah River in the 1790s. In Philomont you can see one of only three remaining General Stores in the state of Virginia with a post office on the inside. Virginia drips in history.
My first stop is the Obama field office in Ashburn, some 10 miles east of Leesburg off route 7. Ashburn is best known as the headquarters for the Washington Redskins football team. Its an unincorporated town of of 73,000 and is also the headquarters location for Verizon Business and the Old Dominion Brewing Company. Ashburn was once known as Farmwell, but old locals will tell you that the name Ashburn came from a lighting strike on an Ash tree in 1896 on Senator William Morris Stewart's farm. The tree burned and smoked for several weeks and if legend is to be believed, gave its name to the area. Ash Burn. Ashburn is here.
On the left I pass Landsdowne, where John's brother Joe McCain said last week that Northern Virginia was "communist country". I looked but I didn't see any communists. OK, I really didn't expect to find very many in an area where the average home price is $525,000. Had I found some I could have always always called for Lyndon LaRouche to come to the rescue. He lives in nearby Leesburg.
At the Ashburn Obama field office it is 11:00 AM and there are 11 people in the office attending a Get Out The Vote (GOTV) organizing meeting. This was an event to train volunteers for the get out the vote campaign coming later in October. The meeting is highly organized and each volunteer is given a 28 page document outlining the GOTV campaign. Its double printed on the front and back so we're really talking about 56 pages here. A one hour training session reviewed the highlights of the upcoming events.
During the course of the meeting two people came in and asked if they could work the phone bank. Both were shown the phones, given a package of instructions on how to make phone calls, and both began making phone calls to independent and undecided voters in Virginia. They never looked up while I was there. Everything in the office was supervised by three paid staffers.
Next it was on to Sterling, some 6 miles down route 7, the Old Colonial Highway first surveyed by George Washington in the 1750s. I pass by uncounted numbers of construction sites, strip shopping centers, Chinese woks, mattress stores and Mickey-D Gut Bomb Factories. I'm looking for the headquarters of the McCain/Palin campaign. I cannot help but wonder though, who is buying all those mattresses?
Sterling is a fairly new town for Virginia and was incorporated 1952. Sterling is here. Compared to Leesburg Sterling is the new kid on the block. It is home to the National Air and Space Museum, part of the Smithsonian group, and is located near Dulles Airport. An afternoon in the Museum and you can see the Wright Brother's plane or rare restorations of P-38 fighters that won control of the air in the Pacific during World War II. The National Weather Service headquarters for the Washington-Baltimore Metropolitain Area can be found here. Lots going on in Sterling.
The McCain/Palin HQ is located in the Community Plaza Shopping Center in Sterling. I get to Community Plaza and I can't find the the place. There is no sign or hint of a campaign office. The numbering system of the shopping center is more complex than sub-prime mortgage document. I drive around looking for it for twenty minutes before giving up. So I call the campaign and ask where they are. "On the second floor of the Community Plaza in the clock tower." Great. I would have never found it on my own. They're not going to get many impulse walk-ins with a footprint like that.
The McCain Palin campaign has one one field office in Loudoun County. Its located right off route 7. Its in a roomy second floor office, almost opposite the Chick-Fil-A, where you can get a good chicken sandwich any day but Sun Day.
I walked in about 1:00 in the afternoon, not the busiest time of day for a field campaign office and tried to look like I knew what I was doing. There are 11 people in the office and three of them are children. Six are seated at a table near the front door, two are grouped around someone answering the phone and there are two more staring at computer screens against the left wall. The Group of Six is talking about the Redskins loss to the Rams last weekend and they all agree that the Redskins need a punter.
After a few seconds somebody comes up to me asks if they can help. I say I want a bumper sticker and he goes off to get one. Soon he returns.
"So how are things going?"
"Pretty good right now"
"McCain going to win Virginia?"
"Yes, but it will be close."
"Can he win the election?"
"I think so. He's come back before."
More conversation ensues.
"See 'ya."
As I leave a lady with two small children enters the office carrying bags of food. Its not enough for everybody in the room so it must be for the kids. Probably chicken sandwiches.
I come out thinking about William Kristol, who said in the Sunday New York Times "It’s time for John McCain to fire his campaign." There appeared to be a lot of social networking going on in that office, but other than the person answering the phone and the guy who got my bumper sticker, I couldn't see much else happening there. Maybe it was just the time of day. And certainly some work has to go on here, but not a whole lot that I could see.
Next stop is Leesburg. Leesburg was founded in 1758 at the intersection of the old Colonial Highway (route 7) and the Old Carolina Road (route 15). It was here that the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were hidden in 1812 to keep them out of the hands of the British army setting fire to Washington. It is here that you still see bullet holes from Elijah White's shoot out with the Maryland Cavalry in September, 1862. The old courthouse has the obligatory memorial confederate soldier, and Payne's Biker Cafe, once the scene of raucous nights, is across the street.
Leesburg is the home of George Marshal, army Chief of Staff during the Second World War, and his Dodona Manor is just north of the Obama field headquarters for Loudoun County. The field office is located right on Market street in downtown Leesburg. You can't miss it. Leesburg is here.
I go in about 2:30 PM looking for a bumper sticker. There appears to be about 24 people here. There are 10 or 11 who are just concluding a meeting, three doing desk work along the back side of the room, three more are waiting on people who have come looking for yard signs, bumper stickers, etc. and one coming to ask me what I want. "A bumper sticker" I say. It takes her a while to find it but this gives me a chance to look around a little more.
This joint is jumping. There are no children milling about and I only saw one teenager. These are adults working for or volunteering for a political campaign. On the left side of the office is a room with a door. Its the phone bank room. And the room is so thick with people that you can't stir it up with a stick. Every desk is occupied. The contrast between this headquarters and the McCain headquarters couldn't be more stark.
It is hard to fathom what the Obama organization has done in Virginia. Let's try it with some numbers. The campaign has 51 field offices, 200 paid staff and 32,800 volunteers.
Need some perspective on that number? Trying to wrap your head on what 32,800 means? Here's some help. That's more folks than Irvin McDowell had available in the Union Army at the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861. How about this. Its more folks than P.G.T. Beauregard had in the confederate army at the same battle.
This is absolutely unprecedented in the state of Virginia. Nobody has ever raised an army of volunteers like that. In Loudoun County alone the volunteers number almost 1,500 and that number is expected to double in the next three weeks. Until three weeks ago McCain didn't have a single office in Loudoun County. The Obama people have been working over this County unopposed since the early days of the primaries. Hillary had very few troops on the ground in Loudoun and McCain doesn't have many more.
Talk to canvassers in Loudoun County and they'll tell you they rarely find any evidence of the McCain Campaign canvassing. The Obama campaign has knocked on 1.6 million doors and made 2.8 million phone calls. Its amazing what you can do with 32,800 people who want to do something.
A quick look at the Virginia polls will give you an idea of what this has done. Obama is ahead by about 6% in a state that hasn't voted for a Democrat for president in 44 years.
Another way to gauge what's happening is to talk with a consultant who works for one of the campaigns. That's exactly what I did last week. He will remain nameless because he didn't have the authority to speak with me. He was a consultant to the McCain campaign and he worked out of Washington.
"Who's going to win the election?"
"Its over. I'm telling you its already over. Obama will win"
"Why?"
"Because McCain is too old, looks bad, is running a terrible campaign and won't listen to a thing we tell him."
"Really?"
"By the way, who do you work for?"
"The Obama Campaign."
"Shit, my own daughter's voting for him."
"Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose" said Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr. Post debate the McCain campaign has no events listed within a 25 mile radius of Purcellville, while the Obama campaign has 38. On Thursday the Washington Post reported that McCain's five Northern Virginia offices were 'nearly deserted'. There was one person in the West Springfield office while down the road at the Obama office in Fairfax 200 people lined up to get canvassing packages.
I'm beginning to think that Bill Kristol got it right on Fox News.