Yepsen: Organization will be key to victory
By DAVID YEPSEN
Register Political Columnist
01/19/2004
http://desmoinesregister.com/opinion/stories/c5917686/23293251.html
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If organization is as important as caucus lore tells us it is, Howard Dean should win the Iowa caucuses tonight. Driven by youthful energy and anti-war activism not seen since the Vietnam War, Dean has assembled what his organizers claim is the best get-out-the-vote operation ever built in the state.
They are probably correct. As the campaign draws to a close today, the important story isn't the candidates and their hoopla. It's their organizations and their boring grunt work on the streets and telephones of Iowa.
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On top of that, Dean's campaign uses a "Dean Leader" program in which people contact their friends to urge them to support Dean. They'll get together before the caucus and go together to the meetings. An elaborate communication system will identify which Dean supporters aren't showing up so someone can track them down in time to get them to the caucus by the 7 p.m. cutoff for voting. The goal is to turn out more than 100,000 people for Dean all across the state.
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Gephardt has based his organization on support from 21 international unions that have 95,000 members in Iowa, and he'd like to turn out at least 45,000 of those folks.
John Kerry's campaign has always had a focus on organizing, even during the dark days of summer when Kerry's national effort languished. His Iowa director, John Norris, is a former state party chairman who is one of the most respected Democratic operatives in Iowa.
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If the Dean campaign has a high goal of turning out 100K supporters, then it's likely they might get 55K to 65K out to the polls, and with the field divided between Kerry, Edwards, Gephardt, and Kucinich....it just might be a Dean win.
