Obama, McCain battle for Florida’s votes

Presidential candidates bolster staff, field offices in key electoral state

By JIM ASH • news-press.com capital bureau • October 5, 2008

TALLAHASSEE — Veteran Democratic strategist Karl Koch remembers the 1996 presidential campaign, when he could count the paid staff in Florida for Clinton-Gore on one hand — five.

On Election Day 2000, when the recount threatened a constitutional crisis, Gore waged the historic losing battle with 250 paid staff in 16 field offices, Koch said.

Today, Koch marvels at a Democratic machine for Barack Obama and Joe Biden that boasts 500 paid staff members and more than 50 field offices, some of them in Republican strongholds like Brevard, Escambia and Charlotte counties once written off as a lost cause.

“It’s amazing,” Koch says. “What you’re looking at now just blows the doors off what we had before. It’s truly at a different level.”

Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer said Republicans have between 41 and 45 “Victory Offices,” in the state and “more than 100” paid staff.

That could swell now that Sen. John McCain canceled appearances in Michigan, signaling he was pulling out of a state he did not believe he could win and marshaling resources elsewhere, including Florida.

“I think any campaign always evaluates where it needs to put its resources on a daily basis,” Greer said.

And Greer is dubious of Obama claims.

“The Obama organization has been very successful at creating a phantom campaign in Florida. Where are all these field offices? I can’t find them.”

Koch said staffing and volunteer teams are a credit to the enthusiasm generated by a dynamic young candidate who lights up crowds with his thundering oratory.

But observers say it is the result of an Obama campaign flush with cash and a Florida Democratic Party that has learned from past mistakes — and how to borrow from the Republican playbook.

MICRO-TARGETED

Today, both Democrats and Republicans are using national databases to track voters who migrate from other states and marketing research that builds profiles of likely supporters, research that helps tease votes from enemy territory.

Do loyal Democrats spend reliably on ballet lessons and Starbucks? Find a voter with the same spending habits and send an Obama volunteer knocking on the door.

“We realized that the methods we used in the past weren’t working and that Democrats needed to do it differently to win,” said Florida Democratic Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff, who worked for the presidential campaign of John Kerry in Florida in 2004.

One of the biggest changes from 2004, when Kerry lost the state by 380,000 votes, is the ground war.

The Kerry campaign relied on traditional allies like the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union and the teachers and the government workers unions to do much of the critical outreach and door-to-door voter contact.

This year, paid staff members armed with updated voter lists are steering more than 10,000 volunteers to micro-targeted outreach, often in nontraditional areas, Democrats claim. Democrats may not take an overwhelmingly Republican county but shaving a few points off the opponent’s victory adds up statewide.

“A place like Brevard County could be the battleground that decides the race,” Jotkoff said. “In ’04, Brevard County was considered the Democratic dead zone.”

AD SPENDING

Money also makes a difference, and Obama and the Democrats have vowed to shower Florida with it. Last week, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe vowed to spend $39 million in Florida.

A University of Wisconsin research group studied the combined $15.5 million in advertising the campaigns spent on battleground states from Sept. 6-13. Florida spending was second only to Pennsylvania in the study. Of the $7.76 million Obama spent nationwide, $1.3 million went to Florida. Of the $7.8 million McCain spent nationwide, $1 million went to Florida.

But Obama started spending much earlier. From June to the end of July, Obama spent $5 million on television ads in Florida, airing more ads in Republican-leaning Pensacola than liberal Miami-Dade. During that same time, McCain spent zero on ads in Florida.